Putin’s War Is Lost. Peace Might Finish Him.
There's a reason Russia's strongman can't get serious about peace. It's not that he thinks he's going to win. That's the logjam Trump hopes to break. Our latest Deep Dive.
by Rod D. Martin
July 25, 2025
The tanks are still rolling. The drones still scream over Kiev. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers continue to kill and die in trenches that haven’t moved in months.
But make no mistake: Vladimir Putin already lost the war. Three years ago. He failed to achieve his war aims. More to the point, his war aims are now unachievable, by any combination of military action or diplomatic talks.
That creates a huge problem for Vladimir Putin, as well as for Donald Trump.
For Putin, the problem is simple: he overpromised and underdelivered, always a bad combination, especially so in a country with a history of violently overthrowing its leaders. Putin cannot end the war without admitting defeat, not to the cheering Western Zelensky fanboys who will see any Russian gains as a victory for Moscow, but to the oligarchs who are the source of his power, the men he promised regime change in Ukraine and that country’s Finlandization.
They elevated him. They can end him.
It’s also a problem for Donald Trump, who famously said he would end the war on his first day. That was always hyperbole, of the sort the President is famous for. But it reflected a very real and reasonable belief that a just peace could be had on reasonable terms, if the United States sweetened the deal, re-invited Russia into the community of nations, and invested in Russia’s economic future.
Under normal circumstances, that would be spot-on. But Putin is no longer fighting for Russia so much as fighting to save his own skin, likely literally. He has no wish to become the next Nicholas II. He also has no obvious path to saving face.
So he dithers. He promises peace while stepping up attacks, attacks that aren’t moving the dial. And meanwhile, Trump has decreed a 50-day deadline we’re now a full week into. Ask Iran how ignoring that clock worked out for them.
Yet the war remains an increasingly unmitigated disaster. Far from defeated and neutralized, Ukraine has been hardened, unified, armed by, and integrated into the West. NATO has expanded, rearmed, and reorganized — with Trump leading it more effectively than any president since Reagan. Rather than Finlandizing Ukraine, Putin has de-Finlandized Finland, massively expanding his border with NATO and (with Sweden) permanently losing the Baltic. Russia’s army has been bled white. Its economy is bleeding out. Its demographic collapse is accelerated. And Putin himself has revealed to the world — and to his own inner circle — that he’s no master strategist, just a desperate, aging thug who gambled the empire on a blitzkrieg and couldn’t even get to Kiev.
So the war drags on. Not because it can be won, but because admitting it’s lost may be fatal.
What Russia Wanted — and Didn’t Get
Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians or “denazify” anything. Those were fig leaves. His real objectives were grand strategic and unmistakably imperial.