Russia’s Growing Resolve to Fight On in Ukraine

During the Cold War, few senior Soviet officials understood the dynamics of Soviet relations with the West as well as Valentin Falin. A diplomat and adviser to several Soviet leaders, Falin was instrumental in improving relations between the Soviets and West Germany in the early 1970s. It was part of the détente that culminated in the Helsinki Accords, the breakthrough agreement that finally, 30 years after the end of World War II, stabilized relations between the Western alliance and the Soviet bloc. Looking back on his experiences, Falin wrote that “confrontation is not fate, but choice.” As he saw it, in the global face-off between superpowers, confrontation happened because one or both sides chose to fight; détente happened because they chose not to fight. In every case, he felt, what happened resulted from an absolutely conscious decision on the part of the respective leaders.

Falin’s insight may be particularly useful for grasping Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approach to the war in Ukraine—and why U.S. President Donald Trump’s yearlong effort to end it has continually fallen short. According to Trump, Russia should be happy to agree to a peace deal; it is just a matter of coming up with the right terms. Indeed, the Trump administration has proceeded from the same false (but understandable) assumption as its predecessor that Putin acts rationally. In the winter of 2021–22, U.S. President Joe Biden thought he could persuade the Russian leader not to launch the “special operation” because its motives made no sense and achieving its goals would be too costly in human and economic resources. By the same logic, Trump has assumed that the “special operation” could be ended by lavishing Putin with territorial concessions and new business deals with the United States, which should be particularly attractive against the backdrop of Russia’s eroding economy.

The Trump administration thus spent 2025 offering a series of apparently inviting options for Moscow, including ceding unconquered lands to Russia, prohibiting Ukraine’s entry to NATO, and placing restrictions on Ukrainian forces. The president also courted Putin with a grand summit meeting in Alaska and numerous phone calls, all the while assuring the world that a deal was about to be reached—on his first day in office, or by Thanksgiving, or by Christmas. Trump even agreed with the Kremlin’s implausible insistence that substantive negotiations, and even new presidential elections in Ukraine, can take place while fighting rages on.

But none of these offers has brought the end of the war any closer. Putin, who has begun appearing in public in military uniform surrounded by generals, no longer hides his desire to “return” the Donbas to Russia by military rather than diplomatic means. The past year has made it clear that he has decided to continue fighting, regardless of the economic and human cost. And he has determined that he can do so while keeping Trump’s United States as a geopolitical partner. This might be called the new “Putin doctrine.” Now that the United States has embarked on its own special operation, to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, the second part of this doctrine may not be so successful: Moscow clearly wants to keep Caracas in its sphere of influence, but under the new circumstances, it can’t. All Moscow could respond with was a barrage of statements from the Foreign Ministry in defense of Maduro’s Venezuela and ironic remarks by Putin’s ally, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: now the United States has nothing to reproach Russia for—the Venezuelan operation is just as much an exercise of “might makes right” as the Ukrainian one.

But Trump’s special operation lasted all of a few hours, while Putin’s has been going on for almost four years and has become a way of life for his political system. And every indication now suggests that Putin believes he has the time and resources to continue “returning” the Donbas and what the Kremlin calls Novorossiya—its propaganda term for the territories of southeastern Ukraine—for months to come. To anyone trying to understand what it will take to bring Russia to a deal, it will be crucial to recognize Putin’s choice.

FIGHT CLUB

For Russia, the story of 2025 was convergence with the United States on broader geopolitical strategy, not on ending the war. Putin was successful in imitating negotiations and turning their meaning upside down: all the major events of the year—the meeting in Anchorage, the telephone conversations with Trump, U.S. Special Envoy Steven Witkoff’s political tourism—have looked like negotiations in reverse. First come the red carpets and big words, not the discussions of anything meaningful. This approach allowed the Kremlin to maintain the intensity of hostilities while keeping Trump as a partner.

In Ukraine, Putin says he is not fighting for territory, he is defending Russian people. But one of the key phrases in the Kremlin’s wartime propaganda is “liberation of territories.” By now, it is clear that Putin measures his power both in spheres of influence and in territories under his control: if soft power does not achieve the desired results, then military force comes into play. The Putin doctrine has resurrected the old thinking of the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, according to which the power of states was primarily measured in terms of territory and lethal weapons systems. But it looks as if Putin is not the only one.

A version of this type of thinking also forms the basis of Trump’s so-called peace plan for Ukraine, with its continually changing number of points. It is also the thinking behind the notion, articulated in the longer, classified version of Trump’s new National Security Strategy, to supplant the Europe- and democracy-oriented G-7 with a so-called Core 5 group of powerful countries—China, India, Japan, and Russia, alongside the United States. (In Trump’s world, both political influence and wealth are sources of power, hence the inclusion of Japan in this group.) But instead of appeasing Putin—or as the NSS puts it, reestablishing “strategic stability with Russia”—such recognition of the Russian Federation merely encourages him to continue his military actions.

Of course, the U.S. operation in Venezuela somewhat complicates the new Putin doctrine. The main new question that arises is: Will Trump remain a friend, even if only a situational one? Will it still be possible for Putin to manipulate him in 2026 in the same way as he did in 2025, through Witkoff and his counterpart, Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s special presidential envoy on foreign investment and economic cooperation? The ease with which Maduro was captured demonstrated that the U.S. president can out-Putin the Russian leader himself in asserting control over his sphere of influence (although Maduro’s capture is hardly proof that the Trump administration will be equally successful in the political remodeling of Venezuela).

But there is another issue: the Putin doctrine is also a shadow, albeit a pale one, of the late Soviet-era foreign policy doctrine in which a superpower must exercise interests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Venezuela was, in this sense, an area of interest for the Kremlin. And suddenly, another superpower has laid its hands on it. This is a defeat for Putin. It does not mean that Russia will end the pseudo-negotiations over the Ukraine war or reject the United States as its mediator. But it has shown Putin another side of Trump—not a friend but an enemy. Trump further emphasized this possibility by seizing a Russian tanker for violating U.S. sanctions. Recognizing a changed dynamic could also reinforce Putin’s desire to continue the war rather than end it on Trump’s terms, however favorable they may be to Russia.

MONEY IS NO OBJECT

And here arises a question that Western analysts have been asking for four years now: At what point will the economic cost of the war in Ukraine become so great that it finally forces the Kremlin to end it? On paper and in daily life in Russia, the signs of growing economic strain are not hard to find. Both at the federal and regional levels, the country’s budgets are experiencing an acute shortage of revenue. As a result, the authorities have been forcing ordinary people and businesses to pay for the war.

Over the past year, Russia’s value-added tax rate has been increased to 22 percent, the purchase of imported cars is now subject to tens of thousands of dollars in additional fees (the state calls these payments “recycling,” or disposal fees), and the government has introduced a so-called technology fee on smartphones, computers, and everything that has an electronic base. At the same time, the state has cut back social spending, as defense and military outlays swallow up an ever-greater share of public expenditure. Meanwhile, utility bills are rising and in some cases doubling. At grocery stores, the prices of some goods, including frozen fish, beef, and rye bread, have risen by 20 percent or more; car sales have plummeted. Many enterprises, including the AvtoVAZ car factory, have switched to a four-day workweek. Small and medium-sized businesses are dreading tax increases and tighter tax controls.

It should be underscored that, as before, these indicators may matter little to Putin: in his view, everything is more or less normal or fixable. Even Russia’s demographic crisis—a rapid population decline driven by a combination of long-term trends, pervasive uncertainty in society that has put downward pressure on the birth rate, and emigration and military losses—is not a significant problem. Nonetheless, the Kremlin clearly understands that the economy is not doing very well. And it has felt it necessary to invest heavily in those who participate in the war and their families. This includes not only large payments for joining the armed forces but also a variety of new rewards for veterans and members of their families, including free admission to universities and other preferential treatments.

By now, the relentless militarization of the economy has distorted the foundations of the Russian economy. Throughout 2025, industrial production and GDP stagnated. And this stagnation—as an average indicator for the entire economy—has been made possible only by the continued growth of defense and military sectors, such as the production of ready-made metal products, electronics, and optics. Although the stimulus effect of wartime spending is fading, inflation remains consistently high. Moreover, many Russian economists have warned that increasing the value-added tax rate can have only a short-term effect on revenue: high taxes depress economic activity and reduce consumer spending power, pushing more Russians into the shadow economy.

Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, can insist as much as they like that the country is not isolated from the world and is in excellent contact with the “global majority.” But the economic data is unambiguous. In 2021, the last year before the war began, foreign direct investment in Russia was worth more than $40 billion; three years later, it had shrunk to $3 billion—a collapse of more than 90 percent. Of course, these stark trends as well as the total degradation of economic relations with Europe would seem to make the deals that Trump has offered Russia in exchange for a cease-fire all the more valuable. But whether the prospect of a deal with Trump remains for Putin in 2026 if he insists on continuing to achieve his goals by military means is a big question.

HUMAN FUEL

Russian authorities are no longer shy about saying that they need money specifically for the war. As Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, paraphrasing Tsar Alexander III, recently put it, “Russia’s allies are its army, its navy, and its stable finances.” In other words, “stable finances” are necessary to fund the military. And the Kremlin will need even more money if and when huge masses of people return from the front: dealing with Russia’s now vast population of war veterans will involve social support, psychological assistance, medical treatment, and job creation. The scale of the problem is enormous, not to mention the fact that ordinary Russians, many of whom have become accustomed to seeing “our boys” as heroes, are also afraid of them. For civilians, it is hard to understand the psychological state of those returning, especially those who have inflated expectations of peacetime, of the Russian state and society, and of their own status, because they fought for their homeland.

Previously, oil could take care of Russia’s economic problems and provided income for the state; now, people have become the new oil. The Kremlin assumes that since Russians have adapted to war, they will also adapt to stagnation and tighten their belts so that the country can achieve victory. This has become a very unfavorable version of the social contract that has supported the Putin regime for all these years. Before the war, it was simply this: support the authorities without interfering in politics and you will have at least relative economic prosperity. Now, the contract requires total support for the authorities, and even accepting the erosion of your financial security, in exchange for the authorities simply recognizing you as a good patriot: the Russian population is expected to embrace both the continuation of war and prolonged economic stagnation.

Still, Russians seem to be tolerating it. Already, the regime has begun preparing them, including by guiding public opinion. In a recent poll, the pro-Kremlin pollster VCIOM asked: “Do you agree with the statement: ‘I feel responsible for my country and am ready to save money and limit my needs for the sake of its defense’?” Of course, for ordinary law-abiding Russians, even those who are largely indifferent to things beyond their daily lives, embracing the idea of responsibility for one’s country is the socially acceptable behavior. About 69 percent of respondents to the survey answered yes.

Russians have adapted to restrictions, repression, and censorship.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has tried to tighten information and communication flows even further. In recent months, it has imposed new restrictions on WhatsApp, Telegram, and VPNs and aggressively pushed Russians to switch to the state-run messenger app Max, modeled on China’s WeChat. These kinds of steps are a good barometer of the Kremlin’s shift from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. Roskomnadzor, the body that regulates the digital and media sphere, has sometimes seemed more menacing than the security forces. Many people are giving in and starting to use Max; nonetheless, a common strategy is to install the state-controlled app to appease the government while continuing to use the familiar messengers in their daily life. (According to data from the independent polling agency the Levada Center, in August 2025, 70 percent of Russian respondents used WhatsApp and 62 percent used Telegram, whereas the Max messenger app was used by five percent.)

For now, the state seems to believe it is unbounded in how far it can apply pressure. Throughout the war, Russians have responded to all the accumulating restrictions, repression, and censorship simply by adapting. Still, there have been pockets of resistance. In Vladivostok this fall, people protested in the streets against the scrap tax on imported cars. At the end of 2025, in St. Petersburg and other cities, a wave of street musicians performed antigovernment and antiwar songs, attracting large audiences. The authorities responded by arresting the musicians. And in Tomsk, in Siberia, children and their parents have taken to the streets to protest the blocking of the Roblox computer game platform. Who would have thought that this would be a reason for open expression of discontent? If you are not politicized, politics still comes to you. Some Russians are beginning to understand this.

CHOOSING CHAOS

The Kremlin is building an imaginary empire—if not very successfully, given that it is clear that Putin’s Russia lacks the soft power to consider the South Caucasus and Central Asia as its own. But Russia is the local hegemon, and Putin knows he must compete with Trump for influence in the five Central Asian countries. Thus, as soon as the five Central Asian presidents visited Washington, Putin hosted a luxurious reception in Moscow for Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and then took the time to fly to Kyrgyzstan. But Putin is fine with this competition—it does not contradict the idea of Trump’s Core 5. So far, these are purely speculative schemes that reflect not the construction of a new world order but political confusion amid the collapse of the existing one. The impulse for this erosion has been set primarily by the conflict in Ukraine.

In this context, it is important to understand the internal Russian sources of global problems. Putin’s Russia exports not only energy resources but also disorder. There is a “root cause” for this, to use Putin’s own words: the internal structure of the Putin regime. Until the country becomes if not democratic then at least rationally organized, it will remain a chaos agent on the international stage. That is why, even if a peace deal is reached in Ukraine, the West will not be able to make Putin’s Russia go away. The period after the peace agreement—if and when it happens—will be no less difficult than the conflict itself: the confrontation will simply continue in a hybrid and cold form.

Regardless of what happens, the Kremlin will not stop fighting at home. By continuing political persecution and repression within the country and searching for enemies among dissidents, the regime will compensate for the stark crisis it will face with the economy, the day-to-day management of the country, and the inevitable social and economic shocks that will result from transitioning the hundreds of thousands of people returning from the trenches to peaceful civilian life.

Russia exports chaos, but so does Trump’s United States, and with no less vigor. A new round in the struggle for spheres of influence has begun, with all the major parties renouncing Eurocentric policies at the same time. The difference from the classic Cold War is that no new rules have yet been set that would determine the balance of power and interests. In addition, a player more powerful than Putin’s Russia—Xi Jinping’s China—now has a special role to play. In this new game, the personal factor, the figures of Trump, Putin, and Xi, has become dominant. The world order cannot restrain them.

To return to the Soviet diplomat Falin: confrontation is not a fate, but a choice. Peace is also a choice. There are still not enough incentives and other factors promoting peace and stability for the current strongmen to establish rules for coexistence—with one another and with the whole world. But it is also as yet unclear what would be required for them to choose differently.

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