US President Donald Trump has announced that he wants to put an end to the Russia-Ukraine War by engaging in direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As the three-year-old war draws to an end, there is a strong opinion that Moscow has achieved most of its war objectives and has emerged as a clear winner of this grinding war.
Following a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12, Donald Trump announced that the two leaders had agreed to start negotiations to end the war immediately. The US President later suggested that he would likely meet Putin in Saudi Arabia in the coming days to work out a solution.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy feels isolated and left out. On February 13, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not accept any bilateral deal between Russia and the United States to end the war if Kyiv is not part of the negotiations.
Shortly afterward, Trump indicated that Ukraine would be part of the negotiations.
Speaking to the reporters a day after the call, Trump said, “Of course they would, I mean they’re part of it. We would have Ukraine, and we’d have Russia, and we’d have other people involved too. … A lot of forks in this game, I’ll tell you what. This is a very interesting situation, but the Ukraine war has to end.”
The US President also said he would like to welcome back Russia into the Group of 7 – G7 (previously G8), from which the latter was expelled a decade ago for invading Crimea.
Several politicians and analysts have interpreted this as a win for Russia, including former Afghanistan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who posted a long thread on social media site X explaining how President Putin has achieved all his objectives in this war.
Has Putin Won?
In September 2024, Putin released a video message pledging that all the goals Moscow had set for itself in the war would be “achieved.” He also reiterated that the Russian military was sent to Ukraine to defend Russian-speaking people in that country against a “neo-Nazi dictatorship.”
For the most part, Russia has maintained that it entered Ukraine to ‘denazify’ the country, which was seen as a call for regime change in Kyiv. However, as Ukrainian forces put up fierce resistance, Moscow turned its attention to seizing the southeast of the country.
In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration as President, Russia and Ukraine intensified their offensive against each other in a bid to enter discussions with a position of strength. However, neither side made any decisive gains in this period.
With the war now potentially approaching its end, there is a strong perception that Putin has won. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Amrullah Saleh wrote: “Russia won the war. President Putin achieved most of the strategic objectives he had set at the outset of the Special Military Operation against Ukraine.” He gave an exhaustive list of why Russia has emerged as the winner in this war.
The first reason he listed is that Ukraine will not get NATO membership.
This is crucial. The fear of NATO expansion along Russia’s border has been the main factor behind the Kremlin’s decision to attack Ukraine.
Putin has argued that the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, was assured by the US leaders that if the Soviet Union disintegrated, the NATO alliance would not expand “one inch eastwards.”
The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was first considered in 2008. However, the idea was put on the back burner after Russia invaded Georgia. Later, in 2014, Russia invaded Crimea. Ukraine has been lobbying for joining NATO ever since. In fact, these calls have only grown louder after the February 2022 invasion.
However, despite militarily supporting Kyiv, NATO has been noncommittal to Ukraine’s demands. The final blow to the country came earlier this week when the new US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said that Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic.
The second reason Amrullah listed is that “Much of the Russian-speaking lands of Ukraine are already under Russia’s control.”
After being driven out of Central Ukraine in the initial days of the invasion, Russia retreated to fighting in the south and east of the country. On September 30, 2022, Russia announced the annexation of the four Ukrainian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
While Ukraine managed to retrieve some territory by launching multiple counter-offensives, large swathes of land remain under Russian occupation. As of now, Russia occupies about 20% of Ukrainian territory. On top of that, Russian forces are currently advancing deeper into the country from south and east, with fierce fighting taking place on the frontlines.
It is pertinent to mention that Ukraine is also currently in control of Russian territory in Kursk, which was occupied in a special offensive launched by Ukrainian forces in August 2024. Ukraine wants to use this territory as a bargaining chip to swap territories to end the war.
The third reason Amrullah listed is that “The Trans-Atlantic alliance is shaken.”
Undoubtedly, cracks have appeared within the backers of Ukraine in NATO. As ABC News recently noted: “President Donald Trump’s phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin has hit Europe and Ukraine as an earthquake.”
Within NATO, Hungary and Slovakia have publically sided with Russia. Turkey has been neutral since the start of the war and even hosted early ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, independent of the NATO alliance.
Now, European NATO members are miffed that Trump has initiated peace talks with Putin without consulting them. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, called it “regrettable” that “the Trump administration has already made public concessions to Putin before negotiations have even begun.”
Taking an exception to the call, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said that there could be “no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Similarly, Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister of Estonia, said, “We must not hand Russia any advantage before negotiations even begin.”
There are also serious differences among NATO members regarding Ukraine’s membership in the alliance, with the UK openly supporting Kyiv’s membership despite the US making it clear that Ukraine will not join NATO.
The fourth reason Amrullah cited is that “Sanctions have failed to weaken the Russian economy or the Russian military.”
As Russia’s forces marched into Ukraine in February 2022, the country was punished with a host of international sanctions. However, as the war approaches its third anniversary, the efficacy of these sanctions has been called into question. Several analysts and Western think tanks have noted that Moscow has managed to stay afloat by absorbing the economic blow caused by these sanctions and by circumventing them.
Russia has found alternative supply chains, ensuring it has access to resources via third parties. Several European countries that joined the sanctions regime were found to be still doing some transactions with Russia. GIS Reports published a detailed report on this, which can be read here.
Moreover, several Russian allies, including India, China, and Iran, continued doing business with Russia. For instance, Russia’s trade with India nearly doubled to US$65 billion in 2023. In fact, the two countries have also started doing transactions in rupee-rouble payments bypassing the US dollar.
Despite all the sanctions, Russia was one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe in 2023.
Amrullah’s fifth reason is that “a multipolar world is now a reality, not just an abstract concept.”
Russia’s resilience to stand firm despite maximum Western pressure and China’s emergence as the greatest challenger to the United States clearly show that the Unipolar world is over.
The expansion of BRICS also shows that a new multipolar world is emerging. The 16th BRICS Summit held in Kazan in October 2024 demonstrated the bloc’s tenacity and dedication to promoting a multipolar global order.
Amrullah also said, “Europe’s economy is weaker than before the Ukraine war due to the boycott of Russian energy and the destruction of Nord Stream 1.”
In this regard, Air University, Alabama, writes: “Europe relied heavily on Russia for meeting its energy demands before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. In response to economic sanctions imposed by the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom in the aftermath of the invasion, Russia weaponized its energy exports by cutting off natural gas supply to Europe by 80 percent, thereby posing a threat to European energy security. Although European countries found alternative energy suppliers, the prices were significantly higher.”
The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, which supplied natural gas from Russia to Western Europe, caused its natural gas prices to spike about 14%.
Amrullah also pointed out that “The Russian army has modernized the hard way and got battled hardened and experienced through hardship and sacrifice,” and “Confidence in Russian weaponry has been restored, attracting more clients as it stood against the entire NATO war industry.”
This is a complicated issue as Russian weapon exports have declined in the wake of the Ukraine war. According to a previous SIPRI report, Russian arms exports fell by 53% between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The report said that the decline was observed to be rapid over the previous five years.
Additionally, the market for Russian weapons has shrunk from thirty-one nations in 2019 to just twelve in 2024. Several countries have been looking to diversify their military supply chains to reduce dependence on Russian weaponry. However, a lot of this decline could be due to Russia’s preoccupation with the Ukraine war. Once the war is over, Russian weapons exports could increase again.
At the same time, several countries have been enamored by the combat performance of many Russian weapon systems. For instance, Deputy General Director of Rostec, Vladimir Artyakov, said in 2023 that Russian systems like the Su-35 fighters, Ka-52 helicopters, T-90 tanks, and heavy flamethrower systems have recorded a surge in the global arms market after their combat performance in Ukraine.
Veteran Journalist, foreign policy expert, and Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times says — “It was, after all, Biden’s war, not Putin’s. Putin was provoked by Biden. After all, Russia has been betrayed over every agreement that Americans had made to end the Cold War. It was unimaginable that Ukraine would be given the NATO membership that Biden and NATO eventually promised. Trump is doing a great job of not pursuing that stupid goal.”
Having said that, Russia also failed to achieve some war objectives. For instance, the Kyiv regime is still firmly placed, and NATO has expanded further. Russian neighbors Sweden and Finland are also NATO members now.
Europe has successfully decoupled itself from Russian energy, and most of the European countries are firmly united against Russia.
