autocratic belarus lukashenko is with him today, and he sees democracy as an existential threat to his system, essentially a corrupt autocracy, and he doesn't want a democratic success story in ukraine that could spill over into russia and he wants to undo the humiliation that he felt with the collapse of the soviet union and the loss of russian domination of ukraine and keep in mind, ukraine was the biggest and to russia most important of the former soviet republics it lost when the soviet union fell apart, and deep cultural and linguistic so putin doesn't accept that ukraine was an independent country. this is about a lot of things that are strategic, that are personal, that are historical, and that's why he appears to be willing to accept enormous economic cost and significant political risk in this effort to try to bend ukraine to his will and if he can't do that, potentially to try to invade and take control of ukrainian