Last week, Vladimir Putin said Russia would expel Ukrainian troops from its sovereign territory, but that has not yet happened. In June, he warned that Russia could place conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range Western weapons. Putin, according to Reuters, views the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential struggle with a declining West. He says that since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the West has humiliated Russia by encroaching on territory it considered Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.