Russia was not always destined to be so bitterly opposed to the West.
Russia draws little sympathy these days, and quite right, too. It launched a misguided and ill-prepared war, which has already devastated many Ukrainian cities and cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Russia, too, is paying a price, though perhaps not yet as high a price as Ukraine and its Western allies might hope. It has likely suffered more casualties than Ukraine. It has lost many of its best-educated young people to exile, and seen its post-imperial weakness mercilessly exposed. But there is another dimension to Russia’s tragedy that is less obvious, but which may become clearer over time.
