No Modest Ukraine Deal Will Slake Putin’s Thirst for Soviet Glory

President Donald Trump is pushing for a meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, following a summit at the White House on Monday. (Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg)

About the author: Carolyn Kissane is the associate dean of the NYU-School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs, and the founding director of the SPS Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab.

Russia’s long-serving foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, arrived in Alaska sporting a Soviet Union sweatshirt. Once seen as pragmatic, Lavrov has in recent years mirrored the Kremlin’s radicalized, combative politics. His gray sweatshirt, emblazoned with the letters CCCP, the Russian equivalent of U.S.S.R., was no casual wardrobe choice. Rather, it was a slogan, a signal, and a reminder that for Russia’s leadership, the Soviet project remains unfinished business.

Why does this matter?

Friday’s summit in Alaska confirmed what should already be clear: Vladimir Putin isn’t stepping away from Ukraine. He has tied his presidency and his legacy to restoring Russia’s greatness, and while he is alive, he is unlikely to cede an inch of ground. What Western leaders keep missing, including President Donald Trump last week and even in his phone call on Monday to Putin after meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, is that Putin’s politics are rooted in humiliation and revenge.

The costs of that project are staggering. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, estimates Russia has lost an estimated 250,000 soldiers and suffered nearly a million casualties overall in Ukraine, five times more fatalities than in all Soviet and Russian wars since 1945 combined. Yet Putin presses forward. To him, defeat would confirm weakness. Retreat would be intolerable.

Afghanistan is important to understanding why. From 1979 to 1989, more than 14,500 soldiers were killed in a war Soviet troops couldn’t win. The withdrawal was a profound humiliation that hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin has never forgotten this lesson. In 2005, he famously called the end of the U.S.S.R. “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” His presidency has been an effort to reverse that catastrophe. Ukraine is now its centerpiece.

I warned about this pattern in a 2017 column. Humiliation theory helps explain Putin’s motivations, I wrote. Political psychologists Bettina Muenster and David Lotto describe humiliation as fueling “retaliatory behavior, even at additional cost to the retaliator.” Putin embodies this perfectly. The greater the bloodletting, the more he insists on pressing forward. He seeks to restore what was lost. He does revenge alarmingly well.

He isn’t the only Russian who shows this trait. Research from Paul Chaisty and Stephen Whitefield at Oxford University shows that nearly half of Russians now identify more strongly with the Soviet Union than with the Russian Federation. That nostalgia is about more than borders. The Soviet era calls up a sense of stability, welfare, and pride. Older and less affluent Russians are more likely to identify with the U.S.S.R., and after the 2014 annexation of Crimea the probability that Putin voters would choose Soviet over Russian identity rose sharply. Putin has consistently tapped into this post-2014 surge in Soviet nostalgia, positioning himself as the leader who can restore Russia’s pride and power.

The Kremlin has used this sentiment to reframe today’s war. Russia’s defense minister, Andrei Belousov, published a May 8 essay arguing that the war in Ukraine would go down in history as a feat equal to the Soviet Union’s victory in 1945. He claimed the conflict is a continuation of “glorious traditions” of Soviet bravery and insisted that domestic unity is as essential today as it was in defeating Nazi Germany. Russian state media amplified his words, making clear that Moscow wants its people to see the war as existential and inevitable, a civilizational battle to preserve Russia’s survival against the West.

In Alaska, Putin showed he is very comfortable displaying this identity. Trump, meanwhile, entered the meeting without his signature MAGA cap. He seemed more at ease with Putin than with the Western leaders whom he met at the White House a few days later.

Trump was outmaneuvered by a leader with a grand strategy two decades in the making. He has had to admit that his campaign promise of ending the war in 24 hours was premature. Still, Trump gave the summit a “10.” Putin, if asked, would likely have given it an “11.” With the cameras rolling, Putin even invited Trump to Moscow, in English, taking a final chance to underscore who left on top.

The subsequent developments in Washington only reinforced this dynamic. Zelensky and seven European leaders joined Trump at the White House on Monday. The Europeans pressed for Trump to give Zelensky a security guarantee akin to NATO’s Article 5, which commits alliance members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Zelensky insisted Ukraine needs “everything,” but may have to settle for Trump’s promise of “very good protection and very good security.”

In a show of his self-styled diplomacy, Trump broke from the meeting to call Putin directly, later floating a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky. The Kremlin described the call as “frank,” diplomatic shorthand for disagreement, and offered no assurance that Putin would participate. Indeed, Putin has long refused to treat Zelensky as legitimate, let alone his equal.

More arms may flow to Ukraine after the summitry— Zelensky spoke of $90 billion in U.S. purchases —but none of this alters the underlying reality. Putin’s grand strategy remains unchanged. Russia occupies 20% of Ukraine, with more than three million Ukrainians living under occupation. Putin seeks to control a swath of Ukraine, not negotiate away what he has taken. By invoking Soviet glory and casting the war as existential, the Kremlin has signaled again and again that it isn’t committed to peace or a cease-fire, but to reshaping Europe’s security map in Russia’s favor.

The glaring truth is that Trump got played in Alaska. His top advisers, largely economic hands with little experience in Russia, were unprepared to meet a seasoned autocrat steeped in revenge. Trump is making the mistake of treating Putin as a negotiator who can be swayed by reason or incentives. But Putin isn’t playing by rational rules.

Putin is asking Kyiv to cede the Donbas, part of Ukraine’s industrial and economic heartland. That wouldn’t be peace. It would be amputation, permanently weakening Ukraine’s ability to stand as a sovereign, secure state. It would also leave Russia territorially closer to NATO’s eastern flank, which should alarm every European ally.

Trump is left veering between portraying Zelensky and Ukraine as the problem or Russia and Putin as the obstacle. Despite the back and forth, the reality is as clear as the letters on Lavrov’s sweatshirt. No meaningful settlement is in reach, because for Putin, Ukraine isn’t a bargaining chip. It is the battlefield for a generational mission. He won’t back down, no matter the pressure or the cost.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barron’s newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit feedback and commentary pitches to ideas@barrons.com.