12 Feb 2026 · 5:35 AM UTC
https://nitter.net/ArmchairW/status/2021820490289910190

A theory for the evening.⬇️

The most basic way to learn who someone is and what their goals are is to listen
to them when they're talking. The Russians have said, again and again, to the
highest levels of their government, that they want a permanent solution in
Ukraine - preferably one that is not just a permanent solution to their
Ukrainian problem but to their NATO problem as well. They have also stated, ad
nauseum, that the goals of the Special Military Operation will be achieved, come
hell or high water, by force or by negotiation - but they will be achieved.
They have been remarkably consistent about all of this for the entire duration
of the war.

Once you internalize that a permanent solution to their western problem is the
actual goal of the Russian government, and they are prepared to fight a major
war over this for as long as it takes because it's an existential matter for
them, murky Russian foreign policy goals and actions suddenly become clear. In
particular this explains Putin's oft-criticized obsession for negotiations with
Western powers that often seem to go nowhere or even harm Russian interests,
because incorporating NATO interests into a Russian-dictated postwar framework
in Ukraine is the one way by which the Russians can realistically achieve all of
their war goals and create a new security paradigm in Europe rather than a new
Cold War.

To put it differently, conquering Ukraine is actually Putin's last option, not
his first - a brute force solution to the post-Soviet crisis that will lead
directly to renewed and direct military confrontation with NATO. Lest we
forget, the first Cold War didn't turn out well for Russia and Putin is almost
certainly keen to avoid a second round of large-scale frozen conflict in Europe.
This requires a subtle combination of diplomacy and hard power to engineer a
long-term solution by which NATO ceases to be a threat - the exact opposite of
Stalin's communist hammer and direct confrontation.

How has all of this been working? Four years ago NATO was marching in lockstep
and their Ukrainian proxy was fully prepared for war. Now NATO is economically
enervated and politically divided - in no shape at all to fight Russia, all loud
rhetoric to the contrary - and the Ukrainian nation is bleeding out. Russia is
the largest economy in Europe and one of the largest on Earth. Now and once
more after four years, the Europeans are coming to Moscow. Clearly Putin's
doing something right.

I pointed out earlier that this model is explanatory of Russian behavior
throughout the war. Yesterday I repeated my usual jibe that the Ukrainians
surrendered in March 2022 and had to be bribed back into the war by NATO after
Russian troops had already partially withdrawn from Ukraine following their
victory. While it is emotionally satisfying to remind Ukraine shills that their
mighty army was soundly defeated in five weeks of combat and their once-arrogant
leaders bent the knee to Vladimir Putin, this somewhat oversimplifies what
actually transpired in Istanbul that led Putin to order the troops out of Kiev.

Putin himself said during his interview with Tucker Carlson that he ordered the
withdrawal after being requested to do so by Western leaders - Macron and Scholz
in particular - who argued that the Ukrainians could not sign a peace treaty in
good faith with Russian troops besieging their capital. Putin duly ordered the
troops out and instead of ratifying the peace treaty the Ukrainians immediately
pretended that they had won a glorious victory, shredded their commitments from
Istanbul, and continued the war with their mauled army rearmed from NATO's
stockpiles.

The conventional telling of this chain of events implicitly paints Putin as a
sucker who was tricked by NATO and clever Ukrainians. This is fallacious - the
notion that Putin is naive about Western intentions, particularly that he was in
March 2022, is beyond laughable. The actual peace agreement on the table at
Istanbul, however, foresaw a political resolution that met Russian political
objectives - a neutral and disarmed Ukraine inside of a European security
framework - while envisioning a more or less general withdrawal of Russian
forces from Ukraine. Withdrawal of forces had to start somewhere and the
Ukrainian government had to physically get back to Kiev from their Polish
bolt-holes to sign the surrender. Putin would have been foolish to not give
them the opportunity to hand him the exact kind of victory he'd been looking
for.

Critically, however, the Russians had a massive "or else" on the table at
Istanbul, because as we now know very well they had the capability to completely
destroy Ukraine, regardless of any amount of support that NATO could provide, in
the event of a denunciation. The Ukrainians stupidly denounced their
commitments regardless, and the rest has been history. But none of this means
that the Russians have abandoned their original goal of a general negotiated
settlement that would relieve them of the burden of a postwar military standoff
with NATO - hence why they remain willing to entertain negotiations to this day.

And given the trajectory of this war, there's really no reason to believe that
they won't eventually get exactly what they're looking for. The Russians are
patient people and willing to let the crisis keep stewing until the right level
of economic and military pressure brings NATO and Ukraine to the table and
willing to make the deal they want on their terms.