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The Kremlin's strategy for nearly 300 years has always been that the West must weaken, be destroyed and collapse, said Stephen Kotkin, a historian and Moscow correspondent who covered the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era for the Washington Post.
“This is the Russian grand strategy. Russia is in a bad place. It’s terrible there. But if the West collapses – if the West defeats itself, if it weakens its own institutions and forces – then Russia will be fine. That’s what you’re worried about, that’s what you’re talking about: that [US President Donald] Trump is doing the work for [Kremlin dictator Vladimir] Putin,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker.
He believes that this may be true, but Kotkin personally would not trade American power for Russian power in any way. And he would not trade the American political system for the political system of the occupiers, because voters in the US punished the Democrats in the last election - and severely.
The historian claims that they (American voters) will punish anyone else who proves incompetent, who fails to deliver on their promises, who destroys Western institutions, the economy, causes inflation in the country, and crashes the stock market.
“Americans hate war, but they hate losing it even more. So Trump is playing with fire,” Kotkin emphasizes. In addition, he sees that the Russian population hopes for an end to the war. According to the expert, Russia has lost 700 people (killed and wounded) without achieving anything in the two-plus years since the occupiers were forced to flee from Kharkiv.
At the same time, he admits that Ukraine does not need Abrams tanks or F-16s, but 500 young fighters. However, Russia also has problems with the number of soldiers.
“They need to either force Ukraine to surrender, which it is resolutely not doing, or force others to force Ukraine to surrender, and I don’t think anyone is capable of that. So Russia is in standby mode. Putin is ready to go to the end, but Russian society may not,” Kotkin said.
The journalist believes that from the very beginning, the main problem was the assumption that Ukraine would be able to win exclusively on the battlefield, instead of exerting political pressure to achieve a favorable truce for itself - one in which it would retain its sovereignty, protected in the battle for Kyiv, and would be able to invest in reconstruction, choosing a path similar to South Korea's after the armistice in the Korean War.
