9 August 2023

The Unpredictable Dictators

Keren Yarhi-Milo and Laura Resnick Samotin

Until the week before it happened, most people refused to believe that Russia would attack Ukraine. Despite repeated warnings from the Biden administration and widespread evidence that Moscow’s troops were massing on Ukraine’s borders, it was difficult to accept that Russian President Vladimir Putin would try conquering Europe’s largest state. “He won’t be initiating an escalation,” said French President Emmanuel Macron on February 8, just 16 days before the invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was also caught off-guard, saying at the end of January that Biden’s claims of a coming invasion were simply “panic.” The German government

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