The problem is that posturing can turn into reality (which is perhaps what you're trying to say). I do think Russia was posturing. They began seeking negotiations 4 days after they invaded, and outside of an absurd longshot decapitation strike all of their early maneuvering was much more performative than military in nature.

With Ukraine's entry into NATO appearing increasingly imminent, they likely felt they could force matters with a semi-bluff thinking they could catch Ukraine by surprise. Then the West jumped in thinking they could catch Russia by surprise. In the end nobody was really "surprised" and so we got a war that I expect nobody, especially in hindsight, really expected, let alone wanted.

> With Ukraine's entry into NATO appearing increasingly imminent

Say what? AFAIK, Ukraine wasn’t even eligible for entry due to the organization’s rules on contested territories.

The most clear trend in modern times is that rules are "flexible" when convenient. Here [1] is the relevant Wiki page, dated to the day before Russia's invasion. NATO had repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine would be accepted into NATO, all that was missing was a date. In the context of this, there was ongoing escalation between Russia and NATO. Russia repeatedly sought any sort of means or agreement to ensure that they wouldn't end up with NATO setup on their doorstep. And NATO increasingly antagonistically disregarded and even belittled such interests. At the same time being ever more provocative with things like NATO-Ukraine military exercises in the Black Sea.

It feels very much like the intent was to provoke, especially when this largely parallels the Cuban Missile Crisis with roles reversed. When the USSR wanted to expand their military reach to Cuba, we nearly started a nuclear war over it. And in that case, Cuba doesn't even share a border with the US! So it's not like we simply lacked the ability to understand why they might have a genuine concern here.

The reason I backdated the article is because when you read that it sounds exactly like Russia is making their intentions of an invasion, if a compromise cannot be reached, rather unambiguously clear. And so if you read it, with hindsight, one might think it was edited with that outcome in mind.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ukraine%E2%80%93N...

In the absence of a membership action plan, NATO saying "Yes, someday Ukraine will be a member" (something that they were barely able to agree on in 2008, and nothing changed in the 15 years after that) is hardly "imminent".

Nothing changed is a rather odd way to read that page. The US not only began actively and publicly disregarding any protestations of Russia, but were actively carrying out NATO-Ukraine military exercises in seas right off the border of Russia. All the while you also had things like British warships intentionally entering Russian waters around Crimea. [1] There were constant provocations that would not have even been considered in 2008.

Things were obviously headed to a climax rapidly. It was likely going to be war or NATO, or perhaps both.

[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57583363

From the article:

  HMS Defender was sailing from Odessa in southern Ukraine to Georgia. To get there, it passed south of the Crimea peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has not been recognised internationally. While Moscow claims the peninsula and its waters are Russian territory, the UK says HMS Defender was passing through Ukrainian waters in a commonly used and internationally recognised transit route.

Not quite the story you are trying to spin.

Indeed. I took it as a serious threat after seeing prediction markets in February move up to 30% odds of it happening

> Putin actually invading Ukraine was a very unexpected move.

Was it? The scale was surprising, but troop build ups were noted ahead of time and Russia had been fighting in Ukraine for many years.

Am I misremembering?

Yes, even Russian soldiers were surprised when they were suddenly marching to Ukraine.

Buildups were happening repeatedly in the past under the guise of exercises.

Eg. here tanks and ~80k soldiers in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-russ...

Very much so. The Biden administration was sounding the alarm, loudly, and the general vibe was, "well that wouldn't make any sense, there goes America crying wolf again like Iraq"

Here was one example: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-invasion-predictions-...

See also: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/21/why-ukrainians-dont...

You're not misremembering.

The US government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen, the Ukrainian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen, and the Russian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen. The mainstream media warned everyone the invasion was going to happen, and the financial markets responded.

Some people don't have the sense to come in out of the rain.

> Some people don't have the sense to come in out of the rain.

Those people included almost all western governments who had blithely assumed Russia was not threat, did not react to the previous invasion (and some took the stance Russia had the support of the inhabitants of ethnically Russian areas), did not react to the invasion of Georgia, and generally just assumed it would be OK - which Russia took as a signal the west would be fine with an invasion of the rest of Ukraine.

Perhaps my impression was colored by the US government actually having a clear picture of what was about to happen. I won't defend Europe too much. It seems to me like Poland, the Nordics and the Baltics see Russia pretty clearly, but everything kind of falls apart the further away from Russia you get.

>the Ukrainian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen

Quite contrary, the Ukrainian government was publicly saying that it was all bluffing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60174684

Zelensky repeatedly said that the West was creating a panic. Ukraine's repelling of the attack was heroic and legendary, but the truth is that if it wasn't for the astonishing incompetence of the Russian assault, where there was a massive traffic jam almost all the way from Belarus to Kyiv, it really would have been a quickly conquered nation.

>and the Russian government warned everyone the invasion was really going to happen

But they didn't. Russia kept portraying the build-up as drills with Belarus.

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-crisis-putin-says-militar...

Western intelligence predicted Russia's plans perfectly, but a lot of people were very in denial about it.

I'd forgotten about Zelensky's prewar media strategy. Whoops.

Regarding Russia: did the strange televised meeting of Putin's war cabinet (whatever it would be called), wherein everyone went around the room and voted "yes" to invasion even though a couple of them looked like they were in a hostage video, happen before or after tanks rolled into Ukraine? In my mind that's a "prewar" thing but maybe I got the sequence of events wrong? (I'm finding it hard to google this even though it was a fairly important event. Weird.)

> Western intelligence predicted Russia's plans perfectly

I remember thinking the white house handled communications surrounding the invasion very well, kind of a rare foreign policy bright spot for them. Too bad it didn't make a difference.

That weird meeting I think you're thinking of-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B0mWzB4GOQ

(I recalled it as well and with normal searching could not find it, even with date winnowing, but asking Gemini 2.5 Pro and it immediately gave me that resource)

This meeting happened just before the invasion. Far too late for anyone to really do anything, and long after most of the "are they/aren't they?" discussions happened. Up until that point Russia was repeatedly denying their "special military operation". Just as they denied their invasion of Crimea and their little green men in the Donbas.

As an aside, that absolutely bizarre security council meeting is virtually indistinguishable from the North Korea-style Trump administration meetings that we now see weekly, where it's a circle of embarrassingly laughable platitudes and servitudes by a cowed and pathetic administration.

>I remember thinking the white house handled communications surrounding the invasion very well

They did.

These are good comments and there's a lot more that could be said.

> As an aside, that absolutely bizarre security council meeting is virtually indistinguishable from the North Korea-style Trump administration meetings that we now see weekly, where it's a circle of embarrassingly laughable platitudes and servitudes by a cowed and pathetic administration.

To be fair there was a lot of this during the first Trump administration, only moreso near the end when plenty of the cabinet secretaries weren't real secretaries, just "acting" secretaries of various sorts. It's just that now they're all operating on that level.

> Zelensky repeatedly said that the West was creating a panic.

I still have no idea if it was serious, or a fake "look at us helpless and not preparing at all". It was reported in media that he was given early warnings and briefings from the US about the incoming attack. There are so many cases like that that were may never learn about for sure...

Ukraine kind of wasn't prepared at all. The US was screaming warnings and giving precise intel, but Ukraine's defence didn't seem to plan for an actual attack at all.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64664944

It is just shocking incompetence by Russian forces that Kyiv wasn't taken in days. Russian units faced negligible resistance right to the outskirts of Kyiv, where their own lack of training, planning and logistics stalled their efforts.

https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-...

Ukraine is now a potent military force and Zelensky is a bonafide hero, but they were in a profound state of denial and got incredibly lucky in those early days.