Why did Putin decide that now is the time to invade Ukraine? That is factually unknown. Conservatives cry that Putin did not invade while Trump was president (and why would that be other than that Trump had decimated NATO, precisely what Putin wanted) but now Republicans seem to assert that because Biden is weak Putin has invaded. That hardly squares with any real facts and such a concept seems to fall in the category of conspiracy theory.
After all it was Trump who attempted to decimate and weaken NATO, a move highly desired by Putin.
However, I do not think that Putin’s actions have anything to do with who is or was president of the U.S. And so I suggest another possible explanation (and there can be many theories because who can divine what actually is in Putin’s quite opaque mind) that has more to do with Putin’s own internal clock, his view of his place in Russian and world history. It seems possible that he has a megalomaniacal view that he wants to be remembered as the leader who restored the Russian empire of old and that his time to do so is winding down.
This theory includes the possibility that he has indeed become psychologically unhinged within that myopia. Basing his thought on that time in 1654 when Bogdan Khmelnitsky pleaded with Tsar Aleksei to accept Ukraine as part of Russia, he seems to have convinced himself that the people in Ukraine want to return to that status of “little Russia” in a new Russian empire.
However, Putin continues to insist that the contemporary leadership is merely an extension of that leadership that welcomed the Nazis into Ukraine in 1941. That was a leadership that hated Russia and hoped the Nazis would liberate Ukraine from Russian control. Putin seems to have decided that that is what the present day leadership (but not the people) also wants: liberation from Russia.
This results in a syllogism that might well exist in Putin’s mindset: Old Ukrainian government + Nazis = liberated Ukraine; present Ukrainian government/Nazis = liberated Ukraine. Old Ukrainian leaders/Nazis = present day government /Nazis.
However, to Putin both governments/Nazis do not represent the Ukrainian people, therefore he has ordained himself as the liberator of all Ukrainians by destroying the Nazi/present day government.
It provides one answer as to why Putin continues to insist that the present leaders are Nazis. And this also presents an explanation for Putin’s incorporation of the Donbas region and Crimea into the “new” Russia -- the people wanted to be liberated from their Nazi/present day government.
This concept of Putin’s reasoning is so unhinged and simplistic that, paradoxically, it is difficult to comprehend.
Gene Fitzgerald, Salt Lake City
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