My Reading List
“Former Russian President Medvedev Explains Why Putin Fights” By Clifford D. May: Clifford D. May uses recent comments from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to argue that Russia’s war in Ukraine is driven fundamentally by Vladimir Putin’s ambition to restore Russia’s status as an imperial “great power.” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, declared that Russia must either remain a great power or cease to exist, which May interprets as unusually direct evidence that domination of Ukraine, rather than simply Russian security concerns, is central to the Kremlin’s objectives. May traces Putin’s claims about Ukraine to a distorted interpretation of the shared history of Kyivan Rus and connects the invasion to Putin’s longstanding view that the Soviet Union’s collapse was a geopolitical catastrophe. Given those ambitions, May argues that a comprehensive peace agreement is unlikely to satisfy Putin. Instead, he advocates pursuing an armistice that stops the fighting while continuing Western weapons and security guarantees for Ukraine, allowing it to strengthen its defenses and make renewed Russian aggression increasingly costly.
