Daniel Treisman: Why Putin took Crimea
Russian soldiers unload trainload of their modified T-72 tanks after their arrival in Gvardeyskoe railway station near the Crimean capital Simferopol, on March 31, 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in early 2014 was the most consequential decision of his 16 years in power. By annexing a neighboring country’s territory by force, Putin overturned in a single stroke the assumptions on which the post–Cold War European order had rested.
