248. James Sherr - Russia’s Sovereignty is not Directly Threatened so Why is Putin Embracing Total War?

The international response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is scaling up, with the expected provisions of ATACMS and F16s, but remains inadequate to the task of achieving a full victory and often lags dangerously behind requirements, which causes the war to be more protracted, resulting in a greater loss of life on the Ukrainian side. Russia poses a serious threat to the rules-based international order, but is the West’s response insufficiently robust in defence of the values it espouses? A recent Chatham House report rang alarm bells and recommended that Western military support to Kyiv should be redoubled before it is too late. ---------- James Sherr OBE has been a senior fellow of the International Centre for Defence & Security in Tallinn since 2019. He also is an associate fellow and former head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House (2008–11). He was a member of the Social Studies Faculty of Oxford University from 1993 to 2012; a fellow of the Conflict Studies Research Centre of the UK Ministry of Defence from 1995 to 2008; and director of studies of the Royal United Services Institute (1983–85). He has published extensively on Soviet and Russian military, security, and foreign policy, as well as energy security, the Black Sea region, and Ukraine’s efforts to deal with Russia, the West, and its own domestic problems. He was awarded an OBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List for his services to British interests overseas. ---------- LINKS: https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-end-russias-war-ukraine ----------