Putin’s Dilemma

George Friedman

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In analyzing the process by which the Russia-Ukraine war will end, the most critical factor, as I have argued before, is that by not defeating Ukraine, Russia already has lost the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary interest was in creating and controlling a buffer between Russia and Poland on the eastern edge of NATO. 

Beyond that, he wanted to recover Russia’s status as a great power, which it had held from the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union. When it lost this status, it lost its dominion over Eastern Europe and the eastern half of Germany. It also lost unchallenged command of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, 

ceased to be more powerful than China and surrendered much of its influence in the Middle East. Its power in the Third World withered as well, losing its place to China – now the only true rival of the United States.

For Russia, the loss of military significance was accompanied by an inability to become a major economic power. Under the czars and the communists, Russia had always been an economic weakling. Although it had vast and valuable lands, as well as a reasonably educated population, Russia has continued to be what can most kindly be called an underperforming economy.

Russia’s decline started and ended well before Putin became president, of course. His rise to power depended on the private sector – the oligarchs who, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, consolidated a substantial portion of the economy and integrated into the global economic system. The oligarchs were the significant force that made Putin president, and the Russian economy had by then developed nicely, considering where it had started.

Putin held a traditional Russian view on high national priority: securing Russia from invasion and intrusion from the outside. From Putin’s point of view, the only way for the country to emerge economically was to be secure from attack. For Putin, that meant recovering as much of the buffer zone as he could from the losses Russia suffered in the 1990s, and thus securing Russia’s western border.