The Russian political leadership badly misjudged the domestic political environment in Ukraine in February 2022. [5]Instead, analysts should turn to a less-acknowledged contributor to Russia’s act of catastrophic political misjudgment which does bear directly on American decision-making processes—the danger of assumptions about a country’s domestic political dynamics under highly dynamic ideological change worldwide. Put bluntly, in 2014, large segments of the Ukrainian population were substantively pro-Russian and mobilizable for political purposes. Political misjudgment across these varied problem-sets has the potential to mirror the Russian failure in Ukraine. Political Misjudgment Applied Ultimately, U.S. and allied policymakers can take several useful lessons from the disastrous Russian political misjudgment in Ukraine.

Source: Washington Post June 16, 2023 11:11 UTC