ENOUGH TO KEEP A STATISTICS CLASS BUSY FOR A SEMESTER Putin’s War Was Never Actually About NATO BY MARIA POPOVA AND OXANA SHEVEL FEB 24, 2022 • 12 � 25 PM War protesters in Moscow on Thursday, shortly after Russia’s invasion. These people are whom Putin is actually afraid of. Alexander Nemenov/Getty Images This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy. In his Feb. 15 Just Security article “Ukraine: Unleashing the Rhetorical Dogs of War,” Barry Posen argued that NATO and Ukraine should have cut a deal with Russia because the Ukrainian military would surely be defeated by Russia without direct U.S./Western military participation, and U.S. o�ers of equipment were only encouraging a potential Ukrainian THE WORLD