Historian Sarah Paine: Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a pivotal error. He would
By Tymofiy Mylovanov · November 2, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Historian Sarah Paine: Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a pivotal error. He would have done much better sitting on Crimea and Donbas and slowly destabilizing Ukraine over years. Instead, he has massively contributed to Ukrainian national identity.
Putin has unlimited objectives in Ukraine. He wants to take over the country, eliminate its leadership and destroy the people who preserve Ukrainian culture. That's called genocide.
For most of my life, Germans wore the crown of infamy for World War II. Putin now owns that crown for Russia. Germany has reformed its educational system, while Russians distance themselves from responsibility for the Soviet Union.
Sanctions are like chemotherapy: they shrink the opposing piggy bank while cooperation with allies grows your own. At 3% annual growth, an economy doubles in 23 years. Reduce that growth to 1%, and doubling takes 71 years.
Russia cannot afford to replace its oil refineries because they depend on Western technology. Ukrainian strikes have knocked out up to 50% of Russia's operating refinery capacity, and Ukraine carries out those attacks independently, without Starlink.
America's greatest generation understood that the Soviet Union was a lethal threat that could not be eliminated through war without risking nuclear catastrophe. Instead, the US managed the threat through sanctions, constrained Soviet growth and waited for generational change.
Putin will continue escalating because dictators often have no safe way out. His own entourage could kill him if he tried to retire. When Putin dies, there will be no democratic election and no clear successor. A violent power struggle, potentially even a civil war, is possible.
China supports Putin because Beijing wants to push the US out of international affairs and benefits from a weakened Russia. Russia once seized territory from the Chinese sphere of influence larger than the entire United States east of the Mississippi. China remembers.
Russia's nuclear arsenal once deterred China from challenging Moscow. Putin has squandered much of that advantage. Russia cannot even defeat Ukraine, let alone confront China, and its demographic decline makes the situation worse.
When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he asked experts why the Soviet Union collapsed. They pointed to its organization along ethnic lines. I suspect that helps explain Xi's persecution of the Uyghurs.
Taiwan matters enormously to Beijing because its vibrant democracy disproves the racist idea that democracy is incompatible with Han Chinese society. In genuinely free elections, neither Xi nor Putin would remain in power. That is the existential threat they fear.
If Putin invaded Poland, World War III would begin. Nobody knows exactly what such a war would look like, but nuclear weapons could kill enormous numbers of civilians. The consequences are obscene.