Next week marks the 25th anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s first election win as the president of Russia.In that span, the autocrat has outlasted five US presidents, four French presidents, three German chancellors, and eight British prime ministers.
Three years after he initiated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and despite ongoing Western sanctions aimed at hindering his regime’s war economy, Mr. Putin’s primary objective remains unchanged since February 2022: the capitulation of Ukraine.
The Russian leader’s other maximalist demands also persist: forbidding NATO membership for Ukraine (a stance the Trump administration acknowledged even before negotiations began between US and Russian officials), the demilitarization of Ukraine’s armed forces, and Russia’s complete annexation of four eastern Ukrainian provinces—a demand he introduced last June.
If anything, Mr. Putin seems more emboldened than ever during this war, as Russian forces advance deeper into eastern Ukraine, pushing the remaining Ukrainian brigades out of Kursk.
His latest request during a phone call this week with US President Donald Trump was for a cessation of all Western military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
This stubborn and unrealistic demand would effectively leave Ukraine to fend for itself against Russia’s invasion, which is precisely what the Kremlin intends to achieve.
The readouts from this week’s Trump-Putin conversation indicated a cooperative tone, with Mr. Putin bringing up issues beyond Ukraine, such as the Middle East, seemingly to reaffirm Russia’s role in global affairs.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 Osaka Summit in 2019.
Despite Mr. Trump’s initial confidence that a swift deal could be achieved to end the war, it is Mr. Putin, not the US president, who is steering the conversation.
During Tuesday’s call, Mr. Putin offered only a minor concession—agreeing to a 30-day pause in Russian aerial assaults on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
However, even this pledge has not been upheld by the Russian side.
Russia has continued its drone strikes since Tuesday’s call, targeting Ukrainian energy facilities and causing damage to nearby residential areas.
How has the Russian leader managed to control the discussion?
It helps to have a US president who has exerted pressure on Ukraine rather than on Russia to conclude the conflict.
Additionally, Mr. Trump has made it abundantly clear that he desires a quick end to the war.
Mr. Putin is in no such rush, and he is a patient negotiator.
He has maintained Russia’s war on Ukraine without pause for three years and has not altered his strategy.
A view of the destruction caused by Russian strikes on the front-line city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine.
In a piece for Foreign Policy this week, Laurie Bristow, a former UK ambassador to Russia, noted that Mr. Trump’s approach to negotiations with Mr. Putin serves as “an open invitation to Putin to present maximalist demands and wait for others to accommodate them.”
“Putin’s reaction to Trump’s suggested ceasefire illustrates that he believes he is negotiating from a position of strength. He is likely counting on Trump’s eagerness for a deal—and his impatience with both Ukraine and his NATO allies—working to Russia’s advantage,” Mr. Bristow explained.
Projecting strength is a tactic that Mr. Putin expertly employs.
Read More: Zelensky urges EU to maintain pressure on Russia ahead of new talks; Trump claims Ukraine truce bid ‘on track’ after Zelensky call; Latest Ukraine updates.
Just last week, he visited Russian commanders in the Kursk region, donning combat fatigues to portray the image of a wartime leader.
In contrast to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has frequently visited his troops on the frontlines throughout the conflict, Mr. Putin’s trip to the Kursk front marked a departure for him.
This indicated that the Russian leader is confident the outcome of the battle for Kursk is almost predetermined in Russia’s favor; otherwise, he would not have risked such a PR stunt.
Vladimir Putin during his visit to a command post in Kursk on 12 March (Picture: Kremlin Press Office).
The new demands from the Russian side, whether from Mr. Putin during his calls with Mr. Trump or through senior negotiators such as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, continue to land heavily.
Mr. Putin stated on Tuesday that Western sanctions should be lifted, and that Ukraine should conduct a presidential election—another absurd demand that seeks to propagate the Kremlin’s narrative that Volodymyr Zelensky is an illegitimate president since his five-year term expired last May. (Ukraine is currently under martial law due to the Russian invasion, and its constitution prohibits elections in such circumstances).
“This reflects the tactics employed by the Soviets and Russians in negotiations. They present demands as if they are indisputable and already accepted,” Witold Rodkiewicz, a Polish expert on Russian foreign policy, informed RTÉ News.
He believes that Europe’s political establishment largely misreads Mr. Putin and Russia’s approach to current talks.
“The Russians are not interested in negotiating peace terms; they are solely focused on discussing terms of surrender,” Mr. Rodkiewicz stated, representing the Centre for Eastern Studies, a think tank in Warsaw.
Russia continues to reject the idea of deploying European peacekeepers in Ukraine, although it is Mr. Lavrov who articulates this crucial demand instead of Mr. Putin.
A damaged building following a Ukrainian drone attack in Rostov, Russia on 22 March.
Furthermore, the Russian president perceives no separation between conducting negotiations and waging war concurrently.
Mr. Trump’s initial concept, which was supported by Ukraine during the Jeddah talks at the start of March, was the implementation of a complete 30-day ceasefire across all fronts before commencing negotiations.
This plan was practically dismissed by the Russians.
Instead, what Mr. Trump received was that minor concession from Mr. Putin regarding halting aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy sites (in exchange for Ukraine reciprocating).
Effectively, Russia’s president has already achieved a victory for his side because negotiations are ongoing while Russian forces progress on the battlefield.
The strategy of negotiating while waging war is a Russian tactic.
Mr. Putin also managed to direct the conversation with Mr. Trump towards Ukraine’s armed forces, rather than Russia’s, contending that a temporary ceasefire could allow Ukraine to mobilize additional soldiers and rearm.
Yet Russia will do precisely that, utilizing a limited 30-day ceasefire period to advance further into Ukraine.
Mr. Putin’s advantageous position is not solely a result of Mr. Trump’s influence.
The Russian leader is a formidable negotiator who can bluff and is willing to take risks.
All of Mr. Putin’s actions regarding Ukraine, beginning with the unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014, have been executed with the understanding that the West would not intervene directly.
What Mr. Rodkiewicz characterizes as Mr. Putin’s “escalation dominance” includes the fact that from the outset of the war, Russia’s president has known that Western leaders prioritize avoiding any escalation that could lead to nuclear threats.
This dynamic shifted in recent weeks when French President Emmanuel Macron openly labeled Russia a “threat” to Europe, expressing readiness to initiate a debate on extending France’s nuclear umbrella.
The Kremlin seeks to avoid a doomsday scenario as well but has not hesitated to intimidate the West with indirect nuclear threats as a means to compel the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK to scale back their support for Ukraine.
Throughout the conflict, he has issued threats regarding the potential for nuclear confrontation, should he perceive Russia as being threatened.
The initial instance was in his speech on 24 February 2022, announcing Russia’s so-called “special military operation”—the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has maintained its war on Ukraine without interruption for three years.
Again, in September 2022, he asserted that Russia would utilize all available means to safeguard itself, warning the West that, “this is not a bluff.”
Such statements have persisted throughout 2023, including ordering the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in May of that year.
And this pattern continued until last November when Mr. Putin declared that Russia had the right to strike countries whose weapons had been employed by Ukraine to target Russian territory.
This was in response to the Biden administration’s decision to permit Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia.
However, in practice, Mr. Putin opted for a response that was dramatic yet not aligned with his threats, instructing Russian forces to launch a hypersonic missile—the Oreshnik—capable of carrying a nuclear warhead at a target in eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Putin frames each incident of escalation as a defensive reaction by Russia to aggressive policies pursued by the West.
This rationale underpins one of his main motives for invading Ukraine: he perceives the West as continuously encroaching on Russia’s sphere of influence through the expansion of NATO membership towards nations bordering Russia, many of which were former Soviet republics.
“What Putin is doing now is essentially akin to the strategies employed by the Soviet Union, albeit executed in a more sophisticated manner, with a deeper understanding of Western vulnerabilities,” stated Igor Gretskiy, a Russian foreign policy expert at Estonia’s International Centre for Defence and Security.
According to him, the Russian leader is “extremely adept at promoting threats to the West,” much as the Soviet Union did.
“Putin consistently reminds the West that Russia is a nuclear power. He seldom issues direct threats, but his allies do, like [Dmitry] Medvedev,” explained Mr. Gretskiy, a critic of Putin’s regime who left his prominent academic role in St. Petersburg for Tallinn in January 2022.
As it stands, Mr. Putin is not facing adverse conditions from either Mr. Trump or his senior negotiators, allowing Russia to persist with its maximalist demands while introducing new ones that Moscow knows Kyiv will find unacceptable.
Nonetheless, while the Trump administration has yet to pressure Russia to withdraw some of its stringent demands, Europe still holds a powerful card: its sanctions against Putin’s regime, which the Russian leader seeks to have eased.
Europe can leverage sanctions as a bargaining chip to compel Russia towards genuine negotiations as opposed to the current situation, which involves demanding Ukraine’s dismemberment.
Failure to curb Mr. Putin’s demands in Ukraine will have significant repercussions for Europe.
After all, Russia’s policies since December 2021 have insisted on NATO withdrawing its multinational battalions from Eastern Europe.
This remains Mr. Putin’s greater aim: to reestablish Russian influence over Eastern Europe.
Just last week, he stated that he wishes to address the “root causes of the crisis.”
By “root causes,” he refers to NATO’s expansion eastwards during the late 1990s.
However, joining NATO was a choice made by the democratically elected governments of Eastern Europe, just as Ukraine aspires to do today.
Mr. Gretskiy believes that to succeed in negotiations with Mr. Putin, one must be prepared to call his bluff.
“The West has ample opportunities to excel in this diplomatic contest,” he asserted.
“It possesses substantial military-industrial potential. The primary deficit the West faces is a lack of political will.”
