Fourth, Russia thirsts for acceptance in the West. Moscow’s reaction to the situation in Ukraine is directly related to the failure of a dream of Common European Home, once optimistically advanced by Mikhail Gorbachev. His idea was that Russia should—and would—become a part of Europe. What he did not expect was for the wall to be moved further east. Vladimir Putin witnessed the crash of Gorbachev’s dreams from his KGB outpost in what was then East Germany. He is still haunted by that pain and humiliation, as are many other Russians. It is only by healing the pains left by the last Cold War that we can avert a new one from taking shape.

Sergey Radchenko is a former public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Reader in International Politics at Aberystwyth University.