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Vladimir Putin's historic gambit of launching a war on Ukraine was based on a calculation that western nations were too weak to stop his advance, a former British ambassador to Russia has said.
Sir Andrew Wood said Mr Putin perceived western leaders as ineffective and therefore felt emboldened with confidence when he ordered tanks into Ukraine.
“He certainly believed that the West was at an all-time low,” Mr Wood told The National.
“You had elections in Germany, and upcoming elections in France, and both those powers tried to see if it was possible to have some sort of solution to the [Russia-Ukraine tensions].
“He didn’t think he’d get anything like the reaction he did when he crossed the border.”
Mr Wood served as ambassador to Russia from 1995 to 2000 and had direct dealings with Mr Putin during his tenure. He also represented the UK as ambassador to Yugoslavia and the US during a diplomatic career spanning decades.
Three weeks into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the West has yet to intervene directly.
US President Joe Biden has vetoed the transfer of Soviet-era jets from Nato members states that once belonged to the Warsaw Pact.
And despite stern warnings from countries about the use of chemical weapons in the war, no leader has drawn a red line to pledge action if such tactics were to be used by Mr Putin’s forces.
On his own side the Russian president is hampered by the fact his soldiers appear woefully unprepared for war.
Mr Wood echoed former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev’s assessment when he said Mr Putin was not aware of the strength of his military.
“He wouldn’t have been told [about] the real state of the army,” Mr Wood said.
“He would have been told that it was wonderful and great. He would have believed that because if you look at the numbers on each side, there’s no contest really. But [the Russians] have no experience of proper air combat and ground combat and logistics and so on, and perhaps he messed up.
“[Putin] was expecting that his forces would be able to act much better than they have been able to.”
Mr Wood suggested the Russians’ inability to make major gains in the first two weeks of the war would have been painful for Mr Putin to bear, because he is “a man with huge pride”.
Assuming that the Kremlin's forces are able to assert their numerical superiority, Russia will struggle to hold on to Ukraine if it captures all the territory, the former ambassador said. He said Russia, like other nations, would have underestimated the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
He said Mr Putin’s troops will “have the problem, if they want it, of occupying and keeping it occupied, they would have supposed that the Ukrainians would melt away fairly quickly and they certainly underestimated Zelenskyy, who after all in our eyes was just a comic who was pretending to be president”.
On Friday, day 15 of the invasion, Russian forces were regrouping north-west of the Ukrainian capital, satellite pictures showed, in what appeared to be a preparation for a renewed attack on Kyiv.
Despite fierce battles in the towns and villages leading to the city, Russian troops have failed to take the capital.
Russia has been pounding Ukraine's cities while its main attack force north of Kyiv has been stalled on roads since the early days of the invasion.
The Ukrainian government has accused Russian forces of bombing and shelling cities across Ukraine, and of hitting a psychiatric hospital near the eastern town of Izyum where hundreds of patients were sheltering in the basement.
In Russia, prosecutors asked a court to declare Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook and Instagram, an "extremist" organisation, after it allowed posts in Russia and its western neighbours calling for the death of invading Russian troops.
