Two interesting and excellent analyses:

(1) New Yorker Hour on NPR for 3/11 Stephen Kotkin on Ukraine (20 min – Apple Podcast)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/id1050430296?i=1000553758866

“It’s impossible to understand the destruction and death that Vladimir Putin is unleashing in Ukraine without understanding his most basic conviction: that the breakup of the Soviet empire was a catastrophe from which Russia has yet to recover. Some experts, including John Mearsheimer, have blamed NATO expansion for the invasion of Ukraine, arguing that it has provoked Vladimir Putin to defend his sphere of influence. Stephen Kotkin, a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University, and a research scholar at the Hoover Institution, respectfully disagrees. Putin’s aggression is “not some kind of deviation from the historical pattern,” he tells David Remnick. Russia in the nineteenth century looked much as it does today, he says. “It had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West.” Kotkin describes how and why the Putin regime has evolved toward despotism, and he speculates that the strategic blunders in invading Ukraine likely resulted from the biases of authoritarian rulers like Putin, and the lack of good information available to them. Kotkin is the author of an authoritative biography of Joseph Stalin, two volumes of which have been published; a third is in the making.” (The New Yorker Radio Hour)

And this one too:

(2) Putin’s Road to War: Julia Ioffe (interview) | PBS FRONTLINE

Mar 9, 2022

“Brilliant analysis of Putin’s current mindset and it’s implications. About 40 minutes well spent.” 

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