How Russia Decided to Start the War Against Ukraine

The subject of the paper concerns Russia's decision to start a conventional war by invading the independent and sovereign Ukrainian state with regular troops on February 24th, 2022.The research question that I will address is how Putin decided in favour of a military solution to advance his foreign policy goals.The methodology I use to address the issue consists of the following steps: (i) identify mostly in news articles the information that most likely influenced Kremlin's calculus (thus rejecting some claims that Putin is irrational or insane); (ii) briefly present the three theoretical models employed by Graham T. Allison (1971) to explain the Cuban Missile Crisis -The Rational Actor, The Organizational Process and The Governmental Politics; (iii) apply the basic unit of analysis, organizing concepts and dominant inference pattern for each of the three theoretical models in order to analyse how the balance might have been tipped in favour of a full-scale military intervention, from Russia's perspective.The analysis contributes to a better understanding of the decision-making mechanisms that led to war, despite limitations stemming from the lack of reliable information for the time being.