Putin’s Quasi War Begins

Ukraine car explosion
Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty
Julia Ioffe
February 18, 2022

The war didn’t arrive on Wednesday, as President Joe Biden reportedly warned allies that it would. Instead, Russian state media marked the day by crowing about Western “hysteria” and faulty intelligence of the kind the U.S. produced before invading Iraq in 2003. It continued gloating well into Friday evening, even as the actual war had very clearly arrived after a tense two days.