President Vladimir Putin has signaled Russia’s disinterest in new peace negotiations with Ukraine. Instead, he is recharacterizing his war on Ukraine as an imperial restoration project. While he has always viewed Ukraine as a Russian limb, Putin’s rhetoric reflects his need to consolidate Russians amid a failing war effort.
Putin’s latest comments came in an interview with Kremlin propagandist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. While Putin admitted that escalating Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure were causing fuel shortages, he insisted that these problems were limited. More air defense systems were being rapidly produced to deal with this challenge, Putin said.
This is a striking admission, one that underlines the serious challenge Ukraine’s drone and missile campaign is causing Russia. More than four years after it began (and was supposed to have been won), Putin has implicitly had to admit that his “special military operation” isn’t going to plan. But the scale of Ukrainian attacks, occurring both in Moscow and Putin’s home city of St. Petersburg, is now undeniable. Putin’s only remaining option is to attempt to limit the public relations fallout.
Indeed, Putin presented the heavy international attention over Ukraine’s long-range strikes as “active propaganda” designed “to generate uncertainty in our strength, and even better, to bring about a split in Russian society…” This is a thinly veiled reference to active measures, a tactic Putin previously mastered as a KGB officer. Active measures center on information messaging, often employing false or misrepresented information, to undermine an adversary. But Putin only shows his fear with this excuse. The reality is that Ukraine has seized the initiative in this war by penetrating Russian air defense nets and striking hard at Russian industry. As a result of Ukrainian strikes on energy supplies in the occupied Crimean Peninsula, for example, Russia may have to evacuate its civilian population from that territory. Regardless, there is no way Putin would reference “a split in Russian society” if he did not fear such a split occurring.
Of course, Putin’s leadership narrative is incompatible with any sign of hesitation. In turn, having admitted Ukraine’s drone success, Putin then rejected a proposal for Russia and Ukraine to suspend long-range strikes against each other (it is unclear whether this proposal came from Kyiv or Washington). As he put it, “In the face of a catastrophic shortage of personnel, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, apparently, believe that this could be a salvation for them. But saving the Kyiv regime is not part of our plans.” According to Putin, this limited ceasefire would only “distract our attention and our forces from solving the main task — the final liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya.”
It’s not clear whether he is deluding himself or being deceived by his generals, but this is very imaginative stuff from Putin.
Ukraine’s military personnel shortage, while serious, is not catastrophic. New recruitment/military contract reforms should improve matters. But while Putin speaks of an approaching “final liberation,” Russian forces continue to undertake poorly coordinated assaults, continue to lack adequate air support, and remain highly vulnerable to Ukrainian drone units. Hence why the front lines are effectively static. And hence why Putin wants to spur Russian dreams of distant history to consolidate support for his war.
Novorossiya, after all, refers to areas of southern Ukraine (on both sides of the country’s bisecting Dnieper River) that Catherine the Great subordinated under the Russian empire in the 18th century. In an actual use of active propaganda, Putin seeks to galvanize nationalist pride over Russian imperial history to establish a moral veil for his unjustified present-day claims over Ukraine (Putin does the same thing toward the Baltic States). Referencing Novorossiya, Putin also makes clear that his ambitions are not limited to the southeastern Donbas region but extend to all Black Sea-facing Ukrainian territory. Here we see Putin’s sustained objective of either controlling Ukraine directly or turning it into a rump state.
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His false protestations to President Donald Trump notwithstanding, Putin is plainly uninterested in making concessions for peace. He wants Ukraine and the West to believe that he’ll continue to wage war until they yield. Putin will certainly engage in new provocations in an attempt to intimidate the West as he carries forward this effort.
Alternatively, recognizing the Russian leader’s quiet admission that Ukraine is causing him trouble, the West — including the Trump administration — should boost support for Kyiv. And ensure credible deterrence against Russian escalation.