Western warnings of an ‘imminent’ Russian invasion of Ukraine have grown more insistent in recent weeks with different voices, from the media to politicians, needlessly stoking the fires of war with their aggressive and inaccurate rhetoric.

Part of the reason for this is because the grainy satellite images of Russian troops poised on Ukraine’s border, just waiting for their orders to attack, conformed so well to every western stereotype: an aggressive Russia under a dictatorial leader, ready to bully, if not annihilate, poor little – well, actually not so little – Ukraine and snuff out its entirely legitimate aspirations to join...