US has underestimated the Russian president’s fixation on conquering his neighbour, meaning the proposed deal is unlikely to satiate his desire
Marc Bennetts
August 12, 2025
The Times
Ever since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there have been two phrases that have been mainstays of President Zelensky’s daily addresses to the nation: “victory” and “a just and lasting peace”.
Before President Putin and President Trump’s summit in Alaska, the former appears to have slipped beyond Ukraine’s grasp, while the latter, if the Russian leader gets his way, has little chance of becoming a reality.
Even if Zelensky agrees to Putin’s expected demands to cede land, something that is prohibited by Ukraine’s constitution, there are no indications that the Russian leader will be satisfied with limited territorial gains.
Putin has not waged war for over three years to capture only eastern Ukraine’s coal mines and its “oceanfront property”, as Trump described Russian-occupied areas along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. While the Kremlin’s propaganda machine would be able to spin such relatively modest gains as a glorious victory to Russia’s people, Putin would not be able to fool himself.
As the former KGB officer and his allies in Moscow have made clear on multiple occasions, Russia is not just fighting for land; it is seeking to eliminate Ukraine as an independent state. “Ukraine is not even a country,” Putin is reported to have told George W Bush, the then US president, in 2008. His unchanging goal is to subjugate Kyiv, however long it takes and by whatever means necessary.
Despite Russia’s sagging economy, Putin has little incentive to make peace while his troops continue to advance in the Donetsk region, the epicentre of the war. On Monday Russia’s forces broke through Ukraine’s defences near Dobropillia, a besieged town, advancing six miles and taking control of a key road, according to Ukrainian reports. “So far, there is no indication whatsoever that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a post-war situation,” Zelensky said on Monday. “On the contrary, they are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations.”
Even after months of talks, it is unclear whether Trump and his administration have fully grasped just how fixated Putin is on Ukraine. The Russian leader’s military aggression did not begin in 2022, when the world was shocked by images of Russian missiles crashing into European cities, but in 2014, when protesters in Kyiv toppled the country’s pro-Moscow leader, Viktor Yanukovych.
In response, Putin annexed Crimea and launched a covert military operation in eastern Ukraine. “[Putin] is a cunning person. He tells the whole world there are no [Russian] troops there. But then he says to us ‘come on, come on’,” a Russian soldier named Dorji Batomunkuyev told the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 2015 after suffering serious injuries in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
The following years were a steady slide towards all-out war that was accompanied by a mounting campaign of political repression at home and propaganda that allowed Putin to leave the day-to-day running of Russia to his underlings while he focused almost exclusively on foreign policy.
In 2021 Putin accused the West of transforming Ukraine into an “anti-Russia” project to be used as a springboard for future attacks on Moscow, even though Nato had refused to provide Kyiv with a clear road map for membership.
A year later, on the eve of the war, Putin lectured Russians for hours on what he said was the fiction of Ukrainian statehood and the “madness” that had allowed it to become independent from Moscow in 1991, when Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly to break away from the Soviet Union. “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin said in June. Last month, he corrected Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, when he warned that Russia could “seize” more land in Ukraine. “Return — it’s ours,” Putin told him.
For the Russian leader, the summit in Alaska is an essentially risk-free venture where all the possible outcomes are beneficial to Moscow. If Trump agrees to his demands for land, without offering anything substantial in return, and Kyiv refuses to sign up, the US leader is likely to turn his fury at being denied another peace deal on Zelensky.
If Trump decides that a deal is unrealistic, as he admitted on Monday was possible, then Putin will be able to leave for Moscow having at least deflected his threats of new sanctions and “severe” tariffs on its remaining trade partners, such as China and India.
Even if a ceasefire is agreed on, Putin will almost certainly use the time to rebuild his battered army and revive Russia’s sagging economy before striking again, especially if Ukraine does not receive ironclad western security guarantees in return for whatever concessions it may be forced to make.
Amid the lack of clarity over the summit, one thing is certain: Putin would prefer Trump to forget all about Ukraine. Analysts have suggested that the Russian leader’s main interest in good relations with Trump is because he hopes that Moscow and Washington can agree to carve out exclusive spheres of influence that would allow the Kremlin a free hand in what it sees as its backyard. Talking about Ukraine in Alaska costs Putin nothing, especially if he can confuse Trump with the details of the conflict.
Last year, during an interview with Tucker Carlson — Putin’s first with western media since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion — the Kremlin leader ignored the chance to present himself as a man of reason, launching instead into a long lecture about what he sees as the historical
roots of the conflict. “I beg your pardon, can you tell us what period … I am losing track of where in history we are,” a baffled Carlson asked at one stage. Putin paused briefly: “It was in the 13th century,” he replied, before continuing anew. Such are the depths of the Russian leader’s obsession.
Marc Bennetts has been covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine, for The Times and Sunday Times since 2015. He has reported from all across Russia, from Chechnya to deepest Siberia. He has also reported from Iran and North Korea. Marc is the author of two books: I’m Going to Ruin Their Lives, about Putin’s crackdown on the opposition, and Football Dynamo, about Russian football culture. He is now writing a thriller, set during the polar night in Russia’s far north.