“They are literally fighting over a 30-50 km strip in Donetsk, roughly 20 percent of the region still under Ukrainian control and now a central issue in negotiations,” Marco Rubio said on Fox News Dec. 2. These words reveal a profound misunderstanding of the objectives Russia is pursuing.
Taken literally, the US Secretary of State’s remark contains a grain of truth: Russia does need these territories to declare a propaganda victory, both internally and externally. The Russian dictator stated that the self-proclaimed so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk would be “liberated” in any case. Does this mean that this is Putin’s main goal? No.
So what, then, is Russia’s goal?
The dictator announced his intentions years ago and repeated them in the months leading up to the 2022 invasion. Putin first exposed his ambitions at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, where he declared a return to imperial policy and rejected Europe’s security architecture.
The text of that speech resurfaced on Russian embassy websites in 2014, when the dismemberment of Ukraine began, and Russia annexed Crimea and seized parts of the east. The Russian leader confirmed this trajectory again a year later at the NATO summit in Bucharest. Looking back, one can recall the chill among European politicians – but no one took his words seriously enough to act decisively. On the contrary, they continued trying to appease Russia. One only needs to recall Obama’s reset or Germany’s energy policy crowned with the Nord Stream pipelines.
European and other democratic states operate within short planning cycles shaped by elections. Russia is the opposite. The long-term nature of the Kremlin’s strategy – pursued deliberately for over a decade through military aggression and hybrid operations – is the real problem. This is why the narrative of “fighting over a 30-50 km strip” is convenient for Moscow. Western partners ask whether it is worth investing massive financial and human resources in defending a devastated patch of land.
For Ukraine, Russia’s objective is political subjugation – stripping it of sovereignty and installing in Kyiv a puppet government dependent on Moscow.
The Institute for the Study of War recently reported that Russia has taken about 1% of Ukrainian territory since 2023 – bringing the total, including areas illegally annexed earlier, to 20 percent of the country. Today, Russia occupies less territory than it did at the start of the invasion, before Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive.
As painful as every loss is – not only territorial – the pace of Russian gains is barely perceptible. Recognizing them, however, would amount to a second partition of Ukraine. Only a naïve observer could believe Russia would not pursue a third. The Kremlin advances through a salami-slicing strategy: stripping Ukraine of territory and destabilizing it politically. And this is where the key lies. For Ukraine, Russia’s objective is political subjugation – stripping it of sovereignty and installing in Kyiv a puppet government dependent on Moscow. It is a return to the model that persisted for centuries until 1991. For NATO’s eastern flank, the goal is weakening and destabilization – to rebuild a Russian sphere of influence.
Ukraine’s war of independence and Russia’s challenge to the West
Other manifestations of the challenge Russia poses – not only to Ukraine but to the West – include hybrid operations: arson attacks, sabotage, cyberattacks, blowing up railway tracks in Poland, disrupting GPS over the Baltic Sea, and planting bombs on cargo planes. The list of below-threshold threats is long. If one followed the logic that this is about territory, one might absurdly conclude that Russia wants to seize cities in Poland, such as Białystok.
What the Kremlin really wants is for societies on NATO’s eastern flank to live in fear, become polarized, and see rising support for anti-Western, anti-Ukrainian, and more or less openly pro-Russian political forces. That, too, is a method of achieving its goals; the army and flag-raising are not the only tools.
It is also worth recalling that Russia attacked Ukraine when Kyiv began slipping from its orbit – when reformist thinking took root, identity processes accelerated, and even Viktor Yanukovych resisted fully subordinating Ukraine’s economy to Moscow. Russia tolerated a subordinate Ukraine, not an autonomous one. Once it realized it was losing it, aggression followed, then war. The Orange Revolution and Euromaidan were key turning points.
Russia is not treated as a threat… For Ukraine, the implications are far from encouraging.
Why is there such a profound misunderstanding of Russia’s goals?
There are several reasons. One is that the Trump administration’s objectives do not align with those of Ukraine or Europe. Among them is the desire for a quick end to the war – an idea that, in light of the above, is almost childishly naïve.
Another issue is a fundamental lack of understanding of Russia in Washington. The US political class does not perceive Russia as a serious state, many cannot imagine that a “gas station masquerading as a country” as the late Senator John McCain once put it, could pose a genuine challenge to America. And yet it does. This is evident in the new National Security Strategy: Russia is not treated as a threat, the need for strategic balance is emphasized, and Europe – despite demographic and economic challenges – is still seen as stronger than Russia. For Ukraine, the implications are far from encouraging.
Divergent interests and flawed assessments mean Washington entrusts negotiations to Trump’s confidants rather than experts. It is reasonable to question whether Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner can effectively negotiate with the Kremlin. America’s transactional mindset and “deal-making” logic are not necessarily shared by Russia’s political elite, shaped by the KGB. If they were, Moscow would have accepted a deal long ago – especially since available information suggests the offers were attractive. The fact that Russia has not altered its course despite severe sanction packages, including US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, confirms this.
Returning to Rubio’s statement: if a US politician known for hawkish views on Russia does not understand – or pretends not to understand – the Kremlin’s true goals, then the level of understanding among other administration officials and negotiators may be even worse. Russia has been steadily rebuilding its influence and attacking new states for years. The West, meanwhile, has remained deeply confused, repeatedly seeking accommodation with Moscow.
This is hardly new. The West’s outstretched hand toward Russia dates back to the 1990s. That was when the idea of a Europe “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” emerged. But instead of pursuing integration, Russia chose to bombard Grozny and wage war in Chechnya. For Ukraine, as one senior Ukrainian diplomat recently described it to me, this remains a “tough ride.”
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.