Making sense of Vladimir Putin’s war

WHEN THE second battle for El Alamein in Egypt concluded in November 1942, Winston Churchill reflected on the British victory. “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end,” he warned, memorably. “But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its 11th month, it is reaching the same inflection point. It has been a story of Russian hubris, human suffering and, above all, Ukrainian defiance.In April 2021 Russia began an unusual number of forces on the border with Ukraine. In retrospect, that was a dry run for what would follow. In July that year Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, published a rambling essay which questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state. After Russia concluded its massive Zapad military exercise in western Russia and Belarus in September, it left much of the kit behind—another warning sign.