This day one year ago, Vladimir Putin unveiled what is likely to become the most consequential decision of his time at Russia’s helm: the launch of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. This paper seeks to ascertain which of the hypothetical factors that the author has inferred from literature on Russia’s past military interventions, as well as from cross-country studies of such interventions, may have influenced the Russian dictator’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.1 These factors include: a threat to vital national interests as seen by the leader; the leader’s need to save face; the leader’s need to ensure his popularity; the leader’s reasonable hope that the intervention will succeed; the exhaustion or lack of non-military options for responding to a crisis; and an increase in Russia’s national power (see Table 1). The author’s examination of these factors indicates that three of them are likely to have contributed to shaping Putin’s decision to launch the invasion a year ago.
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