April 14, 2025: Vladimir Putin believes that one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin believes fixing this is his principal goal and that Ukraine is the first territory to be reclaimed. After that there are another dozen countries to conquer. Putin has few allies in this quest. Two other outlawed and sanctioned states, North Korea and Iran, are his only allies.

Once Putin conquers Ukraine and absorbs it into Russia, it will be entirely eliminated annexing portions of it into other adjacent Russian provinces. Russia has already been moving Ukrainian civilians it controls, or has kidnapped from Ukraine since the 2022 war began, to different parts of Russia where it will be easier to exterminate Ukrainian culture over a few generations. Russians will then be moved into the territory formerly occupied by those Ukrainians to make those areas very Russian.

There are also plans to conquer and occupy the three Baltic states plus portions of Poland and Romania, and then portions of, or all of, some Central Asian states (the “Stans”). Russia points out that these areas were part of Russia at one time and are overdue for reunification with the motherland. This is unlikely because Poland and Romania are members of NATO, an organization formed in 1949 to protect its members from Russian aggression by mandating that if one NATO member is attacked by Russia, then all NATO members will respond as if they had been attacked.

Russia has denounced NATO repeatedly and threatened to ignore it but has never actually attacked a NATO member. The NATO alliance members represent half the world GDP and nearly half of the world’s combat power. Russia attacking NATO would be suicidal, but so was the Russia invading Ukraine. Three years after the invasion the Russian army was depleted and demoralized. Over half a million dead and disabled has led to increasing desertions and spontaneous surrenders to the Ukrainians.

How bad is it? So bad that Russia has to spend millions of dollars to hire 15,000 North Korean soldiers. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has a million man army and is willing to part with half of it if the Russians can afford it. The first 12,ooo North Koreans were largely gone by March due to death, disablement, or desertion. Russia is running out of cash and its sanctioned economy limps along on scraps because war demands top priority. Putin is undismayed and vows to press on with his plan to rebuild the Soviet Union.

Another reason Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 was because Ukraine was negotiating with NATO to become a member. Ukraine was also about to become a member of the EU, European economic union. If Ukraine belonged to the EU, Ukraine would be less likely to trade with Russia because EU membership enables Ukraine to do nearly all its trade with EU members. This includes EU ally the United States, which has the largest and most diverse economy in the world.

According to Russian leaders, most of Ukraine once belonged to Russia and those areas were not called Ukraine. This ignores the fact that the Soviet Union succeeded in its 1945 demand that Ukraine be made a UN member as a country independent of Russia. This was to give Russia another vote in the UN. Ukrainian independence was a sham to Russian leaders, but most Ukrainians wanted a free and independent Ukraine. According to NATO and most other nations in the world, Ukraine became independent, as did a dozen other portions of the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Many Russians, including former Soviet era KGB officer Vladimir Putin, feel the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragic event that must be put right. If Putin can conquer and absorb Ukraine back into Russia, that will be the beginning of a Soviet Union revival. Putin will then go after the other now independent former Soviet States and ask or demand that they rejoin the Soviet Union. Belarus is the only one of those former Soviet states that might do so willingly. The other former Soviet states say they will fight, like Ukraine did, to resist becoming part of Russia once more.

But then there is Crimea, which is a special case and a separate problem for Russia, Ukraine and the Crimeans. In the 1990s Russia claimed that Crimeans had voted to become an independent Crimean state that wanted to eventually merge with Russia. Crimea was independent in the 1990s, something Crimeans voted for. Ukraine objected and in 1995 seized control of Crimea. Since the 18th century Crimea had belonged to the Russian Czarist Empire, then the Soviet Union and, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, became part of an independent Ukraine.

When Crimea became part of Ukraine, the Russians and Ukrainians negotiated a lease arrangement so that the Russian Black Sea Fleet could maintain its major naval base of Sevastopol. This meant that there was a large Russian military presence in Crimea legally and that made many Ukrainians nervous because those Russian troops could enable Russia to take control of Crimea by force, which they did in 2014 and still control the area in 2025. Ukraine still wants to reclaim Crimea and halted the flow of essential fresh water from Ukraine to Crimea in 2014. One reason for the 2022 Russian invasion was to seize Ukrainian controlled areas near Crimea and restore the flow of fresh water to Crimea. The Crimean situation complicates any efforts to make peace between Russia and Ukraine. Most Crimeans back Russia in the current Ukraine war because they consider Russia the lesser of two evils. That is an exception among neighbors of Russia that once belonged to the Soviet Union. Except for Crimea, no other former part of the Soviet Union wants to rejoin the Union.

Putin sees this reluctance to rejoin a new Soviet Union as an obstacle he can overcome if he has enough soldiers and weapons. If Putin is defeated in Ukraine and fails to halt the rearmament plans of the other former Soviet areas, Putin is stalled.

Making peace in Ukraine depends on Putin to agree. Putin will not even negotiate, at least not seriously, unless he can keep all the areas of Ukraine he presently controls or, more likely, all of it. As long as the 72 year-old Putin is alive, the Ukraine war will continue. The likelihood of peace actually happening is still further reduced by Russia’s constant practice of not adhering to cease-fires. One was made in 2015 after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, but Russia kept violating it until its second invasion in 2022. When Putin dies or is removed from office, peace is possible and quite likely to happen quickly. Putin says he can continue the war but even his closest associates would prefer new leadership for Russia. Putin has made himself president for life and since 1999 has mismanaged and misruled Russia to the point of bankruptcy and an ever growing list of economic sanctions. It has become clear to most observers outside the Trump administration that peace can only be made after Putin is gone.