Cover Osteuropa 6-8/2022

In Osteuropa 6-8/2022

Russia’s War on Ukraine
Factors, Causes, Dynamics

Gwendolyn Sasse


Deutsche Fassung

Abstract

Wars do not fall from the sky. They have a pre-history. The constellation for a conflict consists of various factors involving domestic politics, foreign policy, and international relations. In the case of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Putin regime’s radicalization into autocracy and its dissociation from the West combined with Ukraine’s simultaneous democratisation and increasingly Western orientation are the central factors that explain the conflict’s dynamics, made the outbreak of war more likely, and influence the dynamics of warfare as well.

(Osteuropa 6-8/2022, pp. 167–178)