As the first cracks appear in the Kremlin leadership, it it is becoming clear that this is Putin’s war against Ukraine. Nato’s expansion is a secondary factor, the pretext Putin used to get doubters like foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on his side. Putin’s aim is to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign nation and restore it as a vassal of ‘historic Russia’ – his twisted vision of the ‘family of peoples’ living in the lands of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from the time of Kievan Rus in the first millennium.