The Putin Paradox
by Benjamin Cook
The central paradox of the Ukraine war is this: Russia desperately needs the war to end, while Vladimir Putin is increasingly dependent on its continuation. These interests are no longer aligned—and the gap between them is widening.
For Russia as a state, the war has become an economic, demographic, and institutional drain. For Putin as a ruler, however, the war has become a political trap. Ending it now would force him to explain sacrifices that can no longer be credibly justified, while continuing it deepens the very damage Russia cannot sustain indefinitely.
Putin Needs the War to Continue
For Putin, the war is no longer about victory. It is about narrative control and personal survival.
A negotiated end—especially one short of clear victory—would raise unavoidable questions: Why the casualties? Why the economic hardship? Why the defacto-mobilization? Why the lies? These questions are manageable during war. They are much less so in peace.
Contrary to earlier assumptions, the war does not unify Russia’s elites. Elites are looking for the door. Whether that door leads to a fall from their penthouse apartment remains to be seen. Sanctions, asset seizures, travel restrictions, and shrinking margins have taxed loyalty.
Even more threatening is the issue of the army itself.
Putin and the elites are scared to bring home a war-torn, abused, and lied-to army. This is not an abstract concern. Returning soldiers would carry lived experience that directly contradicts state propaganda. Any army vet can tell the truth better than Putin can.
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The Russian military—despite catastrophic losses—is lionized by Russian society. Soldiers are portrayed as heroes defending the nation against the West. When they return, those “heroes” will command moral authority. They will have trust—equal to or greater than Putin’s—precisely because they paid the price. It makes me wonder, will the gulags in Siberia be full of returning fighters, just like during and after WWII?
A demobilized force with shared grievances, informal networks, and public legitimacy is a classic destabilizing factor in authoritarian systems. Ending the war would mean reabsorbing hundreds of thousands of men trained in violence, aware of corruption, and conscious of being misled. Continuing the war postpones that reckoning. Possibly giving Putin enough time to find another conflict to dump these men into. Africa, Syria, Venezuela? N. Korea?
Finally, war provides procedural cover. Repression, censorship, budget secrecy, emergency powers, and elite discipline are all justified by ongoing conflict. Peace would remove the rationale for extraordinary measures. From Putin’s perspective, that is the worst possible outcome.
Russia Needs the War to End
For Russia as a country, the calculus is far more straightforward.
Economically, the strain is mounting. Energy revenues—the backbone of the Russian budget—have declined significantly under western sanctions as well as Ukraine’s Long Range Sanctions. Wartime spending has distorted growth, crowding out civilian investment resulting in masked structural weakness. What looks like resilience is increasingly forced mobilization of resources.
Consumer behavior reflects this reality. Wartime stimulus initially supported consumption, but household confidence is weakening as prices rise, savings fall, and expectations deteriorate. Regions are hollowed out as labor is pulled into the military or defense industry, exacerbating demographic decline that predated the war.
Strategically, Russia is becoming more isolated and less secure. Dependence on China has deepened, access to markets has narrowed, and long-term competitiveness has eroded. Even a frozen conflict would ease some pressure; a prolonged high-intensity war compounds it.
Socially, the costs are corrosive. Casualties are unevenly distributed, hitting poorer and peripheral regions hardest. This strains the implicit social contract: political passivity in exchange for stability. As stability erodes, repression must increase—an expensive and brittle substitute concentrated in the areas most likely to produce rebellion.
From a state perspective, ending the war—even inconclusively—would reduce economic bleed, slow demographic damage, and open limited pathways to normalization. It would not solve Russia’s problems, but it would stop making them worse.
The Paradox
Putin cannot easily end the war because peace threatens him personally. Russia cannot afford to continue the war because it threatens the state itself.
This is the Putin Paradox: the longer the war goes on, the safer Putin may be in the short term—and the weaker Russia becomes in the long term. The interests of ruler and country have diverged so sharply that policy has become a hostage to regime survival.
History suggests such gaps do not close gently. And Christmas 1989 stays on Putin’s mind.
Benjamin Cook continues to travel to, often lives in, and works in Ukraine, a connection spanning more than 14 years. He holds an MA in International Security and Conflict Studies from Dublin City University and has consulted with journalists and intelligence professionals on AI in drones, U.S. military technology, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) related to the war in Ukraine. He is co-founder of the nonprofit UAO, working in southern Ukraine. You can find Mr. Cook between Odesa, Ukraine; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona.
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Sources (selected)
● Reuters – Russian energy revenues, fiscal strain, sanctions impact
● The Economist – Russian wartime economy, elite behavior, sustainability
● International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) – Military losses and force structure
● Institute for the Study of War (ISW) – Russian domestic politics and mobilization
● Levada Center (pre-designation polling) – Public attitudes toward the war
● RAND Corporation – Authoritarian regime stability under prolonged conflict
Interesting article, now some additional 5 cents from my side:
1) The problem of criminals returning: This is nothing new. That already happened after WWII when MILLIONS of them returned. People like Kopelew and Solzhenitsyn warned of that problem and were kicked out of the communist party. Still it happened and the USSR survived.
2) The longer the war continues the more poverty will rise inside the RF. This is a much bigger problem than in 1945 as most of the population at that time did know only poverty and hardship. Now they did get a taste for a 'normal' life. The elites know that "Gollum" will squeeze them as much as he thinks he has to. So it has to be their goal that the war ends.
3) "Gollum" living in a self created bubble (the usual problem dictators have, as they only accept 'yes sayers') brought himself into an untenable position. Yes he will continue with his obsession to bring back the USSR under a different name, no matter how much it costs OTHERS. No hope that the arse lickers around him will stop him.
4) The RF has to lose otherwise the problem for the world will only get bigger, because that 'cancer' is still growing. The nuclear arms race has started and the longer some idiots are willing to benfit an aggressor the more this planet will become an insecure place.
What a load of bullshit. This whole post is prime example of West's projections and wishful thinking. This whole "people will revolt", "Russian elites are not interested in the war" and "economy will collapse soon" just keeps going all since the beginning of the war.
> A negotiated end—especially one short of clear victory—would raise unavoidable questions: Why the casualties? Why the economic hardship? Why the defacto-mobilization? Why the lies? These questions are manageable during war. They are much less so in peace.
There is no one worth considering who will ask these questions. In fact, these questions are being asked every day with exactly zero effect (apart from more people fined or imprisoned). Putin and siloviki who are the actual "elites" know this very well and give exactly zero fucks about such questions.
> Elites are looking for the door.
Would be nice to have a proof of that. "Elites" in Russia can be understood differently depending on the context. There are "economic" elites, sometimes they are also being called "oligarchs" in Western media and then there is "government" ruling the country. The latter are siloviki (effectively former KGB). The economics elites were completely subjugated by them in early-mid 2010s and have near-zero influence on policy and politics.
The economic elites _might_ be looking for the door, but if they are doing so, they are doing it in silence. We do not observe any attempts of exit apart from those that were done in the very beginning of the war and were few. We know that some high-profile managers in several corporations committed exit through the window, so this might be the reason.
The KGB elites, on the other hand, are definitely not looking for any exit. In fact, they are looking the enter even deeper and we observe preparations for prolonged period of eternal war: implementation of total control over internet, banking system, surveillance state, censorship, limitation of economic mobility, propaganda in education and making the education system less accessible overall, economy mobilization, etc.
> Putin and the elites are scared to bring home a war-torn, abused, and lied-to army.
No they are not. A bunch of traumatized alcoholics only are problem for the regular people in their immediate surroundings. At worst, they are _maybe_ capable of organizing into gangs to extort local business for money. In reality, this will likely happen, but the gangs will be controlled by the KGB. Again, not an issue for neither Putin nor Russian "elites".
In Russia the army is not represented in politics and the government for exactly the reason described in the post - that would be a threat to those in power. This approach was started by Stalin after the end of WW2 and has been successfully carried over to the present. That time Zhukov and the army were a legitimate political threat, modern army returning from Urkaine is not. And the army of then was successfully neutralized there is zero doubts that this one will be as well.
> The Russian military—despite catastrophic losses—is lionized by Russian society. Soldiers are portrayed as heroes defending the nation against the West.
No they are not outside of the most blatant state propaganda. Russian society is split approximately 20% - 60% - 20% on the spectrum of strongly support the war - don't care - strongly oppose. Only the first 20% "lionize" the soldiers. The rest is either afraid of them or hates them. There is zero moral authority in people killing other people for money, which how they are perceived by the majority.
And so on and so forth. The KGB is totally fine with current state of affairs. There is no danger to them in the near and mid term. Worsening economy is no problem for them. Maybe in the long run (in 10+ years) if things will continue as they are, it will lead to a system collapse, but there is always a space for manoeuvre and controlled exit (simplifying things: we will stop the war/harassing you - you will left the sanctions and the money will start flowing in again). Since the West doesn't have resolve to actually push the system to the brink, and the KGB knows that, they are free to continue as long as they please because they know they can exit any time if it will become to dangerous, and there will be no recourse of consequences for them.
EDIT: the above doesn't mean that Russia will continue to fight untill the last soldier on either side is capable of holding a rifle. Putin and the KGB might decide that it's enough and wrap it up. But this will not be because they are afraid of consequences, face domestic revolt or want to leave the economy in at least a decent shape. This will be because for some reason they concluded that it's better to stop but these reasons have very little to do with described (non-)factors.