A cocktail of resentment and misinformation is said to have led Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and make him go completely wrong. This is evident from research by the independent Russian news site ‘Verstka’, which spoke to high-ranking (former) officials in Russia and Ukraine. An incident at a summit in Paris in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky laughed at him and a decision by the same Zelensky to censor the news channels of his confidant Viktor Medvedchuk in Ukraine were the last straw. In February-March 2021 – a year before the effective invasion – Putin turned the knob and decided to put away the soft approach and bring Ukraine into line with the hard way. Only, the information on which he based his success turned out to be incorrect.
ttn-3
