evidence: In a pre-dawn address on Russian television, Putin announced that he was attacking Ukraine, a sovereign democracy on his doorstep. The barrage started minutes later — a moment the United States and its have allies have predicted for weeks, but which nonetheless reverberated throughout the international order. [...] Putin was issuing bold demands to the West about security guarantees while massing troops on his neighbor's borders, but unlike previous conflicts Russia's Kremlin-controlled state media was not selling its audience on the idea that war was imminent. That switch was flipped last week. Then on Monday, Putin stopped short of declaring war but laid out the case for one, delivering a revisionist history that painted Ukraine as an illegitimate country that belonged within Moscow's realm.