The purpose of this article is to know the type of management of Putin, the President of Russia, in the Ukraine war. Based on the “game theory”, this study seeks to answer the question, what kind of strategy has Putin chosen against the Western world, led by the United States, in the Ukraine war? Game theory is a science that analyzes the set of interactions and behaviors of the game parties, as well as investigates the types of game structures and patterns and the possible consequences of all types of games. The main foundation of game theory is “game type” and “actor’s character type”; Therefore, it is hypothesized that the choice of war against the West was a strategic choice by Putin.
In order to evaluate this hypothesis, firstly, West-Russia interactions in various regional and global crises were investigated and classified into two different types: the first type “cooperative-asymmetrical-symmetrical-dynamic”; The second type “uncooperative-unbalanced-symmetric-dynamic”. The combination of the two “non-cooperative” and “unbalanced” variables put the game in an Achems situation, and Putin was forced to choose war in order to get out of this situation and prevent a nuclear war. By choosing this inevitable war, “Russian legend” imposed many costs on himself, but he also prevented his opponent from achieving his goal by imposing many costs. Therefore, we can conclude that Putin is still a strategist and choosing the war in Ukraine was also a strategic decision against the West.