Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
And he is still paying the price to this day.
1460 days. Approximately 208 weeks. Or 47 months, if you will.
That is how much time has passed since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Few, if any, know what went through Vladimir Putin’s mind when he decided to attack Ukraine, but one thing is certain:
It did not go according to plan.
During the four years of war, Russia has made an impressive amount of mistakes on and off the battlefield, but its biggest miscalculation was actually made before the start of the war.
A miscalculation for which Russia is still paying the price to this day.
Putin’s self-deception
Years before the beginning of the invasion, Putin had promoted a narrative of Ukraine not being a real country, insisting that Ukrainians and Russians were actually “one people.”
According to a February 20, 2026 article from the Atlantic Council, some Russian forces even packed their parade uniforms to be ready for the victorious march through Kyiv, where the soldiers would be celebrated by the public for liberating them.
That turned out to be a major miscalculation by the Russian leader.
According to the article from the Atlantic Council, the Russian leadership was genuinely shocked when the Ukrainian public resisted the invasion, as the Kremlin had expected to be welcomed as saviors.
The 10-day plan
On November 30, 2022, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) published an analysis of the preliminary lessons to be learned from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and one point in particular is worth noting.
According to RUSI, Russia planned to take Ukraine in a 10-day blitzkrieg using speed and deception, and the institute notes that the plan largely succeeded at first, as Russia managed to achieve a 12-to-1 force ratio over Ukraine north of Kyiv at the beginning of the war.
Following the initial blitzkrieg, the plan, according to RUSI, was to fully annex Ukraine by the end of 2022.
So what went wrong?
Lack of revision
According to RUSI, the deception that allowed the Russians to achieve a massive numerical advantage also became the plan’s downfall.
The deception worked, but the operational security that allowed it to be successful also meant that the Russian forces did not have what they needed to actually finish the job and take the Ukrainian capital.
If the Russian leadership had realized this at the beginning of the war, it might have been able to update its plan and deal a decisive blow to the Ukrainian defense before Kyiv was able to fully mobilize.
But Russia did not alter its plans — and this, RUSI suggests, is a big part of the reason Russia failed to take Ukraine in 2022.
And now, here we are, four years after the invasion was launched.
So if Russia’s (and Putin’s) mistakes in the war were to be summed up in one sentence:
They vastly underestimated Ukraine and its citizens.
Sources: The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Atlantic Council
