Matthew Murray (Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs), who previously served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, published a guest post for The Global Anticorruption Blog. Murray writes about a variety of Putin’s potential motives for invading Ukraine, saying,

“Moscow has sought to discredit the legitimacy of Ukraine’s post-Maidan governments and subvert democratic institutions and processes. It has exerted a malign influence through local oligarchs who use control of the energy, banking, and media industries to interfere with elections and institutions such as courts, prosecutors, and the central bank. But while these efforts have sometimes slowed Ukraine’s progress, they have not stopped it. The current war is an extension, and drastic escalation, of the Putin regime’s campaign against post-Maidan Ukraine, with Putin declaring that the current leadership in Kyiv is illegitimate.”