Putin wanted to restore Russia to its former glory. His desire, however, was doomed from the start - Moscow never aroused admiration, only fear. To change this, the Kremlin leader invented some fundamental lies, and despite the war, the West still blindly believes some of them.
Let's start with Putin's first thesis — about the lack of independence of the Ukrainian nation.
The tsarist empire, from whose tradition today's Russia draws, emerged from the Grand Duchy of Moscow only in the 16th century. Ukraine was annexed by this empire in the 18th century, and Crimea only in 1783.
"The Ukrainian national movement arose in the 19th century despite Russian rule and was no less vital than the movements of other Eastern European nations. It was suppressed in Russia as was the Polish national movement," writes Michael Thumann.
Putin's lie about Ukrainians as depraved Russians dates back to the time of Moscow's Interior Minister Pyotr Valuev. In 1863, he stated in one of the official letters: "a separate Lesser Russian language has never existed, does not exist and will never exist".
Putin's false thesis that "NATO promised Russia during the German reunification negotiations that it would not expand NATO to the east" even appeared in the Hamburg magazine der Spiegel.
This claim is false for at least three reasons. First of all, the West has never promised that the former Warsaw Pact countries would not be admitted to NATO, if only because it was never seriously discussed. It is true that the Federal Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher once spoke on this matter in the early 1990s, but he could not promise anything. He never returned to his proposal after that.
Moreover, in the 1990s, Russia repeatedly accepted, for example in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, both Ukraine's territorial integrity and the right of each state to be free to form alliances.
There was never any talk of alleged "spheres of influence". On March 5, 2000, barely a year after Poland's accession to NATO, Putin, who was acting president at the time, set the conditions for his country's accession to NATO. In an interview with the BBC, he said: "Russia must be recognized as an equal partner." Where, then, is this supposed "betrayal" to be found?
After all, it was not NATO that "lured" the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into its alliance. On the contrary, each extension was preceded by a long discussion.
In 2008, Ukraine suffered a defeat in its efforts to join NATO, which was dictated by fears related to Russian aggression. The then German Chancellor Angela Merkel put a brake on these aspirations, leaving only a vague memory of them. This may have been the beginning of Merkel's concessions to Russia, which led to a direct war of aggression.
Putin wanted to restore the supposed prestige of the past to his homeland. But his desire was always wrong, because in reality Russia was never truly admired - only feared.