The Third Danube Institute Geopolitical Summit took place last week in the Castle District of Budapest, with such illustrious guests sharing their insights as former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, former Czech President Václav Klaus, Head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Hungarians Abroad Zsolt Németh, and Lewis Libby, researcher at the Hudson Institute and advisor to former US President George W. Bush.

I personally believe Putin would have invaded the Ukraine, as he did Crimea in 2014, whether he felt ‘provoked’ or not, especially after he lamented the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 as ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century’. One can conclude that the former KGB colonel, with his reverie to rebuild the former Soviet empire, was looking for an excuse to do so. And the US-led West provided it to him.