These six months of the greatest and most serious conflict of the time, were building a bewilderment about the reasons that led to Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine.

The initial factor which was an inevitable reaction to NATO’s harassment on Russia’s borders, which in fact had existed since the end of the communist camp, gradually dissolved. Largely due to the statements and messages of the Kremlin autocrat who established this military adventure within a tsarist restoration, beyond the Soviet Union.

So none of these stories would only concern Ukraine, but the constitution of that country as the limit for the entire West. The claim to recover for Moscow a dominant place at the global decision-making table and influence on the old Soviet-era courtyard.

Last June, in the 25th edition of the St. Petersburg forum, considered the Russian Davos, and in the celebration, in those same days, of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I the Great, Putin justified the imperial character of the invasion of Ukraine.

tsarism

In that conference, he proclaimed the funeral of the West, arguing that its leaders “live in the past … in an illusory world” and they refuse to see global changes. These would be the emergence of Russia and China in the definition of planetary rules.

Then, on the anniversary of the tsar with whom he identifies most, Putin compared the current war to the one of just over two decades that Pedro I launched against Sweden between 1700 and 1721. That conflict ended in Swedish defeat. which lost the current territory of St. Petersburg and gave Russia access to the Baltic Sea positioning itself as a driving force of time.

The tsar transformed his country into an empire and declared himself emperor of all the Russias. Holding on to that memory, Putin justified the massacre in Ukraine by stressing that “it seems that it is also our destiny to return what belongs to Russia and strengthen it”.

This belief in resurrecting a past that has marked history explains to a large extent because the consequences have not been measured or the reaction from the other side, even from Ukraine, was underestimated. After six months, the balance sheet shows the strengthening of the Atlantic Alliance to levels unimaginable before the conflict and a recovery, even partial, of world leadership by the United States.

But perhaps most serious, aside from Russia’s limited military gains on the ground, is that Moscow has sacrificed the coercive power that Europe’s dependence on its energy sources has given it. This pattern is dissolving and, like Putin’s imperial dream, it will not even be restored.