Vladimir Putin’s ultimate goal in Ukraine is to reshape world order
The Russian leader is less interested in squabbling over territory than showing the US and NATO who is the boss.
About 48 hours after President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 a triumphant article, “The Advance of Russia and the New World”, was accidentally published on the website of a state news agency in Moscow.
“A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has opened a new era,” it read. “Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated but it will be reorganised, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world.”
The article had been prepared in advance by the Kremlin-controlled RIA Novosti website to celebrate what Putin believed would be Russia’s swift capture of Kyiv.
When it became clear that Ukraine would resist more fiercely than Moscow had expected, the decision was taken to drop the article. But it was published in error and, until editors realised their mistake a minute later, it was seen by the world.
The article remains a blueprint for Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine. Although the war is widely seen in the West as primarily a battle for territory, Moscow’s ultimate aim is to subjugate Ukraine and reshape the global order.
The Kremlin has said the conflict can only end after Ukraine has become a “neutral” country and the “root causes” of the war have been eliminated. However, pro-Putin politicians have been more explicit. “Russia is not fighting for territory,” Sergei Mironov, the hawkish leader of the Just Russia party, said last month.
“[Ukraine] should not exist as an independent state.”
Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who quit in protest after Putin sent tanks into Ukraine, said that Moscow’s goal was the “establishment of full political and military control” over Ukraine. “[Putin wants] to weaken Ukraine to the point where it loses its independence and demonstrate to the world the inability of NATO and the United States in particular to resist his ambitions.”
Putin has demanded that Ukraine surrender four regions, including two big cities the Kremlin does not control (Zaporizhzhia and Kherson) as well as Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Moscow in 2014. Yet analysts say Putin would be willing to drop some of these demands if he can weaken Ukraine by other methods.
“Putin’s goals are really not only about control over territory,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre think tank in Berlin, said. “There is no necessity to go after all of the four regions that he claims are Russian, if he can get a US withdrawal from the conflict, as well as [western] security guarantees that are so fluffy that they will leave Ukraine unprotected.”
Although Putin will keep open the option of a new invasion, the Kremlin would also be satisfied with the implosion of Ukrainian society as scores are settled after the end of the war and rifts beneficial to Russia open up amid political tensions, Gabuev said.
“There might be a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine who says, ‘Enough is enough, we realise that the Europeans will not die for us and that we are just a tool for them to undermine Russia and we should just mend fences with the Russians’, and so on. That’s an aspirational scenario [for Putin], but it’s not entirely out of reach.”
Any peace talks between Putin and Trump on Ukraine could also result in Russia repeating its initial demands on NATO expansion. In December 2021, Moscow issued an ultimatum demanding that NATO halt its acceptance of new members in eastern Europe.
Russia also called for NATO to roll back military deployments from countries that joined the western military alliance after 1997, such as Poland and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Kremlin said last year that western countries must also scrap all sanctions against Moscow as a condition for peace in Ukraine.
Putin is likely to go into talks with Trump with confidence. His last direct participation in international negotiations over Ukraine came in Minsk in 2015 during talks with President Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, President Hollande of France and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.
“Putin was arrogantly late and full of himself,” Pavel Slunkin, a former Belarusian diplomat who helped organise the talks, wrote on X. “It was a hard marathon for everyone. But Putin had his own ‘doping’ from the host country. He was the only one who had a room with a bed right in the palace. Several times he left the table looking tired and came back fresh after some time.”
Although Trump has already said that the US will not support Ukraine’s membership of NATO, there would be nothing to stop his successor from reversing that decision. Wary of future US policy changes, Moscow is set to demand that NATO formally rules out any future invitation for Kyiv.
The widening rift between the US and Europe on Ukraine has sparked jubilation and mockery in Moscow. “Europe is mad with jealousy and rage,” said Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now a senior security official. “Europe’s time is over.”
“We wanted to saw the western world into pieces,” said Yevgeny Popov, a Russian television presenter who is also an MP with Putin’s party. “But [Trump] decided to saw through it himself.”
The Times
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