Why Putin believes he can win against us all

From the 1945 portal:

"Why Putin Believes He Can Win His ‘Civilizational War’ Against the West

By Andrew A. Michta Published May 28, 2025

...Reaching a workable and enduring cessation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine was always a bridge too far. The reason for this has yet to register with the Trump administration fully: Russia is simply not interested in any outcome in Ukraine short of achieving the primary policy objectives that drove it to invade the country again in 2022 in the first place. The fact that the US administration continues to negotiate the Ukraine ceasefire shows that Washington also doesn’t fully understand the very nature of the Russian state, the drivers of Putin’s policy, and most of all, that Moscow believes it can continue to pursue the war and achieve its objectives at an acceptable cost to the regime.

For Russia, this war has never been about conquering this or that piece of Ukrainian territory, about the language rights of the Russian minority living in Ukraine, or—as many critics of the war seem to believe—about keeping Ukraine out of NATO. Nor has the US policy of NATO enlargement into post-communist Eastern Europe and the Baltic States after the Cold War been the true casus belli for Moscow. From the start, for Vladimir Putin and his inner circle in the Kremlin, this has been a war for the restoration of the Russian empire, one that Putin, in effect, declared at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 when he rejected the security order the West has built, and when he later opined that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. Taken in this context, the two invasions of Ukraine—the first in 2014, the second in 2022—must be understood not as the result of a Western blunder because the harsh reality is that NATO allies never reached a consensus to bring Ukraine into the alliance, but merely as another battle in this larger war, with the first campaign fought against Georgia in 2008.

Putin’s war for the restoration of the Russian empire has, from the start, had three fundamental objectives: First, to restore the Eastern Slavic “inner core” of the imperial state by subjugating Belarus and then Ukraine to, in effect, reincorporate both into the Russian sphere of exclusive domination... 

Second, his simultaneous objective is to undermine and ultimately fracture the NATO alliance by showing its inability to provide an effective deterrent to Russia’s expansion into Europe.

Third, the overarching objective in Putin’s war for empire is to push the United States out of Central Europe and the Baltic region—and ultimately out of the European continent altogether—so as to end the era of transatlantic security that for eighty years has rested on Europe and America being bound by a shared security system... Putin communicated his overarching objectives in no uncertain terms on the eve of the second invasion of Ukraine when he called for returning the regional power configuration to its pre-1997 status quo, i.e., nullifying the consequences of NATO enlargement altogether.   

The Trump administration seems to continue to operate on the assumption that Putin is genuinely interested in ending the slaughter to save lives and that a territorial settlement and guarantees of Ukraine’s de facto neutrality will meet Moscow’s goals and end the conflict. Still, the concessions the administration has already made to Moscow to bring it to the negotiating table, the totality of which amounts to easing Russia’s international isolation, are not enough to induce Putin to negotiate in good faith... The only pressure that could potentially induce Putin to negotiate in good faith would be a direct threat to the survival of his regime. Anything short of that, especially policies that rely on economic leverage, continues to exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Russian regime and the key drivers of Russia’s policy towards the West, as well as where the battle for Ukraine fits into this larger design.

It is high time the West acknowledges that Russia has been waging a war of imperial reconquest, driven by the Great Russian narrative that is foundational to its systemic evolution throughout history—one that spans the legacy from the Romanovs through the Bolsheviks and now its Putinist variety. Empire is the only form of state behavior Russia is familiar with, characterized by top-down structures steeped in a history of violence. It remains a constant existential threat to the countries facing Russia on NATO’s eastern frontier of the kind post-modern Western Europe can no longer recognize, and the United States has never been able to truly grasp...

The harsh reality of the war in Ukraine that Washington has yet to recognize is that the conflict is only a subset of a larger civilizational war against the West that Russia has been waging for over two decades now.  This Russian war for empire—whether in a non-kinetic or ultimately its kinetic variety—will not stop until Russia suffers a decisive defeat that will pose a direct threat to Putin’s regime at home. This doesn’t mean that Moscow will not engage in a tactical pause in its war against the West from time to time, but we should always be mindful that such a peredyshka or “breather” will only serve to offer Putin an opportunity to rearm and rebuild...

Backed by China’s economic supply base and money flowing in through energy sales worldwide, Russia’s military is well positioned to continue the war in Ukraine for a number of years while gaining combat experience and “going to school” on Western weapons and procedures, aided by the realist expectation that Ukraine’s defenses will ultimately break. If anything, Washington’s efforts to reach a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine, including considerable pressure on Kyiv to do so, have only served to encourage Moscow to believe that time is on its side...

It should be noted that while it was the brave Ukrainian men and women who have bled in this war, Russia ultimately sees the war as an extension of its conflict with what it likes to call the “collective West.” As such, it has found Western democracies wanting, both in means and in resolve, to counter its imperial onslaught.  Taken together with the last two decades of Westen complicity and appeasement when it came to repeated acts of Russian aggression, we should take seriously the prospect that Putin will continue to probe NATO’s defenses and, should an opportunity arise, would not hesitate to move across NATO’s defensive perimeter...

The principal objective of the Putin regime is to stay in power while continuing to pursue its imperialist path, and paradoxically, this war has had a consolidating and stabilizing impact on the regime, allowing for social mobilization at an acceptable cost. It has allowed Moscow to extract concessions from the West while also laying the groundwork for a new spheres-of-influence great power deal, which is the ultimate objective of the Putin regime.

If anything, the fact that the Trump administration has already taken Russia out of isolation and offered multiple concessions while leaning on Ukraine to induce it to negotiate is a signal to Moscow that its strategy is working and its ultimate objective of reconfiguring the European security landscape may be within reach.  And while it is true that Russia’s hard power indices are not a match for the GDP and population numbers commanded by the “collective West,” Putin seems ever more confident that today’s Western democracies have no fire in their bellies for a fight. As such, his strategy for fighting for the restoration of Russia’s imperial dominion and influence offers a path to victory on his terms."