Dear Professor Frankopan, I am not an expert, just applying my mind of an engineer to politics. In a book written in 1980, when I still lived in my native Poland, I speculated about possible scenarios of disintegration of the Soviet Union. The book reviewers laughed at me because there was a consensus among experts that things like that would not happen in the foreseeable future.

Like most Westerners, you do not get Russia right. I explain that in my article: “Why do most Westerners misunderstand Russia?” I posted recently six more articles about Ukraine.

I doubt that “Russia will never be the same” in some mysterious way. Russia needs a contemporary version of the 20 Congress. Russians need to be told that no one wants to conquer their country. Then, as it was done in the case of Germany and Japan in 1945, Russia needs to join the worldwide community by accepting its current borders and following democratic standards. It will take about one generation in Russia to accept the new normal. But Russia cannot do that on its own. It needs to be imposed on it by the victors of the war that Russia just started.