<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://api.kyivindependent.com/storage/2022/01/270012242_272907174824457_1741927119023991530_n-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-7243"/><figcaption>Soldiers practice during urban warfare drills on Dec. 26, 2021 in Kyiv. (Kyiv’s 130th Territorial Defense Brigade)</figcaption></figure>



There are questions about troop numbers, questions about diplomacy. There are questions about the Ukrainian military, its weapons, and its soldiers. There are questions about Germany and France: How will they react? There are questions about America, and how it has come to be a central player in a conflict not of its making. But of all the questions that repeatedly arise about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, the one that gets the least satisfactory answers is this one: Why?



Continue reading <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on The Atlantic</a>.



Editor’s Note: This op-ed was published by&nbsp;<a href="https://thehub.ca/2022-01-26/abandoning-ukraine-means-surrendering-the-liberal-rules-based-world-order/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukraine-democracy/621465/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Atlantic.</a> The Kyiv Independent is aggregating it as a recommendation to our readers.

There are questions about troop numbers, questions about diplomacy. There are questions about the Ukrainian military, its weapons, and its soldiers. There are questions about Germany and France:...

Anne Applebaum: The reason Putin would risk war.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.

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Anne Applebaum