This is Putin’s biggest mistake – and how he will be remembered

If military operations go badly or living standards in Russia start to slip, Putin risks popular discontent – or a palace coup, writes Mary Dejevsky

Russian president Vladimir Putin is taking the biggest risk of his 20-year reign (AFP via Getty)

Writing in The Independent a week ago, I concluded an analysis of the west’s failure even to try to understand today’s Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, like this: “If Russia does invade Ukraine, it will not be a vanity project dreamt up by Putin to restore the USSR, nor will it be an operation undertaken in a fit of pique to teach Ukraine a lesson. Putin is neither – despite many preconceptions to the contrary – an imperial nostalgic nor a gambler. It will be because Putin, as Russia’s president, believes that his country’s security is threatened – and threatened, let there be no doubt about it, by us.”

That invasion has now happened. According to early reports, Russia launched multiple attacks on mainly military targets in the early hours of Thursday. This suggests it has chosen what might be described as the maximalist option, and that the purpose, thus, goes far beyond preserving and consolidating Russian influence in the eastern area of Donbas while letting the rest of the country go its own way.

Russia’s objective seems to be nothing less than to neutralise Ukraine militarily, and to ensure, as Russia would see it, that the country does not – and will not in the foreseeable future – present a security threat to Russia.