Ukraine: the war that shouldn’t have happened


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War between Ukraine and Russiacase

Vladimir Putin is an insatiable autocrat. He seized power. He crushed all opposition. And has shamelessly toyed with all of his “Western partners,” as he condescendingly calls them, for years.

Until the end, we did not want to believe it (except Joe Biden). Until the last moment, even among those who closely follow Russia and its turbulent recent history, the evolution of Vladimir Putin, his hardening, his tension, many will have hoped that it would not resolve to the worst. That despite his increasingly martial declarations, he would not go so far as to provoke a real war on European soil. But that is exactly what is happening: total war on our continent.

However, everything was there, before our eyes. We sought reasonable explanations for each of his bravado and outbidding, clinging to the justifications put forward by the Kremlin (while recalling, in a strange movement of schizophrenic lucidity, that Putin should never be taken at his word). The 200,000 men massed at the borders? They were obviously going to return to their barracks at the end of the maneuvers, since Sergei Lavrov had confirmed this on several occasions. Military ships in the Black Sea and the Sea of ​​Azov? Routine exercises, you know. The Minsk agreements? Of course Putin sees in it the only solution to resolve a conflict, which he very much regrets (with a contrite face) that Kiev persists in wanting to maintain it. He said it again last week…



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