Die Grenzen von Putins Balanceakt: Was der Kreml um den Sieg in der Ukraine verfolgt

[SS from the essay Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America; and Maria Lipman, Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute of European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University]

Four months later, Putin dispatched tens of thousands of Russian troops to Georgia, seizing a fifth of that country’s territory. In 2014, Russia invaded the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, and annexed Crimea. The following year, the Russian military demonstrated its expeditionary capabilities in Syria. And in 2022, Putin launched a full-scale war on Ukraine, with the intent of redrawing the map of Europe and asserting Russia’s global heft.

Yet overreach abroad has landed Putin in a dilemma. Russia’s foreign policy is increasingly marked by failure. The war in Ukraine has stalemated. Contrary to Putin’s hopes, U.S. President Donald Trump’s election in 2024 did not compel the West to abandon Kyiv. In the Middle East, Israel has assailed Russia’s clients and partners. It might be tempting to view these developments as harbingers of Russia’s eventual retreat from Ukraine, but they are not. Putin can afford to lose influence in the Middle East, which is not an existential theater for him, but he will not reverse course in Ukraine, where he recognizes no dilemma. If pushed, he would likely sacrifice Russia’s equilibrium to a mass mobilization and to harshly coercive measures. Russia’s rise to greatness may be Sisyphean for Putin, but he will go to extreme lengths to avoid defeat. In Ukraine, Putin will risk everything.

For him, equilibrium—the complacency he has inculcated in the Russian population—is in danger of becoming a faded luxury. The grim necessity is the war.