Stephen Kotkin: What Putin Got Wrong About Ukraine, Russia, and the West | Foreign Affairs Interview

Foreign Affairs invites you to listen to its podcast, the Foreign Affairs Interview. This episode with Stephen Kotkin was originally published on May 26, 2022. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the world has contended with the stakes of the conflict, and what the war means for Russia’s relationship with the West—and beyond. Should Russia still be considered a great power? What in Russia’s past explains the mistakes it’s making today? Will unity in the West outlast the war? What is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ultimate goal in Ukraine, and is it changing? Stephen Kotkin is the author of seminal scholarship on Russia, the Soviet Union, and global history, including an acclaimed three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin. He is a professor at Princeton University and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Kotkin brings formidable historical depth and a sharp sense of the current geopolitical landscape to these questions about Russia, Putin’s leadership, and Ukraine’s future. We discuss why Russia’s capabilities too often fall short of its ambitions, why Putin underestimated the West (and why the West tends to underestimate itself), what China is learning from Russia’s experience, and what could happen next in Ukraine. SOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE “The Cold War Never Ended” by Stephen Kotkin “Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics” by Stephen Kotkin “The Fantasy of the Free World” by Shivshankar Menon Read More by Stephen Kotkin