There is, at last, a breakthrough in efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
After weeks of tortuous recriminations and reprisals, encapsulated by that notorious scene in the Oval Office, the United States and Ukraine last week agreed on a 30-day cease-fire. Military assistance and intelligence sharing, once paused, have resumed. Since President Trump took office, the saga of the war has played out almost entirely between America and Ukraine, with Russia somewhere in the background. Now all eyes are on Moscow.
People hoping for peace are likely to be disappointed. Despite President Vladimir Putin of Russia signaling readiness for a deal, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been talking to Kremlin insiders who have known Mr. Putin for years and they all agreed: Mr. Putin has come to love war and can no longer imagine a future without it. Instead, his plan is to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the United States, take advantage of Mr. Trump’s apparent friendliness to improve relations with America and keep the war machine running.
Tuesday’s phone call between the two leaders will put that strategy to the test. Whatever happens next, nobody should be fooled. Mr. Putin has no desire to end the war.
The mood in Moscow is war weary. That’s why Mr. Trump’s comments about forcing Ukraine to negotiate were seized upon by Russian officials with such excitement: It offered them a way out of the war, complete with new American friendship. But Mr. Putin sees things differently. According to the people I spoke to, he hasn’t given up on his original aim: to take Kyiv and overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky. The volatility of American support for Ukraine — along with small but steady advances on the battlefield and Russia’s general advantage in resources — makes this pipe dream seem more plausible, if still far-fetched.
More important, though, is that the war has become Mr. Putin’s ultimate tool for controlling the country and ensuring no one steps out of line. It has been brutally wielded to drive out dissenting voices from the country, turning a whole generation of opponents into exiles. The war serves as a perfect gag order on those in the system, too. As long as it continues, even the so-called systemic liberals — the pro-Western faction within Russia’s government that holds key positions in the economy and business world — will remain silent. Many of them are clearly unhappy. But while the war drags on, they will not speak out.
The dangers of peace, on the other hand, are plain. It would return a more than a million-strong army home and a rung of high-ranking veterans to civilian life. What will they do? A warning signal was sent last month when one of Russia’s most prominent war veterans and the president’s envoy to the Urals district, Artem Zhoga, dared to criticize a possible minerals deal with America floated by Mr. Putin. “These resources are part of a strategic reserve, and I urge my colleagues in the regions to ensure their preservation in the interests of the state,” Mr. Zhoga said. Notably, he did not mention the president.
For Mr. Putin, it was an ominous intervention. Shut out from key government positions — not a single war veteran has been placed in a senior leadership role, even after extensive reshuffling at the defense ministry — veterans are a potential pool of resentment. While the war continues, they cannot afford to step out of line. Were peace to come, they may well follow the footsteps of the former Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in railing against Mr. Putin and his regime. Mr. Putin, of course, cannot allow that to happen. To prevent a veterans’ revolt, he must not end the war. His political survival depends on it.
As does the economy, which has been fully reshaped to serve the war effort. The government has been restructured to follow a Stalinist principle: “Everything for the front, everything for victory.” The state apparatus now operates in service of the military-industrial complex. The most influential figure in Russia’s economy is Sergey Chemezov, Mr. Putin’s longtime colleague from the K.G.B. who now heads Rostec, the state-owned military conglomerate. That tells you how entwined political power, the war and the economy have become.
Some Russian business leaders argue that the war has even benefited parts of the country that had long been in economic decline. Once idle defense factories are now running at full capacity, fulfilling government contracts and creating jobs. Unlike the prewar years — when wealth was concentrated in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other major cities — state funding is now flowing into Russia’s economically depressed regions. The Kremlin’s bet on military Keynesianism, making use of oil revenues to redirect the economy to meet the war’s needs, has largely paid off.
So the war stays. How to square that with Mr. Putin’s apparent willingness to discuss an end to it? According to those I talked to, Mr. Putin has pursued a dual-track strategy from the beginning: engaging in separate discussions about U.S.-Russia relations — chiefly economic in nature — while keeping Ukraine as a separate issue. The mooted minerals deal so disliked by Mr. Zhoga is a case in point. Appealing to Mr. Trump’s business sense, Mr. Putin had floated the possibility of partnering with America in mining projects across Russia. Ukraine didn’t feature.
When the war is the subject of discussion, Mr. Putin’s plan is simple: appear open to negotiations while provoking splits in the opposing camp, hoping to force Ukraine to reject them first. In this, he has been remarkably successful. His repeated claim that Mr. Zelensky is illegitimate was echoed by Mr. Trump, who branded Ukraine’s president a “dictator.” The unseemly shouting match in the Oval Office was, among other things, a triumph for Mr. Putin’s tactic of provocation.
Mr. Putin’s other trick is to invoke the Istanbul negotiations of March 2022, claiming that Russia and Ukraine were once close to a peace deal stymied by Western obstruction. Whatever the truth of the claim, the conditions discussed then — such as capping the size of Ukraine’s military, altering its constitution to enshrine a neutral, nonaligned status and surrendering occupied territories — now seem, after three years of war, entirely unacceptable. Any Ukrainian president agreeing to such terms would face immediate political ruin. That’s why Mr. Putin insists on them.
For a while, Ukraine was caught in the trap. Now, with the agreement in Saudi Arabia last week to a monthlong cease-fire, it has seized the initiative. The Kremlin’s initial reaction was cautious. “The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Mr. Putin said on Thursday. “But,” he added, “there are questions that we need to discuss.” Discussions in recent days with American officials centered around Russia’s conditions, including the halting of arms supplies to Ukraine, have made a cease-fire look increasingly unlikely.
Even if one were to come about, it wouldn’t solve much. Given it lacks American security guarantees, Russia could easily provoke an incident, accuse Ukraine of violating the truce and immediately retake abandoned positions, stronger than ever. It’s telling that after the cease-fire proposal, Mr. Putin appeared in military uniform for the first time in the entire war — an unmistakable sign of intent. Little wonder the Ukrainian leadership is skeptical of success.
It’s hard to say how the Trump administration might respond to a refused or broken cease-fire. Its initial enthusiasm for Russia seems to have already been tempered somewhat — see Mr. Trump’s recent threats of “large scale” sanctions on Russia if it doesn’t agree to a deal — and there is a long way to go. But we should be clear about what Mr. Putin is planning. It’s not peace.
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