Putin’s Endgame Is Not a Mystery. It’s Regime Survival.

Ukraine is a speed-chess version of the wars in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Syria, with the pieces on the board including nuclear weapons.

Vladimir Putin , Ukraine , nuclear weapons , Slavic nation , Russia
Left: A Bosnian child leaves his father , Right: A man says goodbye to his son and his wife on a train to Lviv at the Kyiv station, Ukraine

He is the president of a Slavic nation who takes advice from no one and gambles on a war that does not go as planned. Fierce resistance prevents his forces from seizing the capital he covets. Western sanctions send his economy into a tailspin, the middle class flees, and state media offers ridiculous propaganda (“Our enemy is bombing themselves”).


This sounds like Vladimir Putin in 2022, but it’s Slobodan Milošević in 1992, when military forces under the Serbian leader’s control went on a genocidal rampage in Bosnia. The war dragged on for years and involved sieges of Sarajevo and other cities, including Srebrenica. Milošević claimed Bosnia was an artificial country that didn’t deserve to exist — the kind of lie that Putin has deployed against Ukraine. Serbs shelled apartment buildings and attacked civilians as they tried to flee — just as the Russian army is now doing in Ukraine. You can look at a picture of Sarajevo in 1992 and a picture of Kyiv in 2022 and not know which is which.

Location: Ukraine

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