Why?

I think it's the question we are all asking right now isn't it. Why? Part of the reason this is so hard is that the reasons on paper that Moscow is giving us are so patently absurd, it's difficult to make rhyme or reason of it.

The temptation is always to label the administration then mad or irrational, which is a commentary that is certainly doing the rounds now. Is Putin really irrational though? Brutal, yes. Despicable for these acts, yes. But irrational? More difficult to swallow. It is the chess game from hell, but there are tactics afoot. Typically cold, brutal, KGB style tactics. Malevolent, but tactics still.

There must either be something they want in Ukraine, or something they are afraid of, or both, surely. One doesn't embark on this kind of catastrophe unless one or both of those is true.

So what is it really about? I don't know. Yes, Ukraine is rich in natural resources, we all know that, but Russia has them pouring out its ears. There seems more to it than that.

I always find that when these questions arise, being a bit of a map nerd, it is never unhelpful just to turn maps around, away from the conventional north at the top views and play with them. Look at them from unusual angles. Differ the perspective.

I was really a bit flabbergasted when I did that - to realise just how close to Moscow, Kiev is. It's about the same as Southampton to Inverness. I mean that's still a long way, but we are so used to thinking in terms of mega-distances when it comes to Russia, that to realise it's an overnight sleeper train away, is something of a revelation.

When we see how Russia is behaving towards Ukraine, we can surely understand why Ukraine wants to be in NATO. That ostensibly has been the straw that broke the camel's back if we are to believe Russian angst. Yet if we are Vladimir Putin, and we grew up in the USSR, we can get a sense from this view that Ukraine was, apart from anything else, once Moscow's beach.

For all it's huge landmass, Russia has no Riviera of its own outside of the Black Sea coast. Excepting perhaps the Caucasus Caspian coast, all other coasts are fairly frigid or unspectacular affairs. No-one is implying this tragic situation is about something so frivolous as a beach, but it maybe suggests that if there is a deep nostalgia for the USSR still lingering in the Kremlin, Ukraine is the very embodiment of it. That can make the contrast with the relationship today stark and hard to take.

If then we imagine any hardliners in the Kremlin today take a look at the map and colour Ukraine blue for NATO rather than red for Russia, then consider how closely that blue creeps towards Moscow, it perhaps provides a perspective. It's an old cliché to recall how close Hitler's armies got to Moscow (30 km), but avoiding that happening again has been a lynchpin of Russian defence ever since.

It's not to excuse anything that has gone on. This is where a fundamental difference in thinking occurs across the iron curtain. The one we thought had gone away but apparently had really just morphed into glass. Looked like it wasn't there but still was.

On one side of the curtain, it's about people deciding for themselves whether they want to be independent - without any need for tanks. On the other side of that curtain, it's history that decides, and a particular view of history as decreed by Moscow. That's a fundamental difference in outlook. We accept people's right to opt for self determination today, whatever the history was. We are not going to make that difference go away in a hurry. We can perceive the difference and talk to it, but it will never be easy.

For any younger generation person in Russia, I'd suspect it would be less of a problem to have their Ukrainian neighbours wearing whatever cloak they like, if the train down to Yalta is still on, the Crimean red wine still flows, and liquor and music flows freely in the clubs of Kiev. But for someone of former KGB ilk you can imagine - NATO that close to Moscow - well, perhaps we can even take them at their word, that this really is the problem for them. That's not to say we are going to change any stance because of it, but it is to try and understand the logic at play here, and get a grip on what the fears really are on the Russian side.

Trouble is the man really has worked himself into a corner now. Whatever the events of the next weeks, there has been a fundamental underestimation of the "however long it takes" mode that Europe and the rest of the world, except China and Belarus, is for the most part settling into. The affront to decency unabashed. The lies prolific. The callousness with which life has been tossed into the furnace truly shocking. If anything has brought the scale of that Kremlin underestimation home it has been how quickly the "my finger is hovering over the button" card has been played. Surely not one they originally intended to play in day 4.

The tricky thing here, in the process of battening down the hatches, is not to demonise all Russians. The last thing we want to do is alienate all of them for evermore, so that is a tricky tightrope to navigate. They didn't call for this and no doubt as many of them are as gut-wrenchingly horrified by it all. They will bear the brunt of the isolation this has imposed.

One can't help but think that the hope here lies within Russia itself, not with anything the west can do. Leaders at the helm for so long, democratic and autocratic alike, have a way of overestimating the permanence of their foundations. If this does not go well for Putin, there will be those waiting in the wings to take advantage. Just as there is in Westminster every time a PM messes up. While the political philosophies are galaxies apart, other things are not so very different. The corridors of power have unmarked puddles of detergent.

The trick for the Kremlin, whether they like it or not, whoever occupies it, is not to colour Ukraine on the map the colours of NATO, or to colour it red, the colours of Russia, but to let Ukraine colour itself with the colours it wants. If that is allowed to happen, then the relationship is a natural one destined to bloom. Big neighbours with lots to offer each other. Sadly today that seems a long way off. But Russia has always been one to surprise, let's hope there are some positive ones to come. It would be a welcome change.

One of my enduring images of Russia is travelling from Tokyo to London and flying over one vast river after another, all winding, glimmering in the subarctic sun, from southern sources in Siberian mountains, through hills and plains towards the distant Arctic Ocean. Leaning out the window seeing that for hours, on hours. One could imagine the thunderous drama, the cracking of thick ice, of each spring thaw - on hundreds of large and long frozen rivers.

Amidst the Narni-esque permafrost winter that has descended on Eurasia this week, we can but hope. There are characters there in frozen forests who await patiently the turn of season and the thunderous cracking of ice.