Why did Russia launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022? Was this the culmination of centuries of Russian imperialism, or the ambition of a particular personalist leader? In Russia’s Gamble: The Domestic Origins of Russia’s Attack on Ukraine, Vladimir Gel’man, a leading scholar of Russian authoritarianism, offers a rationalist framework linking structural and actor-centered approaches to account for the domestic sources of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its failure in achieving the rapid victory. Rather than seeking to assign blame for one of the most disastrous wars in Europe since World War II—an important normative task in its own right—the author advances a positivist analysis focused on elites and the factors shaping their decision-making. The book traces how the personalization of power, bureaucratic practices of “bad governance” and (mis)perceptions among Russian policymakers led to the prolonged military assault on Ukraine. Building on the author’s previous books (Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes, 2015; The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia, 2019), this study completes a trilogy exploring the evolution of Russia’s authoritarian regime. Russia’s Gamble will interest scholars and general readers alike for its clear and theoretically informed account of why Russia miscalculated in Ukraine. More broadly, the author presents an important ‘hypothesis-generating’ case study on the mechanisms of political failures in autocracies (p. 19).

According to Gel’man, “the Russian assault on Ukraine in February 2022 was the logical outcome of the evolutionary trajectory of Russia’s political regime after the Soviet collapse, driven by the increasing status-seeking ambitions of Russia’s elites and political leadership” (p. 6). This outcome, however, was not predetermined. It resulted from the choices made by Russian elites under specific institutional and informational constraints – or rather, the lack thereof. The central argument builds on a realist assumption: when unconstrained domestically or internationally, political actors tend to engage in aggressive foreign policy behavior as a default pattern (p. 152). In this sense, the relative decline of aggressive foreign policy in the twenty-first century stems from the growing limits on state behavior, due to the larger selectorate, global economic interdependence, and nuclear deterrence. The 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine represents an outlier from this trend (p. 21), yet it nonetheless confirms the underlying realist logic. Gel’man’s analysis, however, moves beyond conventional system- and state-level realist explanations by situating foreign policy decisions within the internal dynamics and mechanisms of authoritarian rule.

The book identifies four interrelated “traps” leading to Russia’s full-scale invasion and its continuation despite failures: (1) the personalist trap (the poor quality of decision-making in a personalist autocracy, Chapter 2); (2) the bad governance trap (the dysfunctions of a rent-seeking-based bureaucratic system, Chapter 3); (3) the trap of misperceptions (systematic information distortions that leave policymakers with an inaccurate picture of reality, Chapter 4); and (4) the trap of impunity (the overconfidence of elites emboldened by prior successes at home and abroad, Chapter 5) (p. 24). As a result, a “small victorious war” could appear optimal when decision-makers perceive benefits as outweighing costs, operate under imperfect information, and face few institutional checks on their behavior.

Chapter 2 explores how the increasing personalization of Russia’s political regime eroded institutionalized decision-making, promoting loyalty instead of competence as the primary career incentive for elites. As a result, policy effectiveness declined, and state authorities became focused on maintaining the status quo. Chapter 3 examines “bad governance”: a politico-economic order “aimed at maximization of rents at the expense of development” (p. 60). It is characterized by low elite rotation, lack of accountability, and pervasive corruption. Bad governance produces a bureaucratic culture of risk aversion, leading officials to avoid responsibility by withholding or distorting information. Even “pockets of efficiency,” such as technocratic agencies, cannot overcome these structural defects due to their weak institutionalization.

Chapters 4 and 5 analyze the (mis)perceptions of Russian elites, representing one of the book’s novel contributions. A specific organizational culture and groupthink among security elites shaped their gambling foreign policy decisions, with raising the stakes after each prior success in Georgia, Crimea, and Syria (p. 25). The four traps reinforced one another, culminating in a poorly prepared full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a self-reinforcing equilibrium that sustains the war despite its mounting costs.

The book’s core contribution lies in synthesizing complementary perspectives from the literature on Russian authoritarianism and applying them to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While the argument itself is not entirely novel, its integration of the “rational actor model,” “organizational behavior,” and “governmental politics” (pp. 22–23), following Graham T. Allison’s Essence of Decision (1971), produces one of the most compelling explanations for autocratic foreign policy failure. This synthesis, combined with analytical rigor, make Russia’s Gamble particularly valuable for nonspecialist audiences seeking a theoretically grounded alternative to normative-based accounts of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The book also situates the war within broader debates about the domestic foundations of foreign policy in autocracies, complementing historically focused scholarship (e.g., Sergey Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War, 2023; Evgeny Finkel, Intent to Destroy, 2024; Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel, Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, 2024), as well as theoretical analyses (e.g., Konstanstin Sonin and Georgy Egorov, “Why Did Putin Invade Ukraine? A Theory of Degenerate Autocracy,” American Journal of Political Science, 2025).

Despite its analytical breadth, the book’s empirical grounding and methodological precision remain limited. Given the opacity of authoritarian politics, Gel’man relies primarily on secondary sources to substantiate his theoretical claims (notably, Sharon W. Rivera, Survey of Russian Elites 2020: New Perspectives on Domestic and Foreign Policy, 2020). The analysis would have benefited from additional original empirical evidence, such as elite interviews or public statements. Without such material, the book largely reiterates what is already known about the logic of authoritarian governance in Russia. Similarly, the discussion of elite perceptions, while plausible, is based on “the author’s interpretation of mainstream sources of contemporary Russian thought on international relations” (p. 32) and is not easily falsifiable. A more methodologically rigorous approach, such as formal modeling or discourse analysis, could have further strengthened the arguments.

The author focuses exclusively on elites, acknowledging this limitation (pp. 4–5). He notes the importance of mass support in sustaining modern autocracies (p. 38) but treats the public as a background condition rather than an active factor. Yet even in nondemocracies, public opinion can influence elite decision-making. The theory of diversionary war posits that leaders may initiate conflict to distract the public from domestic problems. In Russia’s case, the prospect of a “small victorious war” likely promised a surge in legitimacy, a rally-around-the-flag effect and a diversion from economic stagnation—an aspect only briefly mentioned in the book. Incorporating the role of the public would have made the analysis more comprehensive.

Russia’s Gamble offers a theoretically grounded in-depth explanation of how domestic political dynamics within a personalist autocracy can produce disastrous foreign policy outcomes. The synthesis of structural and actor-based analytical approaches makes it a valuable contribution to scholarship on comparative authoritarianism and international relations. The book illuminates the internal mechanisms that led Russia’s leadership to miscalculate in Ukraine. For scholars of Russian politics and for comparativists interested in the determinants of international conflict and mechanisms of authoritarian rule, Russia’s Gamble represents an important and timely addition to the field.