7 Books That Reveal How Kremlin Decision-Makers Think

Answers to these questions will shape the world for the coming years, yet they are contentious. Realist international relations theorists such as John Mearsheimer insist that Russia has no grand design; it is just responding to provocations, chiefly NATO expansion. A raft of foreign policy bigwigs, such as Sir Tony Brenton, a former British ambassador to Moscow, insist that the war is limited to Ukraine and that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO. Even those who concede that Russia is conducting some kind of offensive in Europe and North America—with a dirty-tricks cocktail including election interference, drones, sabotage, assassinations, and other mischief—disagree on whether this a new kind of warfare and what Moscow hopes to achieve.

What prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine? Is it part of a wider war with the West—whatever “West” means these days? And how does Russia fight this conflict? Are the strategy and tactics novel, or are they rooted in the Soviet and tsarist past? And perhaps most importantly, why did so few of our supposed experts see this coming? This is not an academic question for international relations theorists. More than a million Ukrainian and Russian military casualties—not to mention the killed, maimed, traumatized, and bereaved civilians—are the price of Europe’s biggest security policy failure since the 1930s.

What prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine? Is it part of a wider war with the West—whatever “West” means these days? And how does Russia fight this conflict? Are the strategy and tactics novel, or are they rooted in the Soviet and tsarist past? And perhaps most importantly, why did so few of our supposed experts see this coming? This is not an academic question for international relations theorists. More than a million Ukrainian and Russian military casualties—not to mention the killed, maimed, traumatized, and bereaved civilians—are the price of Europe’s biggest security policy failure since the 1930s.

Answers to these questions will shape the world for the coming years, yet they are contentious. Realist international relations theorists such as John Mearsheimer insist that Russia has no grand design; it is just