Why Russia Believes It Cannot Lose the War in Ukraine
Sergey Karaganov is a prominent Russian political scientist whom I have known for almost 20 years in covering Russia and have interviewed many times as a window into Kremlin thinking. The academic director of the faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics and honorary chairman of Russia’s premier nongovernmental think tank, Mr. Karaganov warned for years about a potential conflict in Ukraine over NATO expansion. Since the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February, he has written articles and given interviews in broad support of President Vladimir Putin, so I interviewed him to better understand Mr. Putin’s aims in the conflict. Ukraine continues to suffer, and those who hope to support Ukraine must understand those aims as it tries to confront Russia’s aggression.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In your articles and interviews, you have said, as President Putin has, that the war against Ukraine is existential for Russia. Why? In February 2022, there was no more talk of Ukraine joining NATO, Ukraine was posing no economic risk to Russia, the United States was far more concerned with China and the Middle East than with Russia. Where was the existential threat that required an all-out invasion?

When the military conflict started, we saw how deep Ukraine’s involvement with NATO was — a lot of arms, training. Ukraine was being turned into a spearhead aimed at the heart of Russia. Also we saw that the West was collapsing in economic, moral, political terms. This decline was especially painful after its peak in the 1990s. Problems within the West, and globally, were not solved. That was a classic prewar situation. The belligerence against Russia has been rapidly growing since the late 2000s. The conflict was seen as more and more imminent. So probably Moscow decided to pre-empt and to dictate the terms of the conflict.