The value of a country’s currency is highly correlated with the GDP. Before the Ukraine invasion, oil and gas accounted for about 21.7 percent of Russia’s GDP. By December, it had dropped to 18 percent of GDP. Although the ruble plummeted, immediately after the invasion, by summer, it had rallied, because it seemed that Europe had not found a way to do without Russian energy. Meanwhile, Ukraine refused to surrender, dragging out the war, handing Russia defeat after defeat, and the sanctions became ever tighter, driving down the value of the ruble.

At the end of World War II, Russia wanted assurances that NATO would not shift eastward, threatening Russian territory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, Ukraine and other Eastern European nations became independent, removing the buffer zones between Russia and NATO. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltics have all become NATO members, and Russia sees this as a security concern.

In a speech on Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognized the occupied territories in Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk and moved Russian forces into them. In his view, Ukraine’s independence is an anomaly – it’s a state that should not exist. Putin sees his military moves as a way of correcting this divergence. Largely absent from his discussion was his earlier emphatic grievance that an eventual spread of NATO to Ukraine threatens Russia’s security.