Four days prior to Russia’s armed invasion of Ukraine, I wrote in this column about President Vladimir Putin’s misguided logic and justifications for his actions. As early as Feb. 25, immediately after the invasion, I started calling Putin’s decision to go to war against Ukraine a “strategic misjudgment.”
That said, Putin is not the only politician on the planet who miscalculated the politico-military situation in Ukraine.
One such leader is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who must have regretted stating in the Feb. 4 Russia-China joint statement that “the friendship between the two states has no limits.”