As long as Putin is in power, peace is a fantasy

From the Telegraph:

"‘Peace in Ukraine is impossible while Putin remains in power’

Roland Oliphant, 22 December 2025

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Battle Lines podcast, Sir Laurie Bristow said Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions ‘cannot be reconciled with our interests’

A deal between Russia and Ukraine to end their war with each other is impossible while Vladimir Putin is alive and in power, a former British ambassador to Moscow has said.

Sir Laurie Bristow, who served as British ambassador to Russia between 2016 and 2020, said the idea that Putin could be persuaded to stop fighting in exchange for territorial concessions was a “fantasy”, and that Western leaders must accept that Moscow’s position would not change as long as he is in office.

Sir Laurie, who later headed the UK mission in Kabul during the evacuation from Afghanistan, also said British and other Western governments should face up to the scale of that disaster.

“Specifically on Russia, it is: understand the nature of the problem,” he told The Telegraph’s Battle Lines podcast when asked how he would advise the Prime Minister if he were still a diplomat.

“The key to thinking about how the war might end is first of all do away with fantasies. There is not a deal to be done with Russia where you trade some Ukrainian land for some other Ukrainian land and somehow Putin’s happy and goes home. That isn’t going to happen.

“What [Putin] wants to do here is essentially assert the rights as he sees them of a great power to a sphere of influence – essentially an empire in central and eastern Europe – and that cannot be reconciled with our interests.

“The second fantasy to do away with is that this conflict is resolvable while Putin is in office. By which I think I mean while Putin is alive. For the conflict itself to resolve, Russia has to fundamentally change and that will not happen [while Putin remains in post].”...

Sir Laurie, for his part, said Putin’s own public statements made clear that he was not interested in compromise.

European leaders, including Sir Keir Starmer, instead must accept they will have to continue to arm Ukraine in order to deter Russia from pressing ahead “not because we want the war to continue but because we want it to stop”, he said.

“If the Americans decide their interests are elsewhere, our interests are still in European security and there is no escaping from that. This is fundamentally about the UK’s security,” Sir Laurie added."