Why Putin won’t end the war

It is globally acknowledged that Russian President Vladimir Putin is unwilling to bring an end to the war in Ukraine right now. The Wall Street Journal reported on 26 October that, prior to August this year, internal intelligence agencies within the US State Department had expressed scepticism about Putin’s readiness to negotiate an end to the war. 

In August, US President Donald Trump met Putin in Alaska, a meeting later shown to have produced no results. On 16 October, after a phone call between Trump and Putin, a Budapest summit was announced but subsequently cancelled. Trump remarked that holding a summit with Putin would be a “waste of time”.

A “waste of time” does not mean that Trump has given up hope on Putin. True to his personal-diplomacy style, Trump favours Putin far more than Zelenskyy, the leader he should actually be supporting. Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.”

Trump’s repeated attempts to persuade Putin to end the Russia-Ukraine war have proven futile; even after Russia tested a nuclear-powered missile, Trump continued to call on Putin to end the war. How many times will it take before Trump finally understands Putin’s true intentions in launching this war?

The latest indication of Putin’s intentions in waging war comes from his remarks at the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club on 2 October. He stated that Russia advocates multipolarity, seeks to eliminate the grounds for bloc confrontation, and aims to create a common space of security. Russia had twice announced its readiness to join NATO: first in 1954, and again in 2000 during former US President Clinton’s visit to Moscow. Both proposals were flatly rejected. And this was how Putin came to loathe the West.

However, he argued that the West wants to expel Russia from the global system and refuses to let it off the hook. According to him, the West is isolating Russia politically, culturally and in the information sphere, forcing it towards economic self-sufficiency. Yet Putin confidently claimed that, although the West is carrying out a strategic assault on Russia, global balance cannot be built without Russia. Mired in conspiracy theories, historical blind spots and an obsession with Russia’s own historical status, Putin has responded to what he sees as a Western strategic attack with an anti-West strategy.

The Russia-Ukraine war is a key element of Putin’s broader anti-West strategy. Seen in this light, the conflict is more than a mere territorial dispute, and it sheds clearer light on what Putin means when he talks about addressing the “root causes” of the war.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that if the fighting were to stop immediately, Moscow’s key demands — permanently barring Ukraine from joining NATO and ending what he describes as the “genocide of Russian-speaking populations” — would be set aside.

Putin’s idea of the conflict’s “root causes” is based on a distortion of the facts. NATO is a defensive alliance committed to collective security, aimed at deterring external aggression against its members. It is highly reluctant to admit states embroiled in unresolved territorial disputes or active conflicts. As a result, Ukraine’s accession to NATO remains highly unlikely for the foreseeable future. Notably, Russia has in the past acknowledged — at least in principle — Ukraine’s sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements, including NATO membership.

According to a 2019 survey, 81% of Ukrainians supported the teaching of Russian in schools, and many people used Russian at home. However, since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, many Ukrainians have distanced themselves from Russian culture.

Putin’s so-called “root causes” of the conflict are merely an excuse to initiate war, aimed at turning Ukraine into another Belarus. At the core of this goal lies the fact that Ukraine’s democracy poses an existential threat to Putin’s authoritarian rule. A prosperous and free Ukraine would set a powerful example for Russian citizens, proving that democracy can succeed in an East Slavic country. 

The Ukrainians have repeatedly chosen the West over Russia, a choice incompatible with Putin’s “virtual empire” that seeks to control the post-Soviet space. Only by wielding a veto over Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policies can Putin realise his longstanding ambition of an uncontested sphere of influence.

As such, Putin will not agree to a ceasefire unless his objectives are met. He is not merely seeking to seize territory, but to achieve victory on multiple fronts. He continues to believe that Russia will defeat Ukraine, and the recent Russian offensive around Pokrovsk is intended to demonstrate that its armed forces remain strong. 

Putin’s confidence rests not only on Russia’s vast size and abundant resources, but also on the fact that its economy has been placed on a war footing, adapted to sanctions, and received substantial direct and indirect military support from countries such as Iran and North Korea.

But the objective fact is that, since November 2022, Russia has only been able to militarily advance at an extremely slow pace, occupying just 1% of Ukraine’s territory at the cost of over one million Russian casualties. By this measure alone, Putin’s war has failed. And it is precisely this failure that gives him every incentive not to bring the war to an end.

First, war provides the foundation for Putin’s authoritarian rule. For a dictatorship, few international circumstances are more advantageous than conflict. As George Kennan, the architect of the containment of the Soviet Union, once observed: Soviet leaders had to treat the outside world as hostile because doing so provided the only justification for the dictatorship, without which they did not know how to rule. During Putin’s third presidential term, when income and economic growth slowed, he increasingly anchored the legitimacy of his regime in militarised patriotism, a shift first evident in the 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.

Second, the war allows Putin to maintain the illusion that Russia is still a great power. In his remarks at the Valdai Discussion Club, he outlined his vision for the international order, reflecting his dissatisfaction with the US-led international order, with “multipolarity” and “polycentrism” representing the world order he envisions. 

The Russia-Ukraine war has become a stage for Russia to assert its presence, compelling Western countries to acknowledge Russia as a pole in a multipolar world. In this way, Putin turns the war into a tool for legitimising his rule.

Third, what Putin needs above all is victory. Only a military triumph can secure his authoritarian rule and help the Kremlin balance postwar challenges and the psychological impact of casualties. Putin sees a decisive resolution of the Ukraine conflict as a means to cement his political legacy and historical standing, potentially placing him alongside Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and even Joseph Stalin as one of Russia’s great state builders. The Russia-Ukraine war is thus directly tied to Putin’s historical stature. In the event of defeat, Putin would undoubtedly turn into Russia’s sinner, with the Russian people unable to accept the reality of Russia reduced to a vassal of China and North Korea.

The possibility of ending the Russia-Ukraine war at the negotiating table is extremely low. Only a decisive outcome on the battlefield can bring the war to an end, and the most effective way to determine that outcome is to cripple Russia’s economy, forcing Putin to lay down his arms.

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