The 24th February marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Neither side has been able to land a knockout blow. Donald Trump is back in the White House and promising to begin negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war. What should we expect in 2025 and beyond?
To understand how the war might end, a good place to start is why it began—putting aside Putin’s propaganda about Ukraine being run by Nazis, or having bioweapons labs, and so on.
This war is about how Putin and the people around him see the world and Russia’s place in it. To know what Putin is thinking, we must listen to what he is saying, but here there are two major problems. The first is the role of lying in Russian statecraft, at both the tactical and strategic levels—the latter being what I have called the “intercontinental ballistic whopper”. The second is much bigger. It is that we often don’t want to accept deeply unattractive facts or their consequences. We need to believe that Putin’s worldview can somehow be made to fit with ours and a compromise reached. It can’t.
You must log in or register to comment.