24 February 2022 has gone down in history as the day Vladimir Putin launched his war machine. The numerous expressions of surprise among commentators gave the wrong impression that the Russian leader had made a spontaneous, ill-considered decision. Russia, however, had been preparing for this war for a long time. It had scrupulously accumulated foreign exchange reserves as a financial cushion for the anticipated Western sanctions. It had gradually been escalating the energy crisis in Europe, lowering the readiness of some EU countries to firmly object against the increasingly audacious Russian actions.

The demands issued to NATO in December 2021 concerning security guarantees were only a masquerade aimed at delaying the delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine as much as possible. Russia shrewdly used the Western soft spot for dialogue, fully aware that the machine had already been set in motion. The attack was only a matter of time, as the decision to invade had been made in early autumn 2021 at the latest. Putin’s address on 21 February announcing Russia’s recognition of the independence of the puppet republics in Donetsk and Luhansk was essentially a military briefing. On the very next day, one of the fighters from the Wagner Group, a Kremlin-linked private military company, sent a private message to Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist from Bellingcat admitting that his comrades had already left for Kyiv. The official invasion was to be taking place two days later.