No, Putin didn’t plot to invade Ukraine. But now he might have to

So what, exactly, does Vladimir Putin want? ‘To start World War Three,’ according to the embattled Ukrainian prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk. ‘To rule as president for life with powers on par with the tsars,’ according to Alexei Navalny, leader of Russia’s tiny opposition. To ‘force a major change of boundaries on Europe… and break the post-Cold War consensus,’ according to Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister.

Actually, Putin himself has always been rather clear about his ambitions. ‘Russia has been a great power for centuries, and remains so,’ Putin told the State Duma in his first speech as prime minister, back in August 1999. ‘It has always had and still has legitimate zones of interest abroad in both the former Soviet lands and elsewhere. We should not drop our guard in this respect, neither should we allow our opinion to be ignored.’

Fifteen years in power have done nothing to salve his sense of historical grievance against the West. ‘They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position,’ Putin told an audience of Russian notables in the Kremlin palace immediately after the annexation of Crimea in March. ‘If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You must always remember this.’

So here we are, barely ten weeks after the end of the Sochi Olympics, with Ukraine on the brink of civil war, 40,000 Russian troops stationed along the border and an unknown number of Russian special forces fighting hard against Kiev’s forces inside eastern Ukraine.