For years, Anne Applebaum has warned against Putin's imperial ambitions. Her Cassandra calls are based on decades of profound research into the mentality of the Kremlin rulers and their methods of suppression. She published her findings in a series of award-winning books. 

In "Iron Curtain"  she described how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. In "Red Famine" , Applebaum documents Stalin's war of famine against Ukraine. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Gulag" , a groundbreaking work on the Soviet concentration camps. 

We start our interview with a long-term view of Vladimir Putin, the man who, one year ago,  unleashed a horrific war on Ukraine. Shortly after seizing power as Russian President he addressed the German Bundestag in 2001. He said: «Russia is a friendly European nation. Stable peace on the continent is a paramount goal for our country, which lived through a century of military catastrophes.”

Anne Applebaum, please explain Putin’s remarkable transformation from soft spoken, potential friend to foe? Has he fundamentally changed during the course of the past two decades or was the West blinded by his friendly words? 

Anne Applebaum: Even in the 1990s, under President Yeltsin, Russians were using the language of empire to speak to the post-Soviet states. The president of Estonia made a speech in 1994 warning of Russian revanchism, and indeed, a Russian cyberattack on Estonia took place in 2007. The invasion of Georgia was in 2008. The first invasion of Ukraine took place in 2014, but efforts to create a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine date back much earlier. Putin has always been interested in re-creating the Russian empire. We just didn’t want to believe it.

Weltwoche: Why is Putin obsessed with Ukraine? Is it strategic thinking the key or are there other reasons?

Applebaum: Ukraine matters as a symbol of the lost Soviet empire. Ukraine was the second-most-populous and second-richest Soviet republic, and the one with the deepest cultural links to Russia. But modern, post-Soviet Ukraine also matters because it has tried—struggled, really—to join the world of prosperous Western democracies. Ukraine has staged not one but two prodemocracy, anti-oligarchy, anti-corruption revolutions in the past two decades. Putin wants Ukrainian democrats to fail because he wants Russian democrats to fail. The destruction of Ukraine is linked, in his mind, to his own political survival as an illegitimate autocrat.

Weltwoche: There are historians such as John Mearsheimer, Professor at the University of Chicago, who claimed as early as 2014 that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.”. He argued that “the taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West.” Do you think Mearsheimer has a point, or do you see the roots of this current war entirely different?

Applebaum: Mearsheimer knows nothing about Ukraine, and almost nothing about Russia. The roots of this conflict lie in Putin’s belief that for his autocracy to survive, it needs to expand, not only into Ukraine but into Europe as well. The Russian president sees the very existence of a liberal democratic state on his borders as a threat to his form of personal rule.

Secondly, Nato did not in fact decide to include Ukraine. Of course if it had, we might have avoided this war. Ukraine was left in a security vacuum, and Putin believed no one would defend it.

Thirdly Mearsheimer doesn’t allow Ukraine or Ukrainians any agency: It is as if he believes their views don’t matter. This is a form of thinking about world politics that we know well from the age of empires, and we should all be grateful that it is gone.

Weltwoche: In “Gulag – A history of the Soviet Camps” , awarded with the Pulitzer Prize, you gave your readers a deep look into the mentality of the Soviet leadership dealing with opposition. How much of that mentality is still alive in today’s Russia?

Applebaum: Mostly it is still alive in the form of fear and apathy. People stay away from politics, they are apathetic about public life, they don’t believe they can create any change or have any impact. The only thing they can do is obey.

Weltwoche: Since Russia’s moves against Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk in 2014, Patriarch Kyrill has sought to enshrine the principle of “Russky mir,” the “Russian World,” which he understands to mean the spiritual and ecclesial union of the Eastern Slavs. What is Kyrill’s influence on Putin and what has Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine to do with Religion?

Applebaum: In truth, I don’t believe this has anything to do with religion in a true sense. Religion is just another tool that Putin uses to justify his imperialism, and the imperialism is what he needs to stay in power. Putin is afraid of a democratic revolution inside his own country and he will use whatever tools or ideas he can find in order to prevent it.

Weltwoche: What should the West’s goals vis-à-vis Ukraine be? And what are the chances that Putin might fall from power? How could a ceasefire be achieved and what could peace between Ukraine and Russia look like?

Applebaum: There is only one way this war can end – and I mean end forever, not just for a few months: The Russian regime must understand that the invasion was a mistake. They also must understand that they will never conquer Ukraine. Just like the British in Ireland in the early 20th century or the French in Algeria, they have to conclude that imperial expansion is disastrous, not just for the Ukrainians (and their other neighbors) but for themselves.

Any other solution – a temporary ceasefire, or an agreement to hand over territory – carries the risk that the war will continue later on, that the Russians will wait for a few months or a few years and then restart the invasion. And of course, the Russian state will continue to arrest and murder Ukrainians in the occupied territories, and resistance will continue in those territories, so people will continue to die.

The only thing we can do, right now, is to continue to help Ukraine reconquer its territory: not to achieve a stalemate, but in order to achieve a victory. The exact final borders of Ukraine will be determined by the military progress on the ground.

Anne Applebaum, 59, is a historian, journalist and columnist for the Washington Post. She teaches at the London School of Economics, where she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and propaganda. Applebaum is married to former Polish Foreign and Defence Minister Radoslav Sikorski and lives in London and Warsaw.