Vladimir Putin is caught in a vice of his own making

YOU WOULD have thought that, after four bloody years, a war which neither side can win would have burnt itself out. But not the war in Ukraine. And the blame lies with one man.

Vladimir Putin is caught in a vice of his own making. The chances are waning that his armies in Ukraine will produce something he can call victory. Many people expect peace talks, continuing in Geneva this week, to give him a way out because President Donald Trump will force Ukraine to cede territory. In fact, that escape route is becoming less likely. And even if a peace deal were concluded, the aftershocks inside Russia would risk economic and political instability, wrecking Mr Putin’s plans of being ranked among history’s greatest tsars.

The first problem for Russia’s president is the battlefield. In the Great Patriotic War, from June 1941 to May 1945, the Red Army advanced 1,600km from Moscow to Berlin. In this longer war, Russian forces in Donetsk, the main focus, have advanced just 60km—the distance from Washington to Baltimore.

Russia has been unable to generate enough combat strength to break through Ukrainian lines. In the 10-30km “kill zone” around the front line, vulnerable to drones and their all-seeing operators, soldiers and equipment cannot mass without becoming targets. Even if Russian forces breach Ukrainian lines they struggle to exploit their success.

On today’s trajectory Mr Putin will not be able to change this. In the first three years, Russia was building up its army. By the end of last year, it was losing more men than it could recruit. They are poorly trained, morale is low and desertion rates are higher than ever. Starlink has cut off Russian forces from the smuggled terminals on which they depended for targeting. Their own government has cut off Telegram, which they used to communicate on the front lines.

Mr Putin will struggle to increase the number and quality of recruits. Russia relies on money, not patriotism, to enlist soldiers. The probability of death or injury, the neglect of veterans and the state’s attempt to wriggle out of paying “coffin money” to the families of fallen soldiers are all raising the cost of recruitment. Since June 2025, according to Re: Russia, a think-tank, the average sign-on bonus has increased by 0.5m roubles, to 2.43m roubles ($32,000). Money is getting harder to find. The 5.1trn-rouble-a-year bill for all this is equivalent to 90% of the federal budget deficit. The rest of the economy is shrinking. Debt payments are increasing. The outlook for oil revenues is poor.

Russia’s war effort is not about to collapse. Mr Putin can strike Ukrainian cities and power grids to destroy morale and the economy. But aerial attacks alone are unlikely to lead to capitulation. He may believe that Europe will desert Ukraine, but European support increased last year. His greatest hope may be that Ukraine, suffering grave manpower and equipment shortages of its own, will undergo a political crisis or begin to run out of fighters and weapons before Russia does. Yet Mr Putin’s bet on a Ukrainian collapse has been a losing one for the past four years—and the odds are lengthening.

Why then does he not agree to peace? If Mr Putin could bank Russia’s gains and regroup, he could always attack Ukraine again at some point in the future.

In fact, any peace plan is unlikely to satisfy Russia. The talks have a Potemkin quality, illustrated by the preposterous promise of a $12trn peace dividend, much of it to be shared between Russia and America. They are also unlikely to give Mr Putin the territory he has been unable to take by force and which he wants in order to declare victory.

For Ukraine to surrender its best-defended ground would be a strategic disaster. And although Mr Trump still has leverage, his ability to bounce Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, into a bad deal has passed its peak. True, America still sells vital weapons to Europe, which passes them to Ukraine. But Ukraine is now less dependent on American intelligence than it was, and America has reduced its financing of the war by 99%. If, as seems likely, any peace deal involves American security guarantees to Ukraine that are enshrined in a treaty, the Senate will have to ratify it. That will also help protect against a one-sided settlement.

Another reason for Mr Putin to be cautious about a deal is that peace itself could trigger a crisis in Russia. As our guest column explains, Russia has diverted so many resources to defence, which now accounts for 8% of GDP, that the rest of the economy is ailing. The regime’s lawlessness and the prospect of renewed hostilities will deter new investors. The challenge of redeploying resources from warmaking to peace, including finding work for soldiers returning from the front, could induce a deep recession.

The politics would be ugly, too. Disgruntled veterans destabilise regimes, especially in Russia, as before the revolution in 1917 and after its war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Polls suggest that Russians would initially welcome the end of the fighting. But questions would surely follow: over the bungled campaign, the squandering of lives and treasure, and Russia’s humiliating dependence on China for financial and military support in the name of saving its own civilisation. That might limit Mr Putin’s ability to restart the war. It could even pose a threat to his power.

Mr Putin cannot give up the war, but the cost of carrying it on is rising. If his attempts to generate more combat strength only hollow out Russia further, that could lead to a crisis. If it doesn’t, Ukraine and Russia will be trapped in conflict. Can anything be done to end it? Pursuing Russia’s shadow fleet and activating a Senate plan to punish buyers of its oil could limit export revenues. Countering Mr Putin’s propaganda that America and Europe are bent on destroying Russia would help. So would correcting his claims of an inevitable Russian victory: no one, least of all Mr Trump, likes to back a loser.

It is hard to force a dictator to act. Ultimately, Mr Putin’s readiness to carry on fighting depends on the pain he is willing to inflict. But the more pain there is, the clearer it will be to Russians that he is bringing ruin upon them. ■