an early interview Kozyrev proposed the supply of armaments by NATO partners rather than a direct confrontation with Russia. He stressed that Putin will not stop his westward conquest with Ukraine if he is not stopped there, and lamented the fact that the Ukrainians had been improperly armed until after the invasion began. Putin cannot be provoked, laughs Kozyrev, as he is already in a heightened state of aggression and will perceive any weakness as an invitation to further aggression. Kozyrev, who wrote the Budapest Memorandum, calls the invasion "a flagrant violation" of its terms and finds the conduct of Putin in this regard shameful. Kozyrev is disappointed in the evolution of Sergey Lavrov. Kozyrev observes that Putin was fearful of COVID-19 and hence he surmises that Putin is so attached to this life that he will not risk nuclear war; he finds Putin to be the anti-Russian epitome. In another interview Kozyrev, who tweeted on 1 March for Russian diplomats to resign, said Putin "acts out of desperation. That is clear." In one interview broadcast when the Russian failure to capture the capital was become evident, he called Putin a "lunatic… detached from reality… delusional". Kozyrev opined that Putin thought the West weak and decadent. Kozyrev thought this war a disaster. Kozyrev wrote in May 2022 an essay for the Journal of Democracy entitled "Why Putin Must Be Defeated" that he and Andrey Vladimirovich Kolesnikov remark the parallels between the post-1933 Gleichschaltung that Nazified German society and the several laws passed by the Russians and executive orders signed Putin "basically [to] criminaliz[e] all forms of dissent" and to dismiss the remnants of independent Russian media. He observes sadly that Anton Troianovski wrote that "The history of mass execution and political imprisonment in the Soviet era, and the denunciation of fellow citizens encouraged by the state… now looms over Russia’s deepening… repression," and finds the two 20th-century system to have one thread in common: totalitarianism. Academic criticisms Australian academic Russologist Graeme Gill finds Kozyrev's tenure at the Russian MFA "rather supine". Sergey Radchenko finds Kozyrev's 2019 memoir to offer "fascinating insights into Moscow’s foreign policy at a time when everything seemed possible, including, perhaps, a prosperous, democratic Russia that was anchored in the West. Kozyrev chased that goal like that firebird of the Russian fairy tale, after which the book is titled, though unlike the hero of the Russian fairy