Putin Has a New Ukraine Problem: His Own Soldiers Might Not Want Peace

The New Ukraine War Problem: Peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have resumed for the first time in over three years.

Still, a resolution seems distant, not the least because of the partly self-inflicted political constraints Putin’s regime must now weather.

Putin’s Next Ukraine Challenge: His Own Soldiers?

Speaking to The New York Times, eleven Russian soldiers—including several fighting on the front lines—expressed exhaustion and disillusionment with both the war and the society that sent them to fight it. However, many still claimed a cease-fire that respected the current front lines would betray their contributions to the war.

Sergei, a conscript in Donetsk, said he felt his late comrades would have “died in vain” if Russia did not succeed in taking all of eastern Ukraine. The initially fast-paced invasion soon unravelled into a gutting war of attrition, with both Russian and Ukrainian authorities painting their respective sides in existential tones. Moscow, it claims, is fighting against the expansionist West. 

The Kremlin’s early annexation of four regions of Eastern Ukraine—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—boxed it into big goals. Russian troops have consolidated control over only one of these territories (Luhansk). Regardless, the war has been framed to the Home Front as a morally just war of liberation.

The Kremlin is surely afraid of being seen as weak by the nationalist forces it empowered to support the 2022 invasion.

Soldiers expressed their dissatisfaction not only with Ukraine but also with the Russian elites profiting from the conflict.  This frustration among the troops, overwhelmingly young, working-class men, is hardly historically unusual.

As recently as the 1980s, Soviet troops returning from the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan felt unappreciated and traumatized, contributing to the impending dissolution of the Soviet project. Then, back in 2023, the brief Wagner Group mutiny was an example of how unstable the ongoing war effort could become in a short space of time.

While Putin’s grip on power is unlikely to vanish anytime soon, almost half of Russians have told pollsters that they would not back a peace deal that failed to meet the war’s initial public purpose: the de facto removal of Ukraine’s government and prevention of its NATO membership.

The testimonies of the soldiers that recently spoke with the Times reveal a worrying paradox: those keenest to end the fighting are those most supportive of the war’s goals.

One erstwhile paramilitary fighter hinted at the fact that the Kremlin could not simply ignore the wishes of these soldiers as “a million angry killers is a pretty serious problem” for the state.

About the Author:

Georgia Gilholy is a journalist based in the United Kingdom who has been published in Newsweek, The Times of Israel, and the Spectator. Gilholy writes about international politics, culture, and education.