Putin’s Endless War: Imperial Ambitions and Europe’s Moment of Truth

The authors writer that Putin’s regime needs a permanent war to ensure its longevity by distributing to the elites the spoils of plunder, such as the expropriation of foreign companies or the pillaging of its own population. Thus, Putin finds himself indebted to his new war elite, which forms the backbone of his power. He is forced to continue redistribution and expropriation in order to feed it and ensure its support. A regime based on the rejection of all international norms is an extremist regime that can only be “convinced” by force.

“Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with the conquest and subjugation of Ukraine, it automatically becomes an empire again.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski (2012)

In a remarkable recent interview, political scientist Alexander Morozov, reflecting on the failure of Trump’s peace initiative, once again reformulated Putin’s demands, which he cannot renounce and which the world cannot (for the time being) force him to abandon:

• the neutrality of Ukraine;
• NATO’s retreat to its 1991 borders;
• the effective creation of a world order centered on Russia.

Morozov believes that the endless war of attrition is not a result but a goal for Putin, as it keeps Ukraine in a state of destabilization and Russians in a state of permanent mobilization, and prevents Ukraine’s integration into NATO, thus achieving his objectives without completely occupying the neighboring state. Kremlin propaganda, which presents the war as a clash between the “unique” Russian civilization, an integral part of the “Global South” (is it not paranoid to think this way for such a northern people?), and the “decadent West,” hammers this idea into the minds of unhappy citizens, rallying Russian society and forcing it to get used to endless war and Putin’s imperial agenda.

Essentially, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a “crusade” by the entire Russian people into the past. In this accelerating backward movement, the benefits and values of the civilization that had been acquired in the past are gradually disappearing: democratic principles and tolerance, liberal approaches to solving economic and social problems, religious diversity, modernized education. Let’s turn back, let’s return to an imaginary greatness based on fear and force, let’s reverse course!

How can we not try to sweep away Ukraine’s sovereignty? The neighboring country, which emerged from the same hole, is moving faster and faster in the opposite direction, and its courageous people are clearly showing that they are in no way brothers to the Russians and are defending their path with all their might, to the very end. Putin seems to think that through this resistance, through its very existence, Ukraine is challenging Moscow’s imperialist discourse, when in fact it would have nothing to do with Moscow’s pretensions if the Russian aggressor had not attacked it. But it did attack it, considering Ukraine’s submission, or at least a permanent war, as an existential goal for himself.

In this article, we develop Morozov’s ideas, whose direct and unambiguous style of analysis and synthesis, so uncharacteristic of most political analysts, impresses us greatly, and we offer an unusual perspective for interpreting the Kremlin’s motivations and intentions.

Political extremism and the era of personal resentment

To discuss what is happening honestly, Morozov believes we need to stop playing “diplomatic subtleties” and call the Kremlin regime “political extremism.” This is not a matter of temperament or “authoritarian style,” but a method of management and even diplomacy: promises become consumables, norms become window dressing, and facts become modeling clay.

A characteristic scene of political inconsistency and manipulative lies was recorded in Pratica di Mare on May 28, 2002: after the inaugural meeting of the Russia-NATO Council, standing next to Silvio Berlusconi and NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, Putin declared: “Ukraine is a sovereign state and has the right to decide independently on its NATO membership.” Today, this position has been reversed: “NATO at the borders” has been declared a casus belli, so now it’s “pack your bags and leave.”

We find the same technique in the phrase used after the meeting with Trump in Alaska: “There are no hostile countries, there are hostile elites in these countries”; but then, what is this official list of “hostile states” approved by the government? The gap between word and the institution is not a coincidence here, but a technique: “outside,” the intonation is normal, “inside,” hostility is legally enshrined, and all of this together constitutes the ideology of the regime.

Extremism is also evident in the dismantling of multilateral safeguard agreements. Russia’s withdrawal from the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights, the suspension of its participation in the New START treaty, and the rejection of international conventions, including the Convention against Torture, are not diplomatic “signals,” but shells fired at the normality that emerged in the postwar world.

At the same time, we are witnessing the export of authoritarian norms and instruments of governance, which contemporary politicians in various countries sometimes view with envy: legal toolkits such as the “foreign agents law,” which are already being exported to neighboring regimes, or networks of political influence in which European politicians are caught up—a long-term effort to “legalize” repressive practices in the democratic sphere. Researchers specializing in hybrid regimes (e.g., Levitsky and Way) have been describing this spread for two decades; the concept of sharp power (NED, Christopher Walker, and Jessica Ludwig) explains how autocracies exploit the openness of democracies: they corrupt from within the media, the courts, and parties; Guriev and Treisman show how “spin dictatorships” combine soft repression, marketing, and resource appropriation. This is “International” of authoritarian seduction: politicians who like the idea of “banning the press” and “withdrawing licenses” are provided with a ready-made set of tools, solutions, and excuses that legalize such actions in the public sphere.

Moreover, according to Guriev and Treisman’s model, Putin started out as a “spin dictator,” relying on a facade of competence and propaganda, and when that approach stopped working, he gradually moved into a phase of political extremism: expropriation, war, and direct pressure instead of the usual manipulations.

Russia is not the USSR: numbers, maps, and resentment as drivers of aggression

The substitution ritual is simple: the heir to the USSR must be a leading power. But facts are impassive, and Russia now has about 140 million citizens. According to independent estimates, taking into account emigration and statistical tricks, this figure may be much lower: 120 million. By way of comparison, Pakistan has nearly 260 million inhabitants (and is also a nuclear power), Brazil and Nigeria have more than 210 million each, Bangladesh has around 170 million, Mexico and Ethiopia have more than 130 million, and Iran has around 90 million. The cartographic representation of the vast country of Russia also misleads the uninformed and ultra-patriots: the Mercator projection inflates the northern latitudes, but “gigantic” Russia is actually almost half the size of Africa (17 million sq km and 30 million sq km respectively) and only twice the size of Australia (7.6 million sq km).

But the Kremlin and the people who submit to it like to constantly remind us of Russia’s size as the foundation of its greatness, obscuring, for example, the fact that two-thirds of its territory is covered by permafrost and that its habitable area is smaller not only than that of China and the United States, but also than that of Brazil and Australia (although the latter also have desert areas). These gigantic spaces are not an advantage but a curse for Russia, depriving it of cohesion and constantly increasing infrastructure costs: gasification, electrification, transport networks, communications, and, finally, border defense. Compact states can concentrate their resources on developing human capital, while Russia is forced (it would be if it were a civilized state) to scatter its resources over vast expanses of emptiness.

If we start from the simple premise that the state exists for the people and not the people for the state, then the main indicator of economic power, of results, from the point of view of the state’s own objectives, is GDP per capita. In Russia, it is already lower than that of neighboring Kazakhstan, by $500. The Kremlin’s favorite discussions of GDP (PPP) do not change reality, they only distort it (for example, in the GDP (PPP) ranking, the richest countries, Monaco and Liechtenstein, are ranked 208th and 209th respectively) because what matters to people is real income, health, and education, not accounting reports.

As early as 1989, Douglas North and Barry Weingast explained that growth was based on the protection of rights and predictable political, economic, and social rules, and that institutions only functioned where power was limited by obligations. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, drawing on empirical data, have shown that where elites can arbitrarily deprive citizens of the GDP produced, development gives way to degradation. When Russia was invited to the “big table”—first in the G7 format, which became almost the G8, then in the “Russia-NATO” Council and other prestigious forums—it was done more out of inertia: as the heir to the USSR, not as an equal power in terms of influence. But it soon became apparent that this table brought together countries with long political experience, incomparably more powerful economies, and technological influence that Russia could not offer. Their leaders were rooted in generations of political tradition and institutional memory, while Putin brought to the G8 only rhetoric, references to the past, and the clatter of the Soviet legacy, notably the nuclear arsenal and stockpiles of Soviet weapons.

In concrete discussions about global investment, trade rules, or institutional change, Putin had nothing to say, as the Russian Federation sat on a stool in the midst of armchairs.

This is where his resentment came from: he had been invited to the table out of respect for the past, but he turned out to be the poor relation, offering the world nothing but threats. This feeling of powerlessness motivated the Kremlin’s extremist strategy: to compensate for the lack of any real contribution to civilization by destroying rules and destabilizing, as this is the only way for him to attract the attention of “adult nations.”

Breaking the civilizational taboo, or expropriation as policy

War offers many advantages to autocracy, including the suppression of any alternative opinion and the exploitation of generally dangerous nationalist sentiments. And it is precisely the war in Ukraine and the threat of the Russian Federation’s aggression spreading to other countries that serve as support for Putin’s regime, creating unexpected economic and political incentives (which have literally appeared out of nowhere, i.e., from the war itself) for both the elites and the population. All this ideological talk about the “Russian world,” the creation of Novorossiya, and other dangerous illusions have a clearer justification, an understandable motivation for Putin: only by starting the war, using elaborate narratives, and implanting them in the minds of the majority of Russians, was he able to legitimately drive Western companies out of Russia and strip them of their best assets in the Russian Federation.

The nationalization of foreign assets, estimated at more than $50 billion according to calculations by Yale University, enriches the Kremlin’s loyalists and has long directly financed military efforts. This figure is highly misleading, as in 2021 the total volume of accumulated foreign direct investment in Russia amounted to approximately $500 billion, and given the consistently positive balance of exports and imports of the Russian Federation thanks to the export of energy resources and minerals with low added value, we can speak of a disproportionate contribution to GDP by foreign investments. Vladislav Inozemtsev calls this “the plunder of the century” and estimates the value of plundered assets at $120-170 billion, which is closer to the truth.

This war-driven economy, which Inozemtsev aptly called smertonomika (“the economy of death”), creates a “loyalty trap” in which the elites, enriched by confiscated assets and military contracts, risk losing out, because if the civilized world forces the Russian Federation to end the war, this will entail reparations and restitutions, i.e., the collapse of the entire current system. Thus, future peace threatens not only Putin, but also the entire ruling class, hence the self-perpetuating cycle of aggression and new conflicts.

In the 21st Century, it seems impossible that a state could, by simple decree, seize the assets of multinational companies and declare that this is “policy.” But that is precisely what has become the norm in Putin’s Russia: the assets of multinational companies from ”hostile countries” such as Fortum, Air Liquide, Danone, Carlsberg, the Turkish company Anadolu Efes, assets belonging to Russians living abroad, etc. ; extractive companies, banks, modern car manufacturing plants, fast food chains, and entire industrial sectors. This is not an exception, but a strategy made possible by the Kremlin’s particular hatred of international commitments, not only in the humanitarian and political spheres, but also in the economic sphere.

Participation in conventions and institutions entails not only rights but also obligations: protection of property rights, individual rights, compensation for losses resulting from wrongful decisions, enforcement of international court rulings. This is precisely what Putin is avoiding by leaving the Council of Europe, suspending arms treaties, renouncing human rights conventions, and denouncing numerous other international agreements and contractual institutions. Each exit frees him from his obligations and paves the way for more expropriations, whether commercial or humanitarian. This is literally cancel culture.

The process of dismantling international obligations is spread out over time; it is a long-term campaign that also has a propaganda dimension. The Kremlin meticulously explains that these are “retaliatory measures,” but the initiator is always the same: itself. It is always the same policy of lies and substitution: destroy norms and present this destruction as a forced reaction.

Within the country, substitution has long been the new norm, perhaps since the Yukos affair, where the very essence of the laws governing economic relations was stolen. But such is the established logic: elites close to the Kremlin, of various types and sizes, and now also “veterans of the special military operation,” demand and “legally” obtain something from the expropriated, enriching themselves with commercial interests and conceptual (rather than legal) obligations in the name of preserving the system that feeds them. Expropriation is a tool for the survival of the Kremlin regime: by violating civilizational taboos, Putin has committed theft (Article 161 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: open theft of property belonging to others), and theft is no longer a shame, but a tool, part of the new rules on the way backward.

New “alliances”

Putin has long since moved on from using “energy” as a weapon to using underhanded methods aimed at dividing countries, alliances, elites, and the population. Morozov, in defining Putin’s “political extremism,” shows how Putin is meticulously building alliances with China, India, and the Global South, supporting this work with multi-voiced disinformation campaigns aimed at gaining sympathy and avoiding isolation.

And the Kremlin has been doing rather well so far, especially when taking into account the activities of the “great peacemaker” across the Atlantic. But, as in the case of domestic policy and international commitments, these new alliances are deceptive and misleading: Putin’s real goal, as his visit to Trump in Alaska clearly showed, his deep desire, his dream, is to be among the main players in world politics, i.e., above all, on an equal footing with the United States. There is no doubt that Beijing understands this well.

For now, cyberwarfare, diversions, and sabotage remain the main instruments of a hidden escalation, and attacks on Ukrainian and Western infrastructure are aimed at destabilizing and exhausting support for the same goal: endless war, a broken Ukraine stripped of sovereignty, a “new Yalta” on Moscow’s terms.

The Western imperative: radical measures to survive

Morozov insists that a radical response from the West to the Kremlin’s geopolitical chimeras is necessary, a response that goes beyond incremental actions.

For example, it has been proposed to deploy NATO aircraft in Romania (which is particularly relevant after the latest drone maneuvers) and to protect the skies over Ukraine; to create a unified cyber command and destroy the Kremlin’s disinformation networks. A direct attack on Russia’s ghost fleet—the ships that circumvent oil sanctions—could also stifle its deadly economy.

Brzeziński’s warning about Putin’s geopolitical revenge requires Europe to provide virtually unlimited support to Ukraine in order to prevent autocratic triumphs within the EU itself, which could continue to inspire revisionists around the world.

Institutional extremism

The war in Ukraine has become a decisive battle for the international order based on common European values. Europe must dismantle Russia’s military machine, denounce the conflictual nature of its (pseudo) alliance with the Global South, and neutralize its cyber-interference and disinformation campaigns.

Failure to do so will only confirm Putin’s gamble on aggression, condemn Ukraine to further suffering, and tip global security toward autocracy. And then, the price for Europe will be inevitable. A regime based on lies and the suppression of civilizational taboos cannot end the war without destroying itself. Its entire logic is based on expropriation and the destruction of norms: any step toward peace would mean a return to the institutional field, where property rights, restitution, and compensation apply. This would mean having to answer to international courts and companies whose assets have been confiscated, which, for a system that thrives on plunder, is tantamount to suicide.

(It is possible that Putin’s ultimate idea is to impose his archaic and predatory conception of the culture of relations on democratic countries and, on this new basis, to return to a (de)civilized society.)

Within the country, the system’s dependence on expropriation is only increasing. Let us emphasize this once again: the war in Ukraine, referred to in Russia as a “special military operation,” has created a new generation of people who are demanding their share from the authorities. They say they defended the Kremlin, fought to preserve the regime, and now have “legitimate” claims to a reward: seats in parliament, positions in the executive branch, access to assets, etc.

Putin finds himself indebted to them. He is forced to continue redistribution and expropriation in order to feed the new war elite. This is a historical repeat: in their day, the Cheka and the NKVD also turned the repressive apparatus into a social class integrated into the very structure of power.

Western political science has long explained this mechanism. In their book The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism, Levitsky and Way showed that hybrid autocracies maintained the facade of democratic institutions and, by using them to legitimize arbitrariness, sustained themselves precisely through the creation of new dependent groups, integrated into the system through resources and privileges. This does not weaken the regime, but strengthens it: by destroying institutions, it paradoxically stabilizes itself through new loyal elites. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have described this as a form of extractive state that exists not for development, but for the redistribution of what has been captured, which generally leads to stagnation and crisis due to the loss of confidence among the masses.

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All peaceful initiatives by the Kremlin and Kremlin-backed initiatives are doomed to failure from the outset. Extremists can only be offered a rigid framework of deterrence and verification. It is precisely for this reason that Europe, as Morozov rightly points out, needs to prepare for war—in order to defend norms, rights, property, and the very meaning of institutions.

Once again: Putin’s war is not a campaign with practical objectives, but a form of existence for the regime, which cannot do anything other than wage war. We are not facing a “special path,” but a political construct built on a temporal scale: resentment, lies, dismantling of rules, expropriation, export of authoritarian norms, and impossibility of peace without external constraints.

This is political extremism in its purest form. And the sooner the world gives up the illusion of “convincing” Putin, the shorter the path to real security, both at the borders and within democracies themselves.

Original version