It can be tempting to cast irrational actors as coldly logical, but if one does so one should be careful to infer actually logical motives.
Attacking Kyiv doesn't really make a difference to whether the West can access Ukraine's natural resources. Even attacking infrastructure, whole far more logical, would really only have a temporary impact. Insofar as the west actually needs those resources, then it will deploy its own immense infrastructure to get at them.
So, Putin's actions are only logical if he is also successfully attacking power structures of the west, to convince them that it is better to buy from Russia than deploy the capability to get at those resources. We could argue whether such attacks are happening but they don't appear to be working.
Also, the fact that Russia is refusing to sell gas to the EU because of its support for Ukraine rather undermines this point. (I think it's the EU that should be refusing to buy gas from Russia in order to stop funding the Russian war machine, but it's interesting that both sides don't want to trade right now.)
If Russia really wanted to prevent Ukraine or the EU from having access to resources in Donbas or Crimea, shouldn't they be using their current control over those areas to ruin/destroy those resources or make them harder to access?
Attacking Kyiv doesn't really make a difference to whether the West can access Ukraine's natural resources. Even attacking infrastructure, whole far more logical, would really only have a temporary impact. Insofar as the west actually needs those resources, then it will deploy its own immense infrastructure to get at them.
So, Putin's actions are only logical if he is also successfully attacking power structures of the west, to convince them that it is better to buy from Russia than deploy the capability to get at those resources. We could argue whether such attacks are happening but they don't appear to be working.
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