Putin is unserious about peace in Ukraine

OPINION:

When Russian ruler Vladimir Putin invited Ukraine to peace talks in Istanbul about two weeks ago, many believed peace could be near. Some of us were more skeptical, knowing from Mr. Putin’s long history of desiring to restore the Soviet empire and his history with the KGB to take anything he says with a large grain of salt.

However, Mr. Putin ignored his own invitation and didn’t show up for the talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

On Monday, President Trump had a two-hour call with Mr. Putin and said talks about a ceasefire with Ukraine would begin immediately. Those talks didn’t occur, either, because Mr. Putin isn’t serious about peace with Ukraine.

Three factors compel this conclusion: Russia’s not-terribly-struggling economy, the U.S. nuclear deterrent and Mr. Putin’s massive military buildup.

Russia’s economy is a command economy, not a free one. It will continue as Mr. Putin demands until it cannot.

According to a Goldman Sachs “high-frequency” index, Russia’s annualized gross domestic product growth has fallen from about 5% last year to zero. Inflation is above 10%, and military spending, which grew by more than 50% last year, is slated to grow only 3.5% in 2025.

Can the Russian economy withstand many more years of the Ukraine war? It probably can. Russia’s economy is dependent on oil and gas sales, which can keep it going for years to come. That makes the European Union’s purchase of enormous amounts of Russian liquefied natural gas even more scandalous and exasperating.

The EU declared that it wouldn’t buy Russian gas after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but that was a head fake intended to cover gas delivered only by pipelines.

The EU has been and is continuing to purchase LNG from Russia. In 2024, its purchases of Russian LNG rose to about $7.7 billion. The profit was probably more than enough to pay the cost of a year or two of the Ukraine war. Now, the EU has decided not to purchase any Russian gas after 2027, five years after the Russian invasion and 13 years after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula.

Apparently, most of the EU isn’t very worried about Russian threats to NATO members. A few of its members are. Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have withdrawn from the international treaty banning anti-personnel mines. Finland, which is threatened by a buildup of Russian troops near its border, is fortifying that border with Russia.

It will probably take a Russian attack on a NATO member to bestir these nations to really invest in their own defense, and by then it will be too late.

The “nuclear umbrella” with which we have protected Europe since World War II has a few holes. The biggest hole is that no U.S. president will pull the nuclear trigger against a conventional attack. If Russia attacks Estonia with conventional forces, for example, it could expect an American effort to reinforce Estonia, but there would be no nuclear response.

The European Union, whose membership is almost indistinguishable from NATO’s, is terrified of what Mr. Putin is doing and might do next. Its members should be.

Mr. Putin has ordered the Russian army to expand to 1.5 million troops, up from about 1 million before the Ukraine invasion. Moreover, Russia has increased its military spending to 6% of its GDP from 3.4% before Ukraine was invaded. In contrast, the U.S. spent 3.4% of its GDP on defense in 2023 and the EU countries average 2.1%.

Mr. Putin is pushing his arms industry even harder. He expects artillery and ammunition production to increase by 20% this year. Russian industry is now producing 300 of its top-line T-90M tanks yearly. Before the Ukraine invasion, production was about 40 per year. The Barents Observer, a Norwegian newspaper, reported that Mr. Putin recently told the Russian Military-Industrial Commission, “We must absolutely develop everything that appears promising, and even what today is not being discussed.”

According to a report in the uber-liberal British newspaper The Economist, Lithuania’s intelligence agency says Russia will increase troops, equipment and weapons on its western front by 30% to 50%. “During 2024, noted a recent Danish intelligence assessment, Russian rearmament ‘changed character from reconstruction to an intensified military build-up.’ The goal is to be able ‘to fight on an equal footing with NATO forces.’”

Whether or not he succeeds in Ukraine, Mr. Putin’s intentions toward NATO are not hard to discern. He wants to successfully challenge NATO and cause its breakup. Mr. Trump doesn’t believe Russia will strike NATO, but NATO’s deterrence depends on its military strength, which is better than it was before Mr. Trump began his demands that NATO members share the burden. Still, it is vastly too weak to deter Russia.

Neither NATO nor the U.S. is fully capable of deterring Mr. Putin’s Russia because Mr. Putin is unserious about peace in Ukraine. However, he will tease the possibility so he can get on with disassembling NATO and reassembling the Soviet empire.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.