Trump, the president of the United States, stated that he believes Vladimir Putin wants peace. While the Russian leader himself stated that he wanted peace but declined to sign on when given the opportunity, Ukraine and its European allies do not think he does.
However, Putin’s true agenda is far more expansive.
The Russian president has stated time and time again that he wants NATO to return to its size from the Cold War and has made no secret of his opinion that Ukraine should not be allowed to exist as an independent state.
More than anything, though, Putin hopes to see a new world order, with Russia at its forefront.
The remains of the KGB, the Soviet-era intelligence organization, gave rise to Putin and a number of his closest associates. They are unhappy with how the world has changed after the Soviet Union’s collapse and will never forget the humiliation of that event.
Putin came to power amid the turmoil of the 1990s, when the Russian economy crashed and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had to step in to save it—another setback for the once-dominant nation.
However, constantly rising oil prices made Russia and many Russians wealthy than ever when Putin took office in 2000. Russia also had a voice. It was asked to join the G7, which was later called the G8 and consisted of the biggest economies in the world.
However, Kristine Berzina, a managing director of the US-based German Marshal Fund, told CNN that this was insufficient for the Russian leader.
“Due to higher geopolitical goals, Putin was happy to discard all of that on behalf of his citizens,” Berzina stated. Because of its aggression against Ukraine, Russia was shunned on the international scene, sanctioned by the West, and kicked out of the G8.
Russia’s status as “the eighth in the G7” was never good enough, according to Berzina.
That is incompatible with Russia’s conception of its own uniqueness. How can it only be one of the participants when it is the world’s largest and wealthiest in (natural) resources? “I said,” she said.
It’s important to keep in mind that the United States performed a policy U-turn under Trump, not because Russian thinking has fundamentally changed, in order to comprehend what Putin wants from the present discussions with the US.
Even if it means Ukraine loses more territory, Trump wants the war in Ukraine to finish as quickly as possible.
Putin has nothing to lose by speaking, according to this.
The conflict with Ukraine has been mostly halted for the past two years, despite Trump’s assertion that “Russia holds all the cards.”
Russia is not winning, despite some little victories; but, this may change if the US stopped providing Ukraine with weapons and information.
Putin entered Ukraine with the expectation that it would be a simple, swift operation. After three years, he still holds 20% of Ukraine, but at a very high cost. In other words, the Russians are basically losing. However, Mark Galeotti, a top Russia analyst, told CNN that the Ukrainians are losing more quickly.
He claimed that Trump’s call for a truce just offers Putin and those close to him a chance to achieve short-term gains while monitoring long-term objectives.
Putin is a shrewd businessman. He enjoys generating lively, chaotic scenarios that provide a wide range of chances. After that, he may simply choose the option that interests him and alter his mind, Galeotti stated.
Long-term strategy
The long-term objectives of Putin and his associates have remained unaltered. Russian authorities have insisted that the “root causes” of the crisis in Ukraine be “eliminated,” despite their rhetoric about seeking peace.
According to the Kremlin, these “root causes” include NATO’s eastward expansion over the previous 30 years, Ukraine’s sovereignty, and its democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
In order to impose a pro-Moscow administration in Kyiv, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He wanted to make Ukraine a vassal state like Belarus and keep it from ever joining NATO or the European Union.
Even while he hasn’t used military action to accomplish that aim, he hasn’t given up on it.
He can attempt to accomplish it in another way instead.
“It is possible, even likely, that Moscow would attempt to do this once a ceasefire was established,” Berzina stated, adding that “the easiest way for Russia to attain what it wants in a different country is not through military means, but through interference and electoral process.”
This is probably the reason Russia continues to cast doubt on Zelensky’s legitimacy and demand an election; the Kremlin was thrilled when Trump accepted this line of reasoning and referred to the Ukrainian leader as “a dictator without elections.” Martial law in Ukraine, which was implemented in response to Russia’s assault, forbids elections while the war is still raging.
Putin has demanded a US pledge that Ukraine would not join NATO as part of any peace deal, and Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have dismissed the notion that Ukraine might join NATO anytime soon.
However, Berzina claimed that Putin’s claims that he would cease hostilities if Ukraine became, as he put it, neutral are not being taken seriously by Ukraine’s European partners.
“Many people in Europe now find Putin fundamentally untrustworthy, regardless of what Trump and Putin think they can arrange this week or this year,” she added.
Could there be a willingness for Russia to make another military attempt? Yes. Because of this, Europeans are extremely optimistic about the possibility of future armed conflict.
Everything is personal.
According to Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security specialist and investigative journalist living in exile in London, Putin and his associates think they can “try to get something out of Trump right now.”
He claimed that although they believe they can win certain tactical conflicts, he would not grant them their main demand, which is a total overhaul of Europe’s security setup.
The Kremlin sees the conflict as a conflict with the West rather than Ukraine, and many Moscow residents don’t think they can reach a long-term deal with the US, Soldatov said CNN.
Russia has long been wary of the United States.
Since they were all young KGB officials at the time, Soldatov stated, “it’s very personal to them because they lost their social standing, a place in Russian society, and the country as they describe it now, and it was extremely humiliating.”
They firmly think that for ages, the West has sought to completely destroy and subjugate Russia. It’s not only propaganda; they genuinely hold this belief. Putin, however, has also placed his strategy for Ukraine inside his own erroneous historical perspective, which extends far beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin has frequently maintained that because Ukraine and Ukrainians are a part of a broader “historical Russia,” Ukraine is not a separate nation.
This is obviously nonsense, according to experts.
“What he’s talking about is that, although Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all have a political ancestor named Rus, they are extremely different from any current nation. According to Monica White, an associate professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ukraine has no right to exist because of this common ancestor because it was a political entity in the early to late medieval era. “No country looks the same as in the 10th century,” she stated.
Putin has frequently invoked Russia’s Christian identity to justify his agenda. One of the most vocal proponents of the war is Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“Russia lost its connection to the ancestral Orthodox lands after the fall of the Soviet Union, and I believe part of Putin’s project is to try to bring back that thread connecting 10th century Rus with this pure orthodox continuity,” White stated. “His actions are actually not all that dissimilar from those of some of the early Romanov Tzars, who ultimately succeeded in reclaiming the Orthodox territories that had been ruled by the Ottomans or the Catholics.”
She says that Putin’s goal is to bring Russia back to the world arena in a big way by dividing Europe and the US and allying with the other enemies of the West.
White went on to say, “Russia wants to be at all the important tables – so whatever comes next could mean territorial conquest in Europe, but I think it has to be in a starring role in the more powerful bloc, if it sees that to include China or Iran or others, a bloc that is defined by its willingness to disrupt and destabilize.”
Putin is adamant that Russia, the world’s largest nation by land area, should have a role in global governance. In the White House, he could have a guy who shares his views. Whether it’s Greenland, the Panama Canal, or a portion of Ukraine, Trump has made it clear that he thinks the largest and most powerful nations should receive what they want.
“The main idea, in my opinion, is that, from Trump’s perspective, Ukraine is a bought-and-paid vassal state that needs to recognize its role and come to terms with the fact that, basically, America will strike a deal with Russia and then return it to Ukraine,” Galeotti stated.
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