Euroviews. Russia’s three wars have made peace with Putin impossible

Hopes for Kyiv's relatively quick victory have not materialised and the war between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on — though this is certainly not the fault of the Ukrainians. 

The war is becoming polarising and demands for negotiations and compromise are increasingly frequent.

Those hoping for a compromise with Vladimir Putin do not fully understand the nature of his regime or him as a person.

Compromise with Putin is impossible, and any peace agreement will not lead to peace, but rather to a temporary ceasefire that Putin will use to build up his forces for a new attack.

Putin started this war not to resolve a specific issue — there were no unsolvable contradictions between Russia and Ukraine — but to destroy Ukraine as a subject of politics, language, and culture. 

He repeatedly stated that there was never such a thing as Ukraine to begin with, that it was “invented” by Vladimir Lenin, that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and that the Ukrainian language does not exist. 

He believes it. In Putin’s mind, destroying Ukraine is not at all aggression, but a return to a normal order. 

That is why Ukrainians can’t agree with Putin — or as Golda Meir said, “You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.”

Since it would be politically inviable to openly declare the destruction of Ukraine as the goal of the invasion, the Russian authorities constantly changed their war aims.

They first aimed to ensure the right to speak Russian in Donbas — which no one encroached on — then destroy biological laboratories designed to make Russian women infertile, allegedly created in Ukraine with the help of the United States. 

After came “denazification” and finally, in Dmitry Medvedev’s words, the fight against Satan. 

It is