This book offers a concise yet in-depth analysis of Russia's complex—though consistent—strategic approach to Ukraine over the past 30 years, placing it within a broad historical and geopolitical context.

It reveals how Russia's ambitions toward Ukraine have been deeply rooted in a patrimonial paradigm—marked by a long-standing tradition of instrumentalizing sovereignty and (international) law. The book explores Moscow's use of 'legal smokescreens' to gradually erode Ukraine's sovereignty. It argues that the full-scale invasion was the culmination of Russia's failure to assert its patrimonial claims through legal and diplomatic means over 1991-2021, offering an anatomy of that failure.