What is Putin fighting for?

To protect his new territorial acquisitions? To overthrow Zelenskyy's government? To join Ukraine to the Union State of Russia and Belarus? In all this, the Russians themselves and everyone who tries to soberly assess the situation are confused.

In general, it is not clear what Putin's goals in Ukraine are. It is also unclear what he wants from NATO, America and Europe, since his declared goals obviously contradict Russia's real actions and real capabilities.

Many have already stated the obvious fact: all the declared goals of the "special operation" have been achieved by the Russians exactly to the contrary. Instead of "denazification of Ukraine" - patriotic mobilization and cleansing of most spheres of life of the country from Russian agents. Instead of "demilitarization" - a qualitative and quantitative increase in military capabilities, transformation of the Ukrainian armed forces into a central institution of statehood and an influential factor in European politics. The issue of Crimea is not just back on the agenda, but there is an international consensus on its solution - return of the stolen to the rightful owner. Putin does not protect Donbas, but completely destroys and depopulates it.

Ukraine, which Putin wanted to discredit and destroy, has become a symbol of the struggle for freedom in the modern world, its president - the political leader of the year. Ukraine is approaching EU membership, and its military cooperation with leading NATO countries is much higher than, for example, that of Turkey. International assistance to Ukraine amounts to tens of billions of dollars, and all the leading countries of the world promise to join the country's recovery after the war. Is this what Putin wanted?

In the international arena, the Kremlin has other, no less impressive "achievements". Instead of weakening NATO's influence in the region - the revival of Euro-Atlantic solidarity and building up its military potential, plus its unequivocal focus on deterring Russia. On its western flank, the Russian Federation has received an openly hostile environment from Finland to Bulgaria (Hungary is an exception, but also indicative).

Russian assets, Russian agents and media, pro-Russian sympathizers and lobbyists - all this has suffered a huge blow everywhere in the world, and especially where the investments were particularly large - in America and Europe. Plus the loss of European markets, including for the most important Russian exports - oil and gas. Plus the loss of foreign investments, components for Russian industries, the severance of long-term production and trade ties. In addition, a large-scale cancelling of Russian culture, the image of the aggressor country and the killer nation.

Putinists dream of restoring the Soviet Union, but after the outbreak of war with Ukraine, Russia is rapidly losing its positions in the post-Soviet space. Even its most loyal vassals, such as Armenia and Tajikistan, are distancing themselves from it, not to mention Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Moldova. The CIS, CSTO and EAEU are experiencing a deep crisis of internal trust and are becoming increasingly formal structures.

Partners in the SCO, BRICS, and even a strategic ally - China - show restraint in supporting Moscow, and increasingly express their dissatisfaction with the current situation. North Korea and Iran officially deny their military assistance to Russia, as it can discredit even dictators.

In most areas of Russia's foreign and security policy, the changes are catastrophic, and the continuation of the war makes them irreversible. And yet, Putin continues the war and defiantly refuses to change anything in his approaches.

There is only one explanation for all this: Putin's goals are not in Ukraine and not in relations with the West. Putin's main goals are inside Russia.

All the losses that Russia as a state has suffered over the past year in the international arena should be put next to all the achievements of the regime that Putin has made at the same time inside his own country.

In Russia, even hints of a public competitive policy have disappeared, and there is only a rigid vertical of power. Russia has introduced the most severe censorship and persecutes any dissent. 

The official ideology of fundamentalist type is being imposed in Russia. Everything liberal and progressive is fleeing from Russia. Russian men are ready to go to war for the opportunity to buy sausages and maintain an old shabby Lada car. No one asks the Kremlin about corruption anymore, and everyone is just happy to see Ukrainian hospitals and maternity hospitals left without electricity.

Thus, Putin got the power he wanted, the state he needed and the people he liked. And, of course, no one will ask him about the legality of his next presidential term.

This outcome of the war is much more important for the regime than relations with NATO, BRICS, Sweden, Czech Republic, Armenia and Ukraine combined.

The war with Ukraine is just a way to achieve the Putin regime's domestic political goals. Both a quick victory and a long and exhausting defense of Russian troops in Ukraine may serve the same goals of the regime within Russian society and the Russian government in different ways.

Many are surprised at the recklessness of the Russian leader, who has not listened to the warnings and is deliberately pushing his country towards disaster. But it should be admitted that Putin is ready to go for a complete deconstruction of the model of the state and society that was formed in the Russian Federation in the period 1991-2013. He no longer needs it. Moreover, it scares him, because its evolution may one day lead to a new Bolotnaya Square, a hipster revolution or an LGBT coup (in the imagination of the members of the club of 70-year-old paranoids who make up the dictator's entourage).

In fact, the protests of the Russian opposition in the winter of 2011-2012 launched that large-scale counter-revolution, which included, among other things, the "annexation of Crimea" and the subsequent war against "Maidan" Ukraine.

Similarly, the unsuccessful uprising of the Decembrists prompted Emperor Nicholas I to completely rebuild the country on the basis of "Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality", to create in Russia powerful institutions of political police and gendarmerie, to introduce total censorship and centralized policy of the Ministry of "national education". And also, of course, to the brutal suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830, the punitive expeditions to Europe in 1848 and the attack on Turkey that later became known as the Crimean War.

After Bolotnaya Square, Putin effectively closed the Skolkovo project, gave away the spaceport in the Far East for plunder, and raised the retirement age for Russians. Instead, he threw money at rearming the army, reforming special services and special operations abroad. No one could understand why the funds are accumulated in state reserves, and not invested in development. And, because Putin does not need investments and development, but he needs a "dry ration" for those "hard times" that he and his friends from the Ozero cooperative planned for Russia in advance.

When we say that Putin wants something or has decided something, of course, we do not mean a specific KGB pensioner with poor health, undermined psyche and a very narrow worldview.

In fact, there is no geostrategist named Putin who moves the pieces on the world chessboard. There is no romantic of the White Guard or a follower of Stalin obsessed with restoring the empire. All these are masks and myths created by Kremlin political technologists for external and internal use. In reality, there is a completely gray personality, an opportunist and a cynic who clings to power and seeks all possible means to retain it.

But this does not mean that the Russian authorities have no subjectivity and no strategy of their own. Putin is a symbol and a trademark operated by a certain circle of people who are quite determined in their intentions and able to use enormous resources to achieve their goals.

It is known that as of February 2022, a narrow circle of the regime's leaders consisted of Putin, Patrushev and Kovalchuk. Outside of this strategic core, there is a circle of major shareholders of the regime, each of which has in its subordination the basic industries, institutions and instruments of power - the Duma, the military-industrial complex, the FSB, gas and oil, banks, the Rosgvardia, the Chechen Pakhanat, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin's PMC, media resources. All together they make up Putin's system and are interested in the project of Russia, which is now at the stage of its implementation.

Therefore, for convenience, it is worth talking about "collective Putin", who has his brain, his hands, his eyes around the world and will achieve his goals at any cost. These people have made their choice, so it is useless to appeal to their conscience or common sense. And apart from them, no one decides anything in Russia anymore.

Collective Putin does not feel sorry for a hundred or three hundred thousand dead. He does not feel sorry for Pskov paratroopers or Buryat tankers.

He is ready to throw into the furnace of war not only gold and currency reserves, but also the entire banking business, shares of Russian corporations, and the IT sector. He does not care that the middle class is disappearing in Russia, and the best specialists are going abroad.

He is indifferent to the losses of Russian billionaires, their yachts and villas on the Cote d'Azur.

He is deliberately destroying what was called the Russian Federation until 2014. Because he is building another country, with another social system, on other principles, with another identity and another positioning in the world.

Why? Because only in this other Russia he can guarantee to retain power for himself and his entourage.

And they have nowhere to retreat.

Therefore, there will be no voluntary return to normality. There will be only a deeper gap between the consciousness of Russians and reality. There will be a demand for new victims and even greater commitment.

This will go on, unitil this bubble bursts from the lack of resources for its maintenance and internal enmity, which will then come to the surface.