Recent talks on whether the European Union should open diplomatic channels with Moscow have revealed splits over Europe's part in peace efforts between Kyiv and Moscow. Chess icon Garry Kasparov, now a leading critic of Moscow, sees the whole discussion as resting on a mistaken idea. "Europe is already at war, whether it wants to admit it or not," Kasparov told EUobserver in an interview in Vienna. "Putin has already made the choice," he said.

Europe continues to misread both Putin's aims and the true nature of the conflict, Kasparov said.

In his view, Ukraine is not the final goal of Russia's expansionist drive but only the first front in a wider campaign against the post-Cold War order.

Kasparov added that Europe has repeatedly overlooked what Putin has stated openly.

"He has always responded to strength or, rather, to the lack of strength on the other side," Kasparov told EUobserver. "He was never hiding his intentions. He wanted to push Nato back behind the 1997 borders."

The EU's failure was never due to lack of information but lack of political will and inability to see the larger picture, he said.

"I think it is psychological," Kasparov said. "They became too comfortable. I call them managers rather than leaders. They panic when they have to challenge the status quo."

After Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, Europe largely failed to prepare for what was to follow, he said.

"After Crimea ... basically nothing was done to prepare for the inevitable aggression," he said. "Putin made it very clear that he intended to erase Ukraine from the map once he had enough power to do so."

A historically driven argument

Looking back over the past two centuries of history, Kasparov saw a recurring pattern: meaningful political change in Russia has almost always followed military defeat.

Victories, by contrast, have strengthened authoritarian governments, regardless of whether they ruled under the Tsars, constitutional monarchies, or Soviet dictatorships.

Russia's defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 triggered sweeping reforms under Tsar Alexander II. The Russo-Japanese War in 1905 exposed the weaknesses of the imperial state and helped pave the way for revolution. The Soviet Union's disastrous 10-year war in Afghanistan in 1979 to 1989 also accelerated the collapse of the communist system.

The lesson, Kasparov said, was that Russia's political culture has repeatedly proven incapable of abandoning imperial ambitions. He described this as an "imperial virus", a deeply embedded belief that Russia's greatness depended on expansion and domination of its neighbours.

And for that mentality to change, military failure was necessary, history showed.