4: 2. The Colossal Misjudgment: Underestimating Ukraine and Putin's Imperial Ambitions. Serhii Plokhy (Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University) covers the lead-up to the 2022 full-scale i

2. The Colossal Misjudgment: Underestimating Ukraine and Putin's Imperial Ambitions. Serhii Plokhy (Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University) covers the lead-up to the 2022 full-scale invasion, noting Russia's military buildup in 2021 while President Biden publicly stated that no US troops or weapons would be sent to Ukraine, which constituted a "colossal misjudgment of Putin." Despite the lack of meaningful preparatory military aid for Ukraine, US intelligence performed exceptionally well, accurately predicting the timing of the war and releasing this intelligence in real time, hoping to "shame" Putin. The expectation that Kyiv would fall within days reflected a profound misjudgment: underestimating the resolve of the Ukrainian state and people, and overestimating the Russian military's capacity. To justify his actions, Putin built an argument to the Russian people based on a "misreading of history," reviving 19th-century Russian imperial ideas that claimed Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians constituted a single whole. This false belief led to the expectation that Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops with flowers, rather than weapons. Putin's consistent goal since 2014 was to stop Ukraine's Western trajectory and integrate it into the Russian-controlled Eurasian Union. When President Zelensky refused Putin's demands regarding the implementation of the Minsk agreements in Paris in December 2019, many observers mark this moment as the countdown to the 2022 invasion.