Donald Trump’s recent election victory is fueling international speculation about a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine. For now, much of the debate remains focused on what concessions Ukraine might make to secure a negotiated peace. But the real question is whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is even interested in ending his invasion. The evidence suggests that he is not. On the contrary, Putin appears more committed than ever to his goal of completely destroying Ukrainian statehood.
Putin has publicly questioned the Ukrainian nation’s right to exist for years. He has repeatedly stated that he sees today’s independent Ukraine as an artificial state, and considers anyone who disagrees with this verdict to be anti-Russian or outright Nazis. For more than a decade, he has sought to turn this toxic vision into reality through an escalating campaign of military aggression.
When Putin launched the final stage of his campaign to destroy Ukraine in February 2022, he declared that the goals of his full-scale invasion were the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the country. During the failed peace talks in Istanbul in spring 2022, it became clear that Russia’s interpretation of demilitarization would leave Ukraine unarmed and defenseless.
Putin’s representatives at the Istanbul talks called for a sharp reduction in the Ukrainian army to a minimum of 50,000 troops, as well as strict limits on the number of armored vehicles and types of missiles Ukraine could possess. Russia, however, would face no such restrictions. Crucially, the Kremlin demanded complete neutrality for Ukraine and insisted on maintaining a veto over any international military aid to Kyiv in the event of renewed hostilities. These punitive conditions left no doubt that Putin’s intention was to completely hand Ukraine over to his power and deprive it of the ability to resist the next stage of Russian aggression.
The implications of “denazification” are even more sinister. Putin has long accused Ukraine of being a “Nazi state,” despite the fact that the country has a popularly elected Jewish president and no far-right politicians in government. In reality, “denazification” is Kremlin code for the complete eradication of a separate Ukrainian national identity. In other words, Putin pretends to fight fascism in order to legitimize his criminal goal: a Ukraine without Ukrainians.
The grim consequences of Putin’s “denazification” policy are already evident across Russian-occupied Ukraine. In the regions of the country now under Kremlin control, all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity are being ruthlessly erased. Ukrainian children are forced to study a Kremlin curriculum that demonizes Ukraine while glorifying the invasion of their country. Adults must take Russian citizenship if they want access to basic services like pensions and health care.
Anyone deemed a potential threat to the Russian occupation authorities risks deportation, kidnapping, torture or execution. Although exact figures are impossible to determine, it is estimated that thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been detained since February 2022. In most cases, relatives of those detained have no way of knowing whether they are still alive. The Economist recently described conditions in Russian-occupied Ukraine as a “totalitarian hell.” This is a very specific vision of hell that was designed to erase all traces of Ukraine and impose an imperial Russian identity.
The most obvious sign of Russia’s genocidal intent in Ukraine has been the mass deportation of Ukrainian children, with thousands of children kidnapped and sent to a system of camps where they are indoctrinated to strip them of their Ukrainian heritage and turn them into loyal subjects of the Kremlin. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in connection with these kidnappings. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention recognizes “the forcible transfer of children from one group to another” as an act of genocide.
Russia’s own actions since February 2022 have made a mockery of the Kremlin’s arguments for war. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Putin claimed he was defending the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country. But since then, the Russian army has killed tens of thousands of mostly Russian-speaking residents of eastern Ukraine, reducing dozens of towns and villages across the region to rubble.
Likewise, Russia’s attempts to justify its attack on Ukraine by framing it as a response to NATO expansion have been largely debunked by Putin himself. When neighboring Finland and Sweden responded to Russia’s incursion by announcing plans in the spring of 2022 to abandon decades of neutrality and join NATO, Putin was quick to claim that Russia had “no problem” with the move. This indifference was particularly striking since Finland’s entry more than doubled Russia’s border with NATO, and Sweden’s membership turned the strategically important Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
Since then, Putin has gone even further, withdrawing most Russian troops from the Finnish border and leaving it largely defenseless. Based on Putin’s remarkably calm reaction to NATO’s recent expansion northward, it is safe to conclude that he does not actually view the NATO alliance as a threat to Russia’s own security and has simply used the issue as a smokescreen for his own imperial ambitions in Ukraine.
As Donald Trump tries to make good on his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine, he is likely to find that his famed deal-making skills are no match for Putin’s single-minded obsession with destroying Ukraine. Putin has repeatedly demonstrated, in word and deed, his commitment to erasing Ukraine from the map. In these circumstances, any talk of a compromise settlement is dangerously delusional. Until Putin is forced to recognize Ukraine’s right to exist, any peace agreement will be temporary, and the threat of further Russian aggression will remain.
Yulia Kazdobina is a senior research fellow at the Ukrainian Prism Foreign Policy Council. This text is adapted from the project “Pragmatic Dialogue with the West: Why Ukraine Should Be Supported,” implemented with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It represents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.
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