On February 28, CNN’s website published the following headline: Russia faces financial meltdown as sanctions slam its economy.

The story opened:

“Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”  

That unprovoked attack opened on February 24, with missile and artillery attacks, striking major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev. 

Ukraine vs. Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin had every reason to believe that the conquest of Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Intent on restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union, he had swept from one successful war to the next:

NATO emblem

Russia had began massing troops on the Ukrainian border in 2021. 

When the invasion came, the United States and its Western European allies retaliated with unprecedented economic sanctions. 

Among the resulting casualties: 

• The ruble crashed.
• Russia’s central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%.
• The Moscow stock closed for the day.
• The European subsidiary of Russia’s biggest bank was about to collapse in a massive Depression-era run by savers. 
• Economists predicted the Russian economy could decline by five percent. 
• The West—especially the United States—has frozen at least half of the $630 billion in international reserves that Putin had amassed to stave off tough sanctions.

On the battlefield, the war has bogged down for Russia:

• Kiev remains unconquered. 
• Ukrainian forces have driven Russians from the second-largest Ukrainian city of Kharkov.  
• The Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was sunk on April 14 after being struck by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles.

In short: The war is not going the way Putin assumed it would.

Vladimir Putin 

Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

This is not the first time a dictator has guessed wrong about the results of his actions.

On September 1, 1939, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered his armies to invade Poland. 

Almost a year earlier—on September 29, 1938—he had bullied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier into surrendering the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.

The Munich Agreement—which Chamberlain boasted meant “peace in our time—only whetted Hitler’s appetite for greater conquests.

It also led him to hold France and England in contempt: “Our enemies are little worms,” he said in a conference with his generals. “I saw them at Munich.”

He believed he could conquer Poland, and Chamberlain and Daladier would meekly ratify his latest acquisition. 

Adolf Hitler

So he was stunned when, on September 3, 1939, Britain and France—however reluctantly—honored their pledged word to Poland and declared war on Germany.

“What now?” Hitler furiously asked his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Ribbentrop had no answer.

Hitler knew that Germany didn’t have the resources for a long war. He had intended to fight a series of quick, small wars, gobbling up one country at a time. Now he found himself locked in an endless war with heavyweights France and England.

In time, he would fatally add the Soviet Union and the United States to his list of enemies.

And he stayed locked into that war until he committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and the Third Reich officially collapsed on May 7.

Fast forward to March 21, 2003 and President George W. Bush’s launching of an attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. 

George W. Bush

The war got off to an impressive start with 1,700 air sorties and 504 Cruise missiles. 

Within roughly two weeks, American ground forces entered Baghdad, and after four days of intense fighting, the Iraqi regime fell. By April 14, the Pentagon reported that major military operations had ended.

On May 1, 2003, Bush declared that the war was won.

But then American forces became embroiled in an endless, nationwide guerrilla war. Eighteen years later, the United States was still fighting in Iraq. 

The war that Bush had deliberately provoked:

• Took the lives of 4,484 Americans.
• Cost the United States Treasury at least $2 trillion.
• Created a Middle East power vacuum.
• Allowed Iran—Iraq’s arch enemy—to eagerly fill it.
• Frightened and repelled even America’s closest allies.
• Killed at least 655,000 Iraqis. 
• Frightened China and Russia into expanding the size of their militaries. 

Bush came to a better end than Adolf Hitler: He retired from office with a lavish pension and full Secret Service protection.

And Putin? 

His attack on Ukraine was reportedly motivated, in part, to ensure that Ukrainians did not join NATO. 

If true, he must be enraged and disturbed that his invasion has frightened Sweden and Finland into joining NATO.

And NATO is now fully revitalized to meet future Russian threats.

Thus can the worst intentions of hubristic dictators come undone.