In December 1991, the fall of the Berlin Wall, a visible symbol of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, marked the Soviet Union’s dissolution. Less than ten years later, in January 2010, Vladimir Putin was elected president of Russia. Over the next ten years, he solidified his control over all areas of government. In 2020, he amended his presidential term until 2036, essentially making him President for Life. Vladimir Putin, supreme dictator of Mother Russia, was the “Master of His Fate, the Captain of His Soul, thanking whatever Gods May Be, for His Unconquerable Soul!”
In 2014, with little opposition, Russian unmarked soldiers occupied the Crimean Peninsula, a southern area on the Black Sea of Ukraine with major naval bases. Putin quickly integrated it back into Russia. Simultaneously, Russian-backed paramilitaries occupied Ukraine’s Donbas regions, which had a large concentration of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Putin positioned these acquisitions to reacquire the rest of Ukraine.
In February 2022, Putin ordered Russian military forces to initiate a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With the full might of the Russian Armed Forces, Putin sent them into Ukraine against their ragtag military headed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who three years previously was a TV actor and producer. Putin expected to have Ukraine in just weeks.
Four years later, his grand army is stalemated along a six-hundred-mile front; they have suffered losses of an estimated 1.5 million troops, and Zelenskyy’s forces are attacking throughout Russia, its military and infrastructure with drones and missiles. The International Criminal Court has arrest warrants out on him for illegal child abductions during the war. The international community, in which he was a major player before the war, has condemned his invasion and expanded sanctions against Russia. How or when the Russian/Ukraine War will end is uncertain.
Putin expected that by reintegrating Ukraine into Russia, Russia would be recognized as a great world power again, which has become his greatest gamble in restoring Russian greatness!
With the Ukrainian War stalemated, the other segments of his plan for Western Europe could not proceed. Before invading Ukraine, Russia had established energy hegemony over Europe through petroleum sales into the region, but the Ukraine fiasco brought those energy programs down. Putin aimed to keep Ukraine from joining the European Union, which the war has accomplished, but the Europeans have been much more aggressive in aiding Ukraine.
Putin had hoped NATO could be weakened by a less engaged U.S., but President Trump shamed NATO members into increasing their military spending and taking on more responsibility for maintaining Ukraine’s independence. Ukraine’s military developed drone tactics that devastated Russian ground troops, slowing their progress and causing them to seek shelter in protected trenches. Ukrainian drones are attacking refineries, shipping terminals, and e-commerce warehouses deep into Russia, causing energy shortages, high inflation, and air travel restrictions.
If Ukraine had been absorbed back into Russia, Putin could have moved against the small Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which they lost in 1991 and which would strengthen Russian naval posture on the Baltic Sea and its outlet to the world’s oceans.
Putin’s alliances with Xi Jinping and Iran were meant to reduce U.S. economic and military hegemony worldwide, but instead Putin relies more on Xi to keep Russia’s economy afloat. With the aid of Israel, Donald Trump has eliminated Iran’s effectiveness in controlling events in the Middle East. The U.S./Iran conflict is not totally resolved, but Iran is no longer a military power and nuclear threat to the world.
Putin’s strategic gamble to restore Russia as a great European power depends on how the Ukrainian War ends. Four years after it began, though, Putin may need to spend more time ensuring his Presidency for Life is secure, rather than looking for new adventures.
TW3
September 10, 2026
John Whitmore Jenkins
www.jenkins-speaks.com
john@jenkins-speaks.com
