Authors

Discussion

There have been many explanations for why the Kremlin initiated the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 ranging from a preventive war to stop as Maidan in Moscow, to preventing NATO reaching Russia’s borders at Ukraine, to misinformation from lower down the regime hierarchy leading to the decision to launch the full-scale invasion, and finally, that the war was a personal decision by Putin and other regime personnel went a long with it. This paper argues that these are counter-hypothesises to the contention made here that the full-scale invasion is due to cognitive biases in the thinking of Putin and his inner circle. Using a research methodology of in-depth case studies, process tracing, qualitative case analysis, interviews and critical discourse analysis, we argue that the four cognitive biases of overconfidence, confirmation groupthink and sunk cost fallacy – the latter of which is a bias – biases provide a clear picture for explaining why the Kremlin initiated a full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022. We reject the counterhypotheses above as insufficient for explaining the reasons for the full-scale war. Although everyone has cognitive biases, we need to better understand how these predispositions affect the capacity of autocracies to learn, adapt and survive. Putin has consistently got Ukraine wrong, and the full-scale invasion is a culmination of these prejudices. Having precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union and provided Russia with the opportunity to democratise in the early 1990s, Ukraine may be providing Russia with a second chance. It is a tragedy that it is the result of an autocrat’s cognitive biases, and the atrocities perpetrated by Russia.