Getting the measure of the Russian bear

Patrick Porter

HOW FAR IS RUSSIA, BLOODSTAINED and defiant, a reactive securityseeker, pushing back against Western encroachment? Or how far is it darker than that: an imperial aggrandizer, greedily expanding less for security than for glory, prestige and the sheer rush of it? Or do these two impulses feed off one another? These questions matter. They inform how we interpret Putin’s disastrous lunge into Ukraine in February 2022, how that war can end and its aftermath be best handled, and what our view of what this adversary “is”. Sumantra Maitra’s study, The Sources of Russian Aggression, is a serious book. Rich, well-organised, precise and nicely contentious, it avoids the over-descriptive, lazy insider-ism and “on the other hand”-ism that characterise so much Western commentary on the subject, especially since Russia’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine.…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2025

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