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Yves here. Andrew Korybko often finds important informational tidbits but then can reach very eccentric conclusions from them. His discussion of Putin’s motives in finally dropping the hammer on Ukraine is one.
To attribute to Putin primarily or significantly economic motives IMHO, as Korybko does below, in what Russia regards as an existential war is wildly off base.
I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer to this complicated topic, but some alternative views. Even from the outset, it was clear that Putin did not want to seize Ukraine but merely wanted to secure its neutrality, as the Istanbul agreement scuppered by the US and UK would have done. However, the utter refusal of Ukrainian and European NATO leadership to make any concessions to Russia on its security has forced Russia to break Ukraine. What the end game looks like is still unclear, but with Russia set to secure Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and making Kiev not viable via damage to its Dnieper bridges means it looks set to be able to dictate terms.
I have long seen Russia’s approach to the Trump team, which has repeatedly pitched economic benefits, as not considering Russia’s key needs, as pandering (although Lavrov has lost patience, which is one reason for making Kiril Dmitriev a front man in talks with the Kushner/Witkoff clown show). Russia may indeed see resource “deals” with the US as potentially important, but not for economic reasons but as a vehicle for advancing its security agenda. Economic agreements would allow Trump to declare a win, as in accept the Russian subjugation of Ukraine. That will have the effect of at least somewhat distancing the US from the European NATO rabid dogs who seem determined to continue fighting with Russia.
Finally, the “after nearly five years” in Korybko’s headline can be read as saying that Russia could have subjugated Ukraine sooner. John Helmer has said the General Staff was unhappy that Putin was holding them back in prosecuting the electricity war, since that could have prostrated Ukraine in short order. But Helmer did not point out that this approach would create a humanitarian disaster and would be a war crime. Putin and much of the leadership group has been if anything fetishistic about framing their actions as justified in hitting military and dual-use targets.
And how exactly would Russia intervene when that happened? Its armed forces were not big enough to control the population then, let provide emergency relief. The slow and deliberate destruction of Ukraine, by contrast, is driving much of the citizenry out.
Note that Alexander Mercouris in his recent talks has been describing why he believes this current, decisive phase is the culmination of three years of planning and military expansion. Armchair generals too easily forget that clearing the densely populated, well fortified Donbass is time-consuming (look at the trouble Israel has had using much more brutal means in the much less militarized Gaza) as is dismantling its air defenses.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO,which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website.
Regardless of why Putin might have held off on this for so long, he’s now arguably motivated at least in part by the tantalizing possibility of reaching big-ticket resource deals with the US after the conflict ends, the details of which his and Trump’s envoys have been negotiating for over a year already.
The New York Times cited allegedly intercepted Russian communications to report that Russia plans to obliterate Ukraine’s power, heating, and water systems this winter. While their claim can’t be confirmed, it aligns with Putin mildly “escalating to de-escalate” over the summer in response to Zelensky’s strike campaign, which has taken the form of ramping up attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. If the report is true, then Russia doesn’t just aim to sever Ukraine’s military logistics, but to bring Ukraine to its knees.
Putin has thus far eschewed this arguably due to his belief that Russians and Ukrainians are kindred people. Some have suggested that Russia might not have had the drone and/or missile capacity to do so earlier, however, whether due to low production till now and/or to hedge against the scenario of a hot war with NATO. In any case, Putin now seems to have made peace with the humanitarian consequences of ending the war on Russia’s terms sooner rather than later, or at least on as many of them as possible.
He might be motivated by more than just Ukraine’s “war of attrition” against Russia that began over the summer with American backing and interestingly enough France’s as well. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly told his Russian counterpart over the summer that no business deals are possible so long as the conflict continues. Since then, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Putin to discuss such deals among other topics, after which Kirill Dmitriev traveled to the US to follow up on that.
For background, Putin boasted in late February 2025 that American companies “will make a decent profit” from investments in Russia’s resource industry, and Trump’s Special Envoy to Belarus John Coale recently confirmed that he received approval to pitch a Belarusian-like deal to Putin. It would involve sanctions relief in exchange for the release of “political prisoners”. Putin’s ally Alexander Lukashenko already agreed to several such deals and is now negotiating a massive potash one with Trump.
Just last week, Lukashenko also proposed a trilateral Belarusian, Russian, and US fertilizer plant deal, but that requires the US lifting its sanctions on Gazprom. Russian officials from Putin on down have called for the West to lift its sanctions on Russia, and while the US might lift some if Putin agrees to a Belarusian-like quid pro quo, the Ukrainian Conflict will first have to end for this to happen at scale. Their resultant resource-centric strategic partnership could then revolutionize the global economic architecture.
The Russian economy has survived the West’s unprecedented sanctions onslaught, largely due to the combination of its natural resources and national payment system, but its Economic Development Ministry expects only 0.6% GDP growth this year. United Russia’s landslide victory during last month’s Duma elections, the first since the large-scale phase of the Ukrainian Conflict began, gives Putin the mandate to do whatever is needed to win the war and deliver more prosperity to his people afterwards.
It’s therefore within the realm of possibility, consistent with Russia’s policy of demanding the lifting of Western sanctions, that Putin is motivated at least in part to end the conflict on as many of Russia’s terms as possible sooner rather than later so as to then reach big-ticket resource deals with the US. This imperative, which could revolutionize the global economic architecture and deliver more prosperity to his people, contextualizes the New York Times’ report about him planning to bring Ukraine to its knees.
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