Let’s Get Real: Putin is Going to get What He Wants

If you want to end a war and your enemy remains full of fight, you have to give him some of what he wants. If he has more fight in him than you, he is going to get more of what he wants — maybe all of what he wants. Americans tend to see peace treaties as matters of morality rather than what they are, namely a reflection of the balance of forces.

After three and a half years of paying for Ukrainians to kill Russians, our government has begun negotiations for a settlement. President Trump wants a way out of a war that he never signed on to and has not gone well. In this respect, Trump is more realistic than Joe Biden, who would have let the death and destruction drag on into the mumbling future.

But to reach an agreement, you need to listen to what your opponent wants. What does Vladimir Putin want? Listening to CNN, you might think he wants to conquer all of Ukraine, and then, Hitler-like, to gobble up Poland and resurrect the Warsaw Pact. But that is not what Russia is capable of doing, or what Putin has been demanding. Putin wants a Russian-aligned Ukraine, not in NATO, and with no NATO troops.

You can argue that Ukraine has the right to be as Western as it likes, and that its political choices are none of Russia’s business. Back in 1962, Fidel Castro could argue that Cuba’s choice to have Russian missiles was none of America’s business. President Kennedy didn’t see it that way, nor did most Americans. Cuba was right there, 90 miles from Key West, its missiles aimed at us. Russian missiles in Cuba were damn well our business because our Monroe Doctrine (Europeans, go away) said so. You can imagine Putin thinking the same of NATO weapons in Ukraine, aimed at the Russian heartland.

 We think of NATO as defensive only. (Never mind Iraq and Afghanistan.) But to Russia, NATO has always been an anti-Russian alliance — and the eastward march of NATO’s frontier in the past 30 years feels like something more than defense. And even if a NATO-aligned Ukraine would never attack Russia, its existence would be a challenge. When Putin says Ukraine aligned with the West would be a threat, he’s right. At the very least, it would be a political threat. A cultural threat. And maybe later, a military threat.

Say things like this, and you will be charged with “parroting Russian talking points. You are taking Putin’s side!” But if we want to end the war, we have to imagine ourselves in his shoes. If we are unable to force Putin to accept what we want, we have to listen to what he wants. And show him some respect. If we invite Putin to talk, we have to roll out the red carpet, as Trump just did in Alaska. We have to shake his hand and watch what we say. If this offends your moral sense, put a cork in it! Ending a war is more important than how you feel.

So Trump was polite to Putin. Roosevelt was pals with Stalin. Nixon parleyed with Mao. Kissinger sat down with Le Duc Tho. That’s the job.

For those who prefer to fight on, consider the human cost. At the end of 2024, Ukraine admitted 43,000 dead and 370,000 wounded. As of June, Russian media identified more than 111,000 Russian dead. It’s safe to assume the true figures are higher. A year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported an estimate that the Ukrainian army, most of it conscripts, had lost 80,000 dead and 400,000 wounded. For the Russian army, most of it conscripts, recent estimates are two to three times those numbers. As of July 2025, the United Nations’ tally of Ukraine’s civilian deaths was 49,431.

True, they’re not Americans. But at some point, the pile of dead and wounded over there should be high enough so that even we take note of it.

The American “talking point” has been that Putin started the war, so that the butcher’s bill is on him. But our investment in this war is some $200 billion, depending on what you count. By continuing to “invest,” we’re saying that the dead and wounded are “worth it,” and that we’re willing to take more. Actually pushing the Russians back would cost a lot more.

The Ukrainians went on the offensive in 2023 and failed. Now Ukraine’s only hope of rolling back the Russians is to use weapons and troops that it doesn’t have now. We might ask: What weapons? Whose troops, and how many? And what should we expect a nuclear-armed Russia to do if NATO divisions approached its frontier?

At the Trump-Putin summit at Anchorage, Vladimir Putin said the talks had been “constructive” in an “atmosphere of mutual respect.”  President Trump said, “I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points we agreed on, I would say most of them.” After this sweet exchange, Trump went on to meet at the White House with Volodymyr Zelensky and the European leaders, who insisted that Ukraine be given a security guarantee. That’s what NATO is. Whether a member or not, Ukraine with a security guarantee presumably would be safe behind a screen of NATO forces and NATO weapons.

Trump said this was O.K. (as long as Europe bought the weapons from us), and Russia predictably said it wasn’t O.K. Russia is determined not to be defeated at the peace table.

Putin apparently wants Ukraine to be another Belarus, safely in Russia’s orbit. Well, look at a map. Maybe that’s the way it has to be. Is that so bad for us? For NATO? The world lived with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (with its vote in the UN) for nearly 70 years. Without Ukraine, NATO will still exist. Since our defeat of the communist world in the Cold War, NATO has added the former Marxist bastions of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia — as well as once-neutral Western states of Sweden and Finland.

So we lose one. Not the end of the world.