Signs of failed aggression of Russia’s Ukraine is obvious: the torn reputation of its armed forces as a modernized and massive resistance force; its dilapidated economy; and a Western alliance more united than ever since the worst tensions of the Cold War.

But what is less appreciated is that it is only the latest and potential the most impressive series of failures suffered by President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Ukraine. If Afghanistan is the “grave of empires”, Ukraine is where Putin’s imperial ambitions continue to fail.

In fact, the main reason why the Russian leader took a potentially self -destructive step was an assault, some analysts believe, this is to reverse a long series of failures since Ukraine’s so -called Orange Revolution in 2004, in the early years of Putin’s rule.

“He has been obsessed with Ukraine since the early 2000s since Ukraine wase became the field where I kept losingthe only field where I keep losing, ”said Mikhail Fishman, a former political talk show host on TV Rain, the now-shuttered independent show.

Putin has long conspired to weaken Ukraine, openly and covertly, and has scored several victories along the way. This keeps the country enveloped in a devastating war in the east, he sowed discord in the political arena and destroyed its infrastructure using cyberattack experiments, techniques he later exported to the United States and elsewhere.

But on at least three major occasions when Putin has directly intervened to bring Ukraine under Russian control, he has been restrained.

The consequences

There is always a chance that he will prevail in this opportunity, either by reducing Ukraine’s cities to rubble or seizing large parts of the country to the east and south and declaring victory. Support for war at home seems strong.

But even the results will come at a cost, which reinforces the hatred of Ukrainians to Russia, which strengthens the status of Moscow. as an outcast in the West and will almost certainly require long and expensive work. History tends to punish Russian leaders who launched what they did not expect to be short, successful wars.

The Russian revolution that ended 300 years of Romanov rule erupted a few years after Tsar Nicholas II defeated in a disastrous war against the Japanesewhile the Soviet Union collapsed after its disaster in Afghanistan.

Some analysts believe that Putin is in danger of a similar fate. “Russia will lose because of Ukraine”said Fishman, who had just finished a book on why democracy failed in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Others were less emphatic, especially in the short term, paying attention to popular signs of support for him within Russia. However, they warn that Putin is playing a poker game with an unexpected ending.

“It was a huge failure in Europe’s biggest land war since 1945, and that was a huge failure,” said Clifford Kupchan, president of Eurasia Group, a political risk assessment firm in Washington. “I don’t forecast futures on Russia’s political stability for five years.”

While Putin has publicly stressed the security threat posed by a leaning towards western Ukraine as a reason to go to war, others say their biggest concern is the possible political consequences of living alongside a crowded democracy with decent economic prospects.

“Putin’s latest nightmare is a color revolution in Russia, and that’s the lens through which he sees people voting in Ukraine,” Kupchan said. “Because he’s so close, culturally, to the threat of contagion as he sees it as bigger.”

Putin’s achievements are countless, especially his entire career, from an unknown mid-level intelligence agent, forced to drive a taxi to survive after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, to becoming one of the oldest serves as leader in power. however, in Ukraine, Putin, 69, has made repeated wrong steps.

In 2004, he personally campaigned in the presidential election on behalf of his preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, which he twice congratulated on his success.

The mistakes

But widespread accusations of electoral fraud sparked a nationalist backlash and the Orange Revolution, in which street protests eventually culminated in the election of Viktor Yushchenko (who was poisoned during the campaign) as president of a Western-oriented government.

In 2006, Putin sought to seize more control over the natural gas distribution system that carries Russia’s supplies through Ukraine to Europe, and earn from it, creates chaos by cutting off the flow in the dead of winter.

He backed away when it became clear he was in danger of losing energy markets in Europe if Russia’s gas supplies could not be trusted. In 2009, tried to remodel the cabinete in kyiv who would have allowed his allies to dominate the government, but the effort failed.

Putin made his biggest mistake in 2013, when Ukraine seemed to have successfully stuck in Russia’s orbit by signing an association agreement with the European Union. To avoid this, offered a loan of 15,000 million dollars to Yanukovych, at that time the legitimately elected but unchangeable corrupt president.

As in 2003, that triggered large street protests in kyiv’s Independence Square, or Maidan. After police violence urged Moscow to crack down on protesters, Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014.

Putin called it a US -inspired coup and invaded Crimea, eventually incorporating it, and igniting a separatist war in the Donbas region, the resource -rich rust belt of eastern Ukraine.

He thought he had already found a way to dominate kyiv in a proposed agreement called Minsk agreements, which would give separatists the power to veto important central government decisions. But the agreement was never implemented and the war became a dead end that in 2022 killed 14,000 people, many of them civilians.

As failures escalated, Putin began to discredit Ukraine. He said this is not a real country, but an improvised artifice of Lenin using different parts of Russia’s land, and in recent years it has been said to be led by a “Nazi” government that Ukrainians, particularly ethnic Russians in the eastern part of the country, would be happy to see expelled.

Notably, Putin outlined his final plans for Ukraine in 2014, after including Crimea.

While holding his annual meeting at town hall on television, he made a surprise statement about “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, an arch that stretches the length of the entire coast and eastern part of Ukraine.

“I want to remind you that what was called Novorossiya in the tsarist days (Kharkov, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa) was not part of Ukraine then,” he said. “Russia lost those territories for various reasons, but the people remained”.

In the current invasion, the Russian army attacked all six cities you mentioned. Leaving Lugansk and Donetsk in the breakaway regions, however, Russian troops only captured Kherson, and the rest were fiercely resisting, which Putin seemed surprised.

The example of Novorossiya gives a hint to why did putin fail so consistent in their efforts to seize Ukraine.

At the end of the 18th century, when Catherine the Great toured the same newly conquered lands of Novorossiya, the phrase “village of Potemkin” was born to describe the facades built by one of her generals to hide the extreme poverty and backwardness of the region.

Coming to Ukraine, analysts say, Putin seems to have built a village of Potemkin in his own mindfooling oneself into thinking that the Russian-speaking people of southeastern Ukraine, home to millions of ethnic Russians, aspire to be part of the Motherland again.

What Putin did not acknowledge was that 30 years of democratic elections were gradually emerging. a sense of nationality among Ukrainianssaid analysts. People realize that they enjoy greater freedom in their new country, despite its corruption, than under the oppressive autocracy that Putin has tried to impose.

When the aggression failed to produce the quick results Putin envisioned, which landed him amid numerous self -wounds, Putin analysts said resorted to the wanton destruction of Ukrainepunishing its 44 million citizens for their long history of rejection of its attempts to include the country in its Russki Mir, or Russian World.

“I think now he sees Ukrainians as traitorsbecause they are not falling for their Russki Mir view, ”said Fiona Hill, Russia adviser to President Trump and his two predecessors, as well as co-author of a biography on Russia.

Putin and his Kremlin cronies have long blamed their failures on US arrogance, deception and manipulation, the standard reserve position for anyone from the Soviet -trained establishment. In the current catastrophe, ghostly fears about NATO missile bases and chemical weapons laboratories in Ukraine have resurfaced.

But as many analysts have observed, the powerful people who propagate such fictions often believe their own lies and, in the absence of dissenting voices, become blind to the facts they must face. For Putin, his biggest blind spot is Ukraine.

“If you live in a world where people are really important and their voice is important, that’s a different world than Putin,” Fishman said.

Ultimately, the aggression appears to represent another setback for Putin in Ukraine, perhaps his biggest. destroying his efforts to be a historical hero to rebuild the Russian Empire.

“Without Ukraine it means nothing,” Fishman said of the search for Putin. “He will never gain political control over Ukraine, it is out of the question.”

New York Times