To help explain how things appear from the perspective of Ukrainians, I recently spoke by phone with Nataliya Gumenyuk, a Ukrainian journalist in Kyiv. She is the author of the book "The Lost Island: Dispatches from the Occupied Crimea." During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how Ukrainians are preparing for a possible invasion, why Ukrainian democracy threatens Putin, and Russia's reasons for potentially escalating the conflict.

What is the mood right now in Kyiv and in Ukraine more broadly?

I would say that largely Ukrainians are calm, but worried. They have passed the point where they were about to panic, because it was such an immense threat, but now they kind of understand and feel like, "O.K., we are in control of some things. There are some things we need to do. It depends on us, for instance, to figure out what we need to do to defend ourselves. And other things do not depend on us." So I would say "keep calm and carry on" is everyone's motto. They do not exclude the possibility of a bigger war. However, they are hoping there won't be a major invasion or something like that.

So, when you say that people are preparing for what they can do, what is that? Because it seems like part of what makes this situation so disturbing and so upsetting is that it's not clear what Ukraine can do if Russia launches a full-scale invasion.

People know that they cannot influence the process of Russia launching a war. I should also say that there is very little the Ukrainian state can do to deëscalate, because it's not really escalating in the first place. The Ukrainian state is not in the mood for war. But defending Ukraine is a different story. So Ukrainians think like, yes, it's up to us to defend ourselves. First of all, we must insure that the army is prepared. The second thing involves readiness around understanding what to do in the case of an invasion: What are the objects of critical infrastructure? Can we survive without them? What is the algorithm, for instance, for media to work and operate in case there is no Internet and things like that? So people are really discussing those things. But, for the general population, I should say, indeed, the call to them by the government is just largely to stay calm, and more or less to do nothing. And especially: don't panic, because this threat is so broad and so unclear that there isn't a clear algorithm for the general population to prepare themselves. An invasion could take many different forms. [...]

Most of the explanations you see in America for Putin's behavior center on his need for more domestic popularity, or to keep the West off balance, or his feelings about a supposed encirclement by nato. Many of these explanations are not really Ukraine-specific, but I'm curious how you see what Putin is doing.

I just read an interview with Dmitri Trenin, who is the head of the Moscow Carnegie Center. He says that, for a while, Russia's foreign policy stood on the shoulders of what [Mikhail] Gorbachev built, and held that, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia and other former Soviet countries would, little by little, become part of the West. For that, there were some requirements: democracy, human rights, rule of law, less corruption, and so on. But, at this moment, Russia feels that it doesn't want that anymore. Putin doesn't want any conditions. He actually doesn't want to join this club. He wants to have a world where Russia is strong, and decisions globally are not taken without Russia, including important decisions in the Middle East and in Latin America. So Russia wants to be, again, a global power, not just a nice member of the international liberal order.

Ukraine is just too big to ignore, and Putin himself seems to have an obsession with Ukraine. This summer, he wrote an article about Ukrainian history. Putin usually achieves everything he wants, but Ukraine is a country where he failed twice. In 2004 and in 2014, he backed a pro-Russia, authoritarian candidate, using great effort to cement his rule, and twice, popular uprisings by Ukrainians did something he feared and didn't want to have happen. The Ukrainian people voted differently. And, with their protest, they kind of mocked Russia. So Putin feels offended and betrayed by Ukraine and by the Ukrainians--not just by the Ukrainian government. So I think for him it's quite important to prove that no, this democracy is not really genuine, that it's the West that wants to impose it on the Ukrainians. To admit that societies can do it themselves is to admit that change could be possible in Belarus, in Georgia, and in Russia as well.