SAD: The Russia That Might Have Been.

In the 12 months since Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine, the war has turned into an accelerating disaster for Russia. Although Ukrainians are the primary victims of the Kremlin’s unprovoked aggression, the war has already left hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers dead or wounded. Unprecedented Western sanctions have squeezed the Russian economy, and Moscow’s large-scale mobilization and wartime crackdown on civil society have caused hundreds of thousands of the country’s high-skilled workers to flee abroad. Yet the greatest long-term cost of the war to Russia may be in permanently foreclosing the promise of Russia occupying a peaceful and prosperous place in the twenty-first-century world order.

The current trajectory of Russia’s foreign policy was not predestined, and there were many chances for the Kremlin to do things differently. For much of the last 20 years—even following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014—Russia had a historic opening to build a dynamic new place for itself in the international system. When Putin was sworn in as president, in May 2000, Russia was entering a period of greater possibility—both within and beyond its borders—than at any other point in its history. Internally, Russia had survived the collapse of the USSR and the tumultuous 1990s to go from an empire to an influential nation-state in the making. Despite the horrendous wars in Chechnya, Russia was, by the turn of the century, largely stable and at peace. Its planned economy had given way to an adaptable market economy. It was an imperfect but vibrant democracy.

Read the whole thing.