Mykola Bielieskov writes:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered an evasive initial response to US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal, backing the idea in principle while listing a series of additional demands that make any meaningful progress unlikely. Officials in Kyiv will be hoping Putin’s reluctance to embrace the US-led ceasefire initiative will help convince their American colleagues that the Kremlin dictator is not genuinely interested in ending the war.

Many in Ukraine have been dismayed by recent US suggestions that Russia is ready for serious peace talks, and have pointed to the Kremlin’s consistently hardline negotiating position as proof of Putin’s determination to fight on. They argue that the current debate over possible compromises and territorial concessions reflects a fundamentally flawed understanding of the maximalist motives behind Russia’s invasion.

Ukrainians feel they have a far more realistic view of Russia’s true intentions. They are convinced Putin will never be satisfied with limited territorial gains because he is not actually fighting for land in Ukraine. Instead, he is waging a war against the very existence of a separate Ukrainian state and nation. This chilling objective undermines the entire concept of a compromise peace. Put simply, there can be no meaningful middle ground between Russian genocide and Ukrainian national survival.

The Trump White House is not the first to misjudge the extent of Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine. On multiple occasions, the preceding Biden administration declared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “strategic failure” while pointing to the extremely high cost paid by the Kremlin in terms of military casualties and economic damage. This practical assessment of the invasion assumes that Putin is guided and constrained by the same logic as his Western contemporaries. In reality, however, he is not.

While democratic leaders must worry about approval ratings and economic indicators, Putin has removed virtually all possible sources of domestic opposition and is free to focus on securing his place in Russian history. Since the early years of his reign, he has made no secret of the fact that he views the collapse of the USSR as a tragedy, and regards the post-Cold War world order as an injustice. Crucially, Ukraine has come to embody both of these grievances. Putin firmly believes he cannot hope to achieve his historic mission of reversing the verdict of 1991 and reviving the Russian Empire without first extinguishing Ukrainian independence. [Continue reading…]