necessity and opportunity. back then in 2014, there was no government in ukraine. ukraine had chosen the path of european integration and russia was not going to let that happen. ukraine is central to russia s understanding of itself, to russia s understanding of its place in the world, and now what we see is a continuation of that enterprise, again, driven by necessity and opportunity. the necessity now is a little bit different than back then. they see their influence in ukraine waning. they believed ukraine would be a failed state on its own. that has proven false. ukraine is actually doing quite well. relatively speaking, it made some significant advances in the political, economic, military spheres and russia sees it slipping through its fingers. at the same time, on the opportunity side, they see the u.s. is distracted with a miscalibrated pivot to china. china is a long-term threat, but