Many attempts have been made to explain Russia’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine, but the argument of the distinguished political scientist Sabine Fischer is that we can fully understand Russia’s foreign policy and its aggressive war of annihilation against Ukraine only by putting Russian chauvinism at the heart of our analysis. Fischer argues that Putin’s regime has long been driven by a mixture of aggressive nationalism, sexism and autocracy: taken together, these three elements constitute the chauvinist threat that stems from Moscow and that led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.