For Vladimir Putin, Russia’s position in the world is personal. Here’s what he really wants
US President Donald Trump said he thinks Vladimir Putin wants peace. Ukraine and its European allies don’t believe he does, while the Russian leader himself said he wants peace but then refused to sign up to it when presented with the option.
What Putin really wants, though, is much, much bigger.
The Russian president has made no secret of the fact that he believes Ukraine should not exist as an independent state and he has repeatedly said he wants NATO to shrink back to its Cold War-era size. But more than anything, he wants to see a new global order — and he wants Russia to play the starring role in it.
Putin and several of his most trusted allies emerged from the remnants of the KGB, the Soviet-era intelligence agency. They have never forgotten the humiliation of the fall of the Soviet Union and are not happy with the way the world has turned out since then.
Putin rose to power during the chaos of the 1990s, when the Russian economy collapsed and had to be rescued by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – another humiliation for the former superpower.
But from 2000, when Putin became president, steadily rising oil prices made Russia and many Russians richer than ever before. And Russia had a voice. It was invited into the G7 group of the world’s largest economies – renamed the G8 after it joined.
But this was not enough for the Russian leader, Kristine Berzina, a managing director at the German Marshal Fund of United States, told CNN.
“Putin was happy to throw all that away on behalf of his citizens because of higher geopolitical aims,” Berzina said. Russia was expelled from the G8, sanctioned by the West and ostracized on the global stage because of its aggression against Ukraine.
Berzina said it was never good enough for Russia to be “the eighth in the G7.”
“That doesn’t work within Russia’s understanding of its own exceptionalism. It is the largest country in the world, the richest in (natural) resources, so how can it simply be one of the players?” she said.
To understand what Putin wants from the current talks with the US, it’s key to remember that the two sides are talking because the United States made a policy U-turn under Trump — not because of a fundamental change in Russian thinking.
Trump wants the war in Ukraine to end as soon as possible, even if it means further territorial losses for Ukraine.
This means Putin has little to lose from talking.
Trump has claimed that “Russia holds all the cards” in the war with Ukraine, but the battlefield has been mostly stalled for the past two years.
While Russia is making some incremental gains, it is definitely not winning – though this could change if the US was to stop supplying arms and intelligence to Ukraine.
“Putin went into Ukraine thinking that it will be an easy, quick operation. Three years on, he controls 20% of Ukraine, but at terrible, terrible cost. I mean, essentially the Russians are losing. The thing though is that the Ukrainians are losing faster,” leading Russia analyst Mark Galeotti told CNN.
For Putin and the people around him, Trump’s push for a ceasefire simply presents an opportunity to secure quick wins while keeping an eye on the long-term goals, he said.
“Putin is an opportunist. He likes creating dynamic, chaotic situations, which throw up a whole variety of opportunities. And then he can then just pick which opportunity appeals to him, and he can change his mind,” Galeotti said.
