Ever since things in Ukraine first went sideways for Vladimir Putin back in the spring of 2022, the Russian president and his officials have said that, not only were they fighting Nazis and responding to NATO aggression, but that the stakes of the conflict were so high that Russia may cease to exist should they fail. This claim has always been puzzling, because it seems so absurd. And yet such a belief would help explain the extent to which the Kremlin is now ramping up attacks on Ukraine, expanding its campaign of hybrid warfare in Europe and — by announcing massive budget transfers from nondefense to military spending — risking discontent at home.
Putin touched on the idea yet again earlier this month in his annual address to the Valdai Club conference of foreign policy and Russia analysts. Harping on a 2022 comment from then-NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith that the U.S. sought Russia’s “strategic defeat,” Putin said this put his nation’s “very right to exist” in question. What Smith intended must be seen in the context of the ultimatums Putin sent to the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization before the war, in the form of two draft treaty proposals.
These described his subsequent war aims and went far beyond requiring Ukraine’s neutrality. They also demanded the removal of all alliance troops, weapons and bases from Central and Eastern Europe and all U.S. nuclear weapons from any foreign base, significantly reducing the credibility of the nuclear umbrella Washington could offer its allies. So, strategic defeat meant putting an end to Putin’s project to reimpose control over Moscow’s so-called historical zone of interest by stopping his forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Allow him to take Ukraine and the only question would be: Where next? It’s still a valid concern, but use of the term “strategic defeat” has proved a gift that never stops giving to Putin’s victimhood narrative. At least, we did not forget this.” But how would losing in Ukraine pose a threat to Russia’s existence?
Even in the unlikely event that Kyiv should win the war by pushing Russia’s troops all the way back to their internationally recognized borders — a true and humiliating defeat for Putin — Russia would not disappear. It would just continue to exist in the form it had until 2013. And if the front lines were frozen where they are today, Russia would have gained about 20% of Ukrainian territory.
Whatever they may say, Russia’s leaders know their opponents bear no resemblance to the invading armies of Nazi Germany (1941), Napoleonic France (1812) or the Polish-Lithuanian forces that occupied the capital in 1610. Nobody is marching on Moscow. Indeed, the Washington has effectively moved to the sidelines.
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