Thread by @polidemitolog

Debates about peace in Ukraine are natural. Every decent human being desires peace, not war, but they miss a crucial reason why Putin's Russia went to war with Ukraine (from 2014) and why it doesn't desire peace with a version of Ukraine that's not the Kremlin's puppet state ⤵️

Summary of Putin's aims in Ukraine:

1. Putin wants a new Minsk Agreement (cease-fire, not peace), so he can build up his army's strength and retrieve some of the credibility he's lost globally. Please, make sure you understand the difference between peace and a cease-fire.

2. Ultimately, Putin wants Ukraine to be a satellite state of Russia (like countries inside the Soviet Bloc were). Putin doesn't want peace in exchange for Ukraine's territories. Peace with a free Ukraine, which is the opposite of an autocratic Russia, was never on the table.

3. Putin knows that the Russian army has almost completely exhausted its offensive potential. The whole of Ukraine is, at the moment, out of reach. He would accept Minsk III, but not a peace treaty, in which Ukraine remains free, joins NATO and the EU. It's not about territory.

4. Putin's strategy is to destabilize the West so he's given Minsk III. He uses his agents, lobbyists, populist parties on the payroll, resource blackmail (from energy to grain) in order to extort a cease-fire from the West (like what happened in 2015, when 🇺🇦 was much weaker).

5. This strategy is not hard to grasp - destabilize and outlast. Putin hopes that national-populists in the West will get an upper hand and cut a deal with him (like the Bolsheviks once hoped for the global revolution). Putin sees democracy as a weakness, he feels eternal.

6. The only way to defeat Putin is from within, through Russia's elites. For the elites to turn against Putin, they must be put under a great deal of strain - Ukrainian army advancing, sanctions tightening. Every other initiative misunderstands Putin's intentions.

7. It is my opinion that Putin's system is structurally weaker than that of Western democracies and that it will crack under pressure. It's a matter of a time-frame - the harder the West pushes (arming Ukraine, tightening sanctions), the less risk for its own destabilization.

8. Western leaders, stretching the time-frame, as to not force Putin to escalate, just put the West under more danger and once again show that Putin is misunderstood as some manic, ready to start WWIII, while he's looking to secure his regime's stability (his primary objective).

9. In short - Putin doesn't want a few of Ukraine's regions for peace, Putin wants to destroy free Ukraine and then you can have the peace of the grave.

10. Lastly, those who think that the West caused Putin to attack, because Ukraine turned to democracy, disregard the fact that Ukraine has its own autonomy of action and that autocratic regimes, like Putin's, are always threatened by more progressive neighbors.

11. If one wanted to appease Putin, he would have to give him back the borders of the USSR and then new more democratic and developed rivals would arise, such as Poland. What would've happened then? Putin would not feel his regime safe from falling as long as Europe was free.

12. To be perfectly realistic, why would Putin be gifted any part of Europe for his defiant autocracy? Stalin wasn't given anything, he took what he could by force, half of Europe. Putin is in no state to do so, although he felt differently a year and a half ago.