When President Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year, he confidently announced that he could do a broker at the immediate end for the Russia-Ukraine war. But the White House has achieved a better meaning of meaningful compromise ability in the months, and its expectations have been modified below – below.
“I don’t know what happened to Putin,” Trump Told reporters late May. On the same day, he posted on Truth social that the Russian leader “has gone mad.” Since then, although the administration has continued to suppress Moscow for any compromise with Kiev, more of its officials now understand that Russia has no real interest in de-size.
But why, okay? Eventually, Kremlin has already spent heavy blood and treasures in his efforts to dominate Ukraine, and continue to do so. Russian battlefield Is estimated To make 1 million hits, its campaign against Ukraine is more expensive than all the conflicts after all world warfare in the country.
Nevertheless, Kremlin has remained in the war of aggression of his war, both ideological and practical reasons.
Ideologically, in recent years, the revival of the dreams of the Eurasian Empire of Russia has been seen and efforts have been made by the Kremlin to revise their boundaries outwards – and to do so at the cost of its nervous neighbors. Underlining all this is an expansionist ideology that sees both regional profit and conflict with the West as indispensable. Or, one -time Kremlin Insider Vladislav Surkov Keep it Earlier this year, “There is no limit in the Russian world.”
This helps explain Russia’s ongoing aggression towards Ukraine – and its purpose in the current Trusa talks. Dimitri Medvedev, Vice President of Russia’s Security Council, “Istanbul talks are not to compromise on someone else’s terms, but to ensure our fast victory and complete destruction of Nav-Nazi regime,” Vice President of Russia’s Security Council, ” Recently declared On Telegram, mention of the Government of Ukrainian.
The second cause of Russia’s military is economic. Growing evidence suggests that in front of continuous international sanctions, Kremlin has withdrawn the country’s economic sector, preferred military industries (while neglecting others) and making their armed forces the focal point of national development.
The signs of this innings are everywhere. There is a dramatic bounce in a military expenditure. Russia have picked up This year 25 percent, and the country’s defense budget, its defense spending on 13.5 trillion rubles ($ 145 billion), now more than 6 percent of the total GDP.
Incentive funds have an allocation of billions to promote another Russian military complex. This support, both carried out Officially And off the booksThe country’s defense sector is led, while other industries become stable.
A third is a major expansion in the rate of production of war. European officer Now estimate The country makes the same ammunition in three months as the entire NATO block is done in one year. They project that Moscow will produce 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles and 200 Iskander missiles in 2025.
All of them have helped Russia’s war machine to make the engine of their national economy, and has stopped the state in a continuous campaign of military.
Fast, European officials look at writing on the wall. In a recent speech in London, NATO General Secretary Mark Rute Wags This Russia may be ready to attack a NATO treaty nation within five years, and that as a reaction, a “a quantum jump” in collective defense was required. “The danger will not disappear even when the war ends in Ukraine,” he said.
Those words are a serious acceptance of Russia’s revisionist ideology, Who sees Ukraine Just as before in a series of unavoidable victory. It is also a quiet belief that, in a real sense, Putin now needs a ongoing war to protect his rule.
For the Trump administration, which is still demanding a sharp end for conflict, which is undoubtedly a bitter pill to swallow. But the drivers of the Russian policy decide that, even if he wanted, the Kremlin is unable to climb his current foreign policy without risking ideological bankruptcy or economic turmoil, or both.
The corollery is that until Moscow is stopped in Ukraine, it will essentially need to be closed elsewhere – and potentially at the higher cost for the US and its European partners.
Ilan Burman Washington is a senior vice -president of the US Foreign Ethics Council at Washington, DC
