Peace in Ukraine Means the End of Vladimir Putin

There is only one obstacle to peace in Ukraine, and his name is Vladimir Putin. Keep that in mind when you encounter proposed peace plans that speak of “Russia” and its willingness to end the war.

Russia—the people, the elites—is completely irrelevant. It—they—has no say in the matter. All that matters is Russia’s self-elected president and fascist dictator, Putin.

This means it’s not a question of getting Russia to the bargaining table. It’s a question of getting Putin to that proverbial table. And Putin has made it absolutely clear that he will go to that table only if it’s a question of when and how Ukraine should capitulate and become a province of Putin’s realm. Compromise of any kind is not on Putin’s table, and all the peace plans that involve Putin’s agreeing to compromise are thus utterly out of touch with reality.

The war is Putin’s war, and everybody in Russia knows it. To stop short of destroying Ukraine is to lose, and to lose the war is tantamount to losing his status, his legacy, and possibly his life. Putin has maneuvered himself into a dead end from which there is only one exit—via complete and total victory.

How then can Putin be brought to the bargaining table and made to agree to some form of genuine compromise?

Only by force or by force of circumstances.

Putin just might agree to end the war and agree to Ukraine’s continued existence as an independent state if he loses big on the battlefield. Losing Crimea would do the trick. Suffering a major defeat in the Donbas would also work. Even so there’s no guarantee that Putin wouldn’t just dig in his heels and sacrifice tens of thousands more Russians in a hopeless cause. But there’d be a chance, which is far more than there is today.

Putin might also countenance ending the war if the Russian economy collapses, as it’s likely to do within the next year or two if current trends continue. Mass unemployment and poverty, growing social discontent, and a lack of funds for continuing the war might also compel Putin to seek peace. Or not. He wouldn’t be history’s first dictator to destroy his economy for the sake of his ego. Still, there’d be a chance.

Short of a major catastrophe, Putin will not negotiate. It’s that simple. It’s equally straightforward that the only way the West can encourage a military defeat or an economic crisis is by arming Ukraine and taxing Russia’s ability to wage war. Ukraine needs to inflict a major defeat, but it can do so only if it has the requisite armaments in sufficient numbers.

Western policymakers terrified of instability need not worry: Russia’s defeat in, say, Crimea wouldn’t lead to the state’s implosion. It might lead to Putin’s implosion and the degradation of his fascist regime. But the end of fascism didn’t mean the end of Italy, and it need not mean the end of the Russian Federation.

Ending the war, therefore, means forcing Putin to end the war, something that is perfectly doable.

The other way to get Putin to negotiate in good faith is for Russian elites and masses to force him to do so. Palace coups and putsches may strike us as unlikely given the bravado with which Putin depicts the strength of his regime, but Russian and Soviet history is full of such power plays, and there is no reason to exclude such a possibility a priori. We know that elites are unhappy with the condition of the war and economy; they’ve said so publicly. Even Adolf Hitler seemed invulnerable until a group of German officers proved otherwise in 1944.

Putin probably knows that his comrades can’t all be trusted. Yevgeny Prigozhin proved that in mid-2023 when he almost succeeded in capturing Moscow, while the army and security services merely sat on the sidelines and watched—hardly evidence of resounding elite support of Putin. Hence his adoption of especially extreme security measures since the Prigozhin affair.

Putschists will probably drive a hard bargain, but they will be far more inclined to end the war as quickly and as honorably as possible, if only because they, in contrast to Putin, haven’t invested their careers and legacies in its prosecution.

The moral for the West is clear. It should abandon absurd notions of getting Putin to compromise and, instead, do everything possible to force him to the bargaining table. In other words, don’t threaten to supply Ukraine with all the weapons it needs if Putin refuses to bargain, but supply them—immediately.

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”