Almost four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion: A historical look into the future
Almost four years after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, historian Jan Claas Behrends (ZZF/European University Viadrina) takes a historically informed look back—and warns against illusions about quick negotiated solutions. He shows how imperial traditions, violent politics, and the structure of Putin’s regime are shaping the war and why concessions to Moscow encourage escalation.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has already lasted almost as long as the German-Soviet war (1941–1945); in total, we are looking at twelve years. Nevertheless, there is often still a lack of a deeper, historically grounded understanding of the war. This was most recently demonstrated by the reaction to US President Trump’s negotiation initiatives – it seems unrealistic to me that this constant appeasement of Moscow will have a positive influence on the conflict. On the contrary, when the West shows weakness, Russia has always escalated the conflict further. Looking back, we can see that this is a likely scenario for the future. So let’s look at the reasons for the war in order to better understand its present and future.
The historical causes of the war in Ukraine
As a historian, I see a toxic mix of several factors that make the conflict between Russia, Ukraine, and the West a fundamental one. Some of these factors are deeply rooted in Russian history, some stem from the Soviet era, and some are related to the current Russian leadership.
The first point I would mention is the deeply entrenched imperial tradition among Russia’s elites and population. After the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western observers underestimated the persistence of this imperial thinking and overestimated the changes initiated during perestroika. Fundamentally, however, Russian elites continue to define their country and its politics in terms of its claim to be a great power with unlimited sovereignty and its own sphere of influence. Although Moscow signed the Charter of Paris in 1990, Russia’s elites never really embraced the idea of a Europe consisting of sovereign nation states. Rather, the Kremlin always viewed the sovereignty of other, smaller states with reservation. On the contrary, Russia’s rulers continued to see themselves as the only great power in the post-Soviet space and sought to regain their status as a global power. For those who govern Russia, this imperial mission outweighs other concerns, such as modernizing the country or foreign trade. This, too, has often been misunderstood in the West. Initially, Chancellor Merkel offered trade in exchange for better relations, and in recent months President Trump has acted along these lines. However, this approach is doomed to failure as long as Putin and his circle continue to prioritize their revisionist mission.
Russia is thus driven by both imperial legacies and revisionist ambitions.
War and violence as common means of foreign policy
Second, Russia has a fundamentally different relationship to war and violence than the West has had since 1945. Historically and in the present, Russia considers the use of military force and diplomatic coercion to be legitimate means of foreign policy. Since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan – that is, for almost five decades – Moscow has been at war almost continuously: from the Hindu Kush to the Caucasus, Moldova, and Abkhazia to Chechnya, from Georgia and Syria to the current war against Ukraine. In these wars and conflicts, Soviet and Russian forces have mostly fought in consistent disregard of international law. Many of these conflicts were accompanied by atrocities or genocidal acts. Under President Putin, Russia has also revived the Soviet tradition of accompanying its aggression with massive propaganda campaigns – both at home and abroad – in our countries. Russian wars have many dimensions.
A fundamentally totalitarian state
Thirdly, Russian statehood is defined in a completely different way from the modern state in the West: at its core, it remains the apparatus of coercion that emerged during the revolution and civil war at the beginning of the 20th century. This totalitarian core of Russian statehood was not dismantled despite Gorbachev’s perestroika and the collapse of 1991. Although the Communist Party was dissolved in 1991, the two remaining pillars of the dictatorship – the army and the secret police –remained in place. What’s more, neither of them has ever been reformed. Today, the army and the secret services form the cornerstones of Putin’s regime. Their fundamental beliefs and practices, their lawlessness and criminality, date back to the Soviet era and continue to shape the present. As long as they exist in this form, these instruments of violence will remain a threat to European security, even under different leadership elites. Russia’s army and secret police are and will remain criminal and violent institutions.
Putin fantasizes about Russia as the Soviet superpower of the 1970s
Fourth historical factor: The geopolitical position of the late Soviet Union and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 shape the thinking of Putin’s generation. Today’s leadership and Putin himself are products of the late Soviet Union and the 1990s. Vladimir Putin was socialized in the late 1960s and early 1970s – a time when the West was weak and the USSR was a global superpower. For Vladimir Putin and many of his peers, this is the status they want to regain: they want to act on an equal footing with the US, even if that is unrealistic. Russia is therefore an aggressive revisionist power that wants to achieve more than just the destruction of independent Ukraine. Rather, the Russian leadership wants to play a role in a multipolar world similar to that of the USSR in the 1970s. This has been the goal of Putin’s generation since it came to power in the 1990s. In addition, Putin and his entourage were shaped by the post-communist chaos, crime, and corruption of the years after 1991. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they learned that only the unscrupulous – the most unscrupulous – can prevail on a completely uneven playing field. They applied this lesson to the field of foreign policy and began to harass the West quite successfully. It is completely unrealistic to expect the Putin generation, which has been shaped in this way, to change once it is in power.
Negotiations without leverage lead to war and conflict
Fifth and final point: The West has been sending the wrong signals in its dealings with Putin for 20 years. After the end of the Cold War, the West, especially the Europeans, abandoned deterrence and containment in favor of dialogue and trade – both with Russia and with China. The underlying idea was that Moscow’s integration into the rules-based international order would be attractive to both sides. However, Russia, which lacks the rule of law and binding rules at home, never had any intention of accepting international law and regulations – especially when those laws conflicted with the Kremlin’s interests. The West responded to Russian aggression and violations of the international order with repeated attempts to remain in dialogue – think of Obama’s “reset,” Minsk I and II, or more recently, the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska. All these attempts failed spectacularly. Why? The Kremlin interprets our offers of dialogue as a sign of weakness. Russia responds with escalation on the battlefield. We saw this in Minsk, and we saw the same thing in Ukraine this summer. Negotiations without leverage are a path to more war and conflict.
The West must signal strength in order to be taken seriously
That is why the West should finally stop sending signals of weakness; we must learn to project our strength again. Only the strong are taken seriously in the Kremlin; the weak are despised. In Putin’s world, as in Stalin’s world during the Cold War, the weak deserve to be beaten. Russian political culture is based on ruthlessness, and being ruthless is considered a virtue – especially, but not only, in times of war. We must begin to acknowledge this reality and stop imagining a Russia that does not exist.
Only by considering the historical developments I have outlined here can we move forward in our analysis of the present. No war happens without preconditions. Where are we now at the end of 2025?
An existential war for Ukraine and Russia
To understand the historical dimensions of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, we must realize that this is an existential war for both sides. To this end, it is worth taking a look at the respective belief and conviction systems of Ukraine and Russia. For Ukraine, this is a struggle for survival – the survival of the state itself and Ukrainian culture is at stake. The majority of the population in all parts of the country understands this and supports this struggle.
For Putin’s Russia, this war is primarily about bringing Ukraine back into the Russkii Mir. If Putin cannot achieve this goal, he is prepared to destroy Ukraine – which is why this war has genocidal tendencies. But beyond that, the conquest of Ukraine is only the first step in Russia’s attempt to reshape the European and, if possible, the global order. By accepting enormous losses, Putin has made this war his own. Personally, he can no longer accept compromise – the stakes are too high: He is threatened with losing power. And we should understand that in the third year of the war, the Russian dictator is ultimately fighting for his political and possibly also his physical survival.
That is why I am convinced that economic incentives will not help to end this war – that was once Merkel’s approach and is currently Trump’s approach. Wrongly so. Because Putin is not interested in profit, but in power. If we understand these fundamentals of the war – Ukraine’s existential struggle and Putin’s deeply rooted ideological convictions – then we realize that the prospects for a negotiated solution are slim. A compromise between these two positions is hardly conceivable.
How can the war be ended?
Like most wars in European history, this war will most likely be decided on the battlefield. It could drag on for a long time. The war will end when one of the two sides collapses – militarily, economically or morally. For Ukraine, this means that the West must continue to support Kiev resolutely, because the collapse of Ukraine would be nothing less than a catastrophe for European security.
Vladimir Putin will be desperate to avoid a revolutionary upheaval in Russia like those of 1917 or 1991. That is why he has turned Russia into a neo-totalitarian state, with severe repression against anyone who opposes the war. Stability in Russia depends on the ability of its secret police to maintain order and uphold the dictator’s authority. But we know that every authoritarian state collapses the moment the chain of command breaks down. We saw this in part during Prigozhin’s uprising. A similar situation could repeat itself tomorrow – or there could be years of repressively enforced stability. We don’t know, and we must be prepared for both scenarios. Dictatorships are difficult to interpret, and their future is uncertain. Who foresaw the collapse of the GDR in 1987? Hardly anyone – and yet it happened!
We should understand that it will not be easy to end this war soon. Ukrainians and Russians understand this better. For us in the West, it is about ending the war; for Kyiv, it is about survival – and that means winning the war.
Asymmetric warfare
A minimum level of security for the population and social cohesion are crucial for Ukraine’s economic stability. Without these prerequisites, the country cannot successfully continue the war. From Ukraine’s perspective, this war must also be fought asymmetrically. Technological innovations must be translated into military successes. Ukraine needs better weapons and better tactics and must continue to inflict heavy losses on the Russian side. Kyiv cannot afford to suffer losses on a scale similar to those of Russia; Ukrainians must fight smart and always stay one step ahead of the Russians. The attacks on Russian energy infrastructure deep inside the country were an important step – Russia is a petro-state, and such attacks cause it serious damage. The West should support these attacks in every way possible – by supplying missiles and providing intelligence.
While the hot war in Ukraine continues, we in the West face the problem that we do not have the right categories to describe our own situation. Germany and Europe are in a state between war and peace. Putin has been speaking openly about his conflict with the West for a long time, but Berlin has long ignored this. I would suggest that we finally take Putin’s threats and actions seriously. Drones over our airports are not a problem for the police, but for the air force. We must understand that hacking, drones, and espionage are only the prelude to a military attack that our armed forces must deter or repel.
The Ukrainians are fighting our battle
There are a few things that can help us understand where we are headed. Wars are fought with economic resources and willpower. Unlike Russia and Ukraine, the West is only fighting this war half-heartedly. Under the traffic light coalition, this was sold to the German public as “prudence.” We see the result today. Germany still lives under the illusion that we can leave our social benefits untouched and still fend off Russia. We will have to rethink our priorities. Because we know from history that wars can be protracted—and that they are always very expensive.
As far as Russia is concerned, the war that Moscow is waging in Ukraine is, of course, not sustainable. But in the past, the Russians have done things for decades that were not sustainable. It was called communism. Zhukov fought against the Wehrmacht in a way that was hardly sustainable – but he won nonetheless. So let us accept that Russia will remain a tough opponent that does not play by any rules but is highly motivated to achieve its revanchist goals. That should be our basic assumption for the coming years.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, we should reinforce the idea that Ukraine is part of the European security architecture. The Ukrainians are fighting our battle. We can learn resilience, innovation, improvisation, and much more from the Ukrainian armed forces – and indeed from the entire country. But we must finally accept the historical foundations and harsh realities of this war and act accordingly. Four years of procrastination were four years too many.
This text is based on a speech given by Jan Claas Behrends at the NATO Operations Analysis Conference at the Julius Leber Barracks in Berlin in early November.
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