Even before Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he professed that Russia only wanted peace, if only Ukraine and Western countries would give him the peace he wants. Towards the end of 2021, he made unrealistic and unreasonable security demands whose conditions, if fulfilled, would have made NATO allies feel profoundly insecure. Just a few days before Russia’s invasion, he sent a low-level official to present Ukraine with conditions for peace that it could not