Putin cannot dictate the future of Ukraine by means of war

Ukraine’s geopolitical future must be determined by the principles of international law and its own subjectivity, not by the resource capacity of the Russian Federation to wage a war of attrition. This challenge is critical for the stability of the global deterrence system, as its consequences will shape the rules of international relations for decades to come, regardless of the current dynamics on the battlefield.

After all, it is about who has the right to determine Ukraine’s strategic course, Ukraine itself as a sovereign state or the Moscow regime, which is trying to impose its own vision of the future on Kyiv by force of arms. Today, not only Ukrainian diplomacy, but also a new European security system must be shaped around this issue.

It is obvious that from the very beginning, Russian aggression against Ukraine was not just a struggle for territory. The territorial dimension of the war is extremely important for Putin, but it does not exhaust its political content.

The Kremlin seeks much more: to limit Ukraine’s sovereign right to independently determine its foreign policy, security system, economic model and civilizational choice. In this sense, missiles, drones, tanks, occupation of territories, energy blackmail and military pressure are instruments of a broader strategy – to preserve for the Russian Federation the ability to influence the fundamental decisions of the Ukrainian state.

Therefore, the main strategic task for Ukraine now is not only how to survive the war. It is how to deprive Moscow of the ability to use force to determine Ukraine’s future. This is a much more difficult task than achieving a ceasefire, but it is what distinguishes a sustainable peace from another pause between two phases of the war.

The cessation of hostilities in itself does not mean the end of Russia’s policy of coercion. The history of international conflicts convincingly demonstrates that a ceasefire can only be a moment of regrouping forces if the fundamental cause of the conflict remains unresolved.

When, after a ceasefire, Muscovy retains the ability to threaten new invasions, block economic development, destabilize the political system, or impose foreign policy decisions on Ukraine under the threat of force, then such a situation is not a full-fledged peace. It is just another form of war, less intense but no less politically dangerous.

Given this, the Ukrainian understanding of peace should be much broader than the formula «Russia has stopped shooting». Peace should mean a security configuration in which Moscow cannot turn its military advantage, missile arsenal or threat of a new invasion into an instrument of political control over Ukraine. In other words, true peace is not the absence of shots, but the absence of the possibility of returning to the policy of force as an effective way to resolve the Ukrainian issue.

In this context, it is fundamentally important to distinguish between the concepts of «ending the war» and «ending Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine». The first can be achieved by political agreement. The second requires a long-term transformation of the entire system of Ukrainian and European security. Ukraine must become a state, an attack on which does not open a political window of opportunity for the aggressor, but creates unacceptable military, economic and political consequences for him.

Hence the key principle of the future Ukrainian strategy: security cannot be built on Moscow’s goodwill. Ukraine should not wait for the Kremlin leader to «realize the error» of aggression or voluntarily abandon encroachments on the sovereignty of neighboring countries.

The state strategy should proceed from the opposite assumption: Russia must lose the ability to impose its decisions on Ukraine, even if the Kremlin again has a desire to do so.

This means that future Ukrainian security must be based on three interrelated components: Ukraine’s own military capabilities, long-term support from its allies, and Ukraine’s institutional integration into the European security space.

None of these components is sufficient on its own. A country’s own army without strategic alliances finds itself under constant pressure from a much larger state. External guarantees without a strong Ukrainian defense system may not be convincing enough. And political integration without real military and economic stability will be shaky.

Ukraine must therefore invest not only in the ability to survive another Russian attack, but also in the ability to make such an attack strategically pointless. This includes the development of the defense-industrial complex, air and missile defense, unmanned systems, long-range deterrents, cyber capabilities, intelligence, secure energy, and resilient critical infrastructure.

After all, modern deterrence is not only about the number of soldiers and tanks. It is the ability of a state to quickly recover from a strike, to continue functioning during war, and to convince a potential aggressor that the price of a new attack will be unacceptable to it.

But Ukrainian security cannot remain an exclusively Ukrainian problem. If Russia is allowed to determine the fate of Ukraine by force, this means that the force factor effectively gains precedence over international law in the very heart of Europe. In such a situation, it is not only Ukraine that is under threat. The very principle that the borders and political status of European states cannot be changed by force is under threat.

Therefore, the question of Ukraine’s future is at the same time a question of Europe’s future. European security after this war cannot return to the pre-war logic, which assumed that economic interdependence would by itself restrain Russia, and diplomatic dialogue would allow it to manage its revisionist ambitions. This model has proven to be ineffective. The new European security system must be based on the need for deterrence, defense readiness, technological superiority, and the ability to respond quickly to threats.

In this sense, a strong Ukraine is not a problem for European security, but one of its fundamental elements. The Ukrainian army, defense industry, experience in countering the Russian military machine, and the ability of society to mobilize are a strategic resource for all of Europe. Ukraine must move from the role of a state that Europe helps to defend to the role of one of the key producers of European security.

At the same time, Ukraine must avoid the dangerous illusion that military victory alone will automatically solve all strategic problems. War ends not only on the battlefield. The future will also be determined by economic stability, the quality of state institutions, the rule of law, the fight against corruption, the development of human capital, the return of citizens, the modernization of the country, and its integration into European structures. A strong state is not only a state that is capable of fighting. It is a state that is difficult to break politically, economically, and socially.

As a result, the main response to the Russian strategy should not be the endless expectation of the next Russian attack, but a strategy of Ukrainian strengthening. When Moscow’s goal is to maintain chronic uncertainty around Ukraine, the only correct response from Kyiv should be to clearly and irreversibly define its own geopolitical vector.

If the Kremlin seeks to freeze Ukraine between war and peace, Ukraine should accelerate its integration into Europe. In response to Russia’s attempts to retain its veto power over Ukrainian decisions, Ukraine should build a system of international relations in which the Russian veto simply does not exist.

This is the main diplomatic task. Ukrainian diplomacy must speak to the world not only in the language of the need for assistance in the war, but in the language of common strategic interest. Ukraine is defending not only itself. It is defending the principle that no major state is given the right to decide what foreign policy course its neighbor should choose, what its political system should be, and what its future should be.

In this regard, any further negotiations on ending the war should be evaluated not only by the criterion of the cessation of hostilities, but also by the criterion of Ukraine’s long-term ability to remain a subject of its own politics. An agreement that leaves Ukraine formal sovereignty but creates conditions for constant Russian blackmail does not solve the problem. It only postpones its solution.

Real peace must answer a simple but fundamental question: what will happen if Russia decides again in a few years that Ukraine should change its political course? If the answer is that Ukraine will once again be left alone with the threat of invasion, then the current conflict will not really be over.

When Ukraine has sufficient domestic defense capabilities, reliable international partnerships, an integrated economy, and a clear place in the European security system, then war will cease to be a tool for determining its future.

This is the strategic difference between peace and pause. Pause gives the parties time. Peace changes the balance of power. The pause can be broken by the next missile. But true peace makes the use of force hopeless, since no missile can dictate the terms anymore.

Ukraine cannot build its future around the question of what Putin wants. It must build it around the question of what Ukrainian society wants and what institutions are capable of guaranteeing the realization of this choice.

This does not deny the need for negotiations with Russia. On the contrary, a strong negotiating position arises when the other side understands that refusing to compromise does not allow it to return to effective military coercion.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s strategic goal should be formulated as simply as possible: Russia may have its own interests, its own army, its own foreign policy and its own vision of the world, but it should not have the opportunity to determine the future of Ukraine by force.

This is the true meaning of Ukrainian sovereignty. Not just the right to have a flag, border and state institutions, but the real ability to independently determine its own historical path. If after the war Ukraine retains this right, then all its sacrifices will not be in vain, and the main political task that Russia set for itself will be completely crossed out.

The future of Ukraine should not be determined by the range of Russian missiles, the number of occupied square kilometers, or the Kremlin’s political will to continue the war. It should be determined by the ability of Ukrainian society, the Ukrainian state, and its allies to make Ukraine’s sovereign choice irreversible. Then Russia will lose the main resource of its aggressive policy – ​​the ability to convince the world and Ukraine itself that its future depends on Moscow’s decision.

And a stable peaceful settlement is not the same as the Russian Federation’s declarative refusal to engage in hostilities. The foundation of real peace is Moscow’s complete loss of the ability to determine Ukraine’s geopolitical course by military means. Depriving the Kremlin of the tools of forceful pressure must become a key priority of the long-term strategy of Ukraine and its European partners.