The Limits of Putin’s Ambitions

Thomas Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This Ukraine Policy Brief is part of the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine's Future and the Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security.

Executive Summary

The limits of President Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions are a central question in Russia’s war against Ukraine: Will the Russian leader be satisfied with subjugating Ukraine or will he seek to extend Russian influence and control further into Europe, as many European leaders fear? Three historical impulses provide insight into Putin’s ultimate goals: the impulse to expand control to enhance security, to return to the Russia state lands that were lost for various reasons, and to reunite the three branches of the greater Russian nation. Putin has used elements of all three narratives in his rhetoric since before he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Each of those narratives has different implications for the dimensions of the threat Russia poses to Europe. Yet it is impossible to know which one prevails in Putin’s strategic calculations, nor how his successors will choose among them, although the narratives will certainly influence their foreign-policy thinking. Prudence dictates that Europe should prepare for the worst, while hoping to steer Russia toward a less perilous course, even to the point of reducing the salience of those three expansionist narratives for Russian security.

To counter and deflate the narratives driving Russian aggression, Europe should pursue four broad goals: enhanced deterrence to stabilize the Russia-West frontier, concerted efforts by European states to overcome acute domestic political and socioeconomic cleavages so as to decrease the scope for Russian meddling, support for preserving a sovereign Ukrainian nation-state to tame Russia’s expansionist impulses, and a dialogue on coexistence to lay the foundation for a more secure and peaceful future.

Security and Territory in Putin’s Strategic Calculations

Putin has insisted from the start that his war against Ukraine aims to eliminate a grave threat to Russia’s security. In his telling, he had no choice but to move militarily against Ukraine after the West refused to take seriously the draft U.S.-Russia and Russia-NATO treaties on security guarantees he released publicly in December 2021.

At the same time, Putin denies he had any territorial ambitions. Even after he annexed four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia—in the fall of 2022, he continued to insist his goal was not territorial conquest but security. That is disingenuous, for territory and security have been inextricably intertwined in Russian strategic thinking for centuries. The question is how much territory Putin believes Russia has to dominate in order to feel secure.

Putin’s search for security, and its territorial dimensions, has far-reaching implications for the settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war and European stability. It will, for example, determine the settlement’s parameters and the intensity of any campaign to sow confusion in various European countries before and after a deal. Most important, it will determine whether any de-escalation in tensions with Europe signals a prolonged period of peace and stability or merely constitutes a breathing space in which Russia can regroup before renewing its assault.     

For the moment, the limits of Putin’s ambitions are difficult to discern. To be sure, he has been clear from the beginning that he wishes to subjugate Ukraine. How much of the country he wants to formally annex is uncertain, but he would strip any part of Ukraine that lies beyond Russia’s direct control of genuine independence and sovereignty, reducing it to a vassal state, such as Belarus is today.

Beyond Ukraine, Putin has denied any aggressive intent or designs on any state’s territory. But his repeated threats of dire consequences for European states that step up their support to Ukraine, as well as his escalating campaign of disinformation and sabotage across Europe, have understandably raised concern. Prevalent among Western commentators is the view that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will undoubtedly turn his sights on other states of the former Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which are NATO members. At the extreme, some believe he even intends to restore the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe through covert operations or direct military assault on former Soviet Bloc countries, such as Poland.

Three Explanatory Narratives

Amid this uncertainty, three narratives drawn from Russian history provide insight into Putin’s ultimate goals. Two suggest he will press further into Europe; one, that he would be satisfied with the conquest of Ukraine. None, however, would bring much comfort to Europe.

Expansionist Russia

Historically, Russia has been an expansionist state. From the mid-fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, it grew more than 550 times larger to form the biggest contiguous empire in the modern era. Europeans have understandably seen that expansion as imperialistic; Russian rulers have insisted it was defensive. According to them, pushing borders as far away from the Russian heartland as possible was critical to defending a sparsely populated, multiethnic country on a vast landmass without any formidable physical barriers against powerful rivals. As Catherine the Great avowed, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.” The expansion into Europe from the beginning of eighteenth century onward stopped only when Russia ran into a countervailing power, such as Prussia and the Austrian Empire and, later, a united Germany .

So it is with Putin today. The draft treaties on security guarantees he released in December 2021 focused on the perceived threat of NATO’s eastward expansion. No matter how ardently NATO leaders insisted on the alliance’s peaceful intentions and defensive orientation, Putin perceived the expansion as slowly eliminating Russia’s buffer zone in eastern Europe, as NATO inducted the states of the former Warsaw Pact. Bringing in Georgia and Ukraine, a goal NATO first expressed in 2008, would further undo Russia’s westward geopolitical advance that began when Peter the Great declared his domains to be an empire in 1721. Putin’s treaties focused on restoring the lost buffer zones by obliging NATO not only to forswear further eastward expansion but also to withdraw its infrastructure back to the lines of 1997, when the Russia-NATO Founding Act regulating future relations was signed and two years before the first wave of post–Cold War expansion into Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

Ukraine was an attractive target. Geopolitically, it was strategically located on the northern littoral of the Black Sea, a gateway into central East Europe. Politically, it had not fully consolidated its statehood since gaining independence in 1991. It was riven by pronounced regional differences reflected in patterns of ethnic settlement, linguistic preferences, religion, and cultural traditions. Those fault lines undoubtedly loomed large for Putin, who saw Ukraine not as a genuine state but the artificial creation of perverse Bolshevik policies that cobbled together ethnically and culturally diverse regions.

The Gathering of Russian Lands 

Putin’s aggression against Ukraine is not simply opportunistic expansion in search of security. The rulers of Russia since the middle of the fifteenth century have also justified their seizures of land in Europe as the “gathering of Russian lands,” territory that had been split asunder by the Mongol conquest of Kievan Rus, the primordial Russian state, in the mid-thirteenth century. Over time, the notion of Russian lands expanded to include all the territory that had once been incorporated into the Russian Empire. After the empire collapsed in 1917, the new communist rulers eventually extended their writ over most of the former lands, including the Baltic states and Bessarabia (a combination of what is now Moldova and parts of Ukraine). They only failed to reconquer the greater part of the Finnish and Polish territory the czars once ruled.

Putin locates himself in that grand Russian tradition. Shortly after he launched the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he implicitly compared himself to Peter the Great. He argued that during the Great Northern War of the first decades of the eighteenth century, Peter had not seized Swedish land on the Baltic Sea but rather returned that land to Russia (he left unmentioned that no European country had ever recognized Russian sovereignty over the greater part of that territory). Like Peter, Putin claims his assault on Ukraine is aimed at returning lost lands. The one difference with Peter is that all the lands Putin has seized were indeed once recognized as Russian by European states before the breakup of the Soviet Union, even though they have been internationally recognized as Ukrainian since then. 

The Russian Union

Putin also partakes of a long-standing Russian nationalist view that Ukrainians are simply one of three branches of the Russian people, a view he laid out in detail in a long essay in 2021. That view is aligned with the great Russian writer (and Soviet-era dissident) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who argued in a 1990 essay [PDF] that Russians encompassed Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, and their lands included Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan (or southern Siberia). To strengthen Russia and enhance its prosperity, he thought Russia should welcome the independence of the non-Russian lands of the former Soviet Union. Putin has lauded Solzhenitsyn as a “true patriot.” At a 2007 ceremony, he told the writer that some steps he was taking as president were “in harmony” with his views, although he did not refer directly to Solzhenitsyn’s musings on Russia’s geographical extent.

All those narratives converged on Ukraine in 2022. If Putin succeeds in subjugating Ukraine, he will have restored Russia’s western border to where it stood at the end of Catherine the Great’s reign; he will have returned a significant tract of Russia’s historical patrimony; and he will have completed the formation of the “Russian Union” in Europe (even if more needs to be done in northern Kazakhstan).

Power and Ambitions

Whether Russia is powerful enough to fulfill Putin’s ambitions is of course a critical issue. Some Western leaders have warned that Putin is building up his military forces so that he can attack a NATO country by the end of the decade. How accurate those assessments are is a matter of debate. Western governments were surprised by how rapidly Russia reconstituted its forces after the humiliating setbacks of the first year of the conflict. They also have been humbled by how resilient the Russian economy has been to what were billed as crippling sanctions. 

As to whether Western leaders and analysts, wrong in their assessments of Russian weakness, are now overcompensating by exaggerating Russia’s strength, it is worth recalling the observation, attributed to various prominent Western statesmen for the past two centuries, that Russia is never as strong or as weak as it appears. All assessments of Russian power should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Viewed through another lens, however, the objective state of Russian power could be a secondary consideration. What matters more is Putin’s own judgment of that power. Before the 2022 invasion, he was confident that the operation would be a blitzkrieg, quickly fulfilling his ambition to reunite Ukraine with Russia. Instead, he got a war of attrition, which he now appears to believe he can win no matter how steep the cost. In other words, in assessing the threat Europe faces, this could be a rare case where it pays to focus more on intentions than capabilities.

Implications for the West

The first two Russian narratives offer only cold comfort to the West. The search for security carries the most disturbing implications, as it suggests that Putin’s ambitions are unlimited, constrained only by Russian capabilities and the external resistance he encounters. The gathering of Russian land, for its part, raises particular concerns for the states that were once part of the Russian Empire, including the Baltic states and Moldova, but also Finland and Poland. Those with significant Russian minorities—Estonia and Latvia—would appear to be at greatest risk. The Russian Union narrative, by contrast, sets clear limits on Putin’s territorial ambitions in Europe. Other than Ukraine, European states can relax. 

The obvious problem is that no one knows for certain what is motivating Putin. Nor does anyone know whether his eventual successors will pursue the same course, although the three narratives sketched out above will likely influence their decisions. The question will be how they assess the acuity of the security threat Russia faces, the relative balance of power with Russia’s rivals, and the solidity of their own political standing.  

Nevertheless, the West needs to prepare for the worst, with regard to both Putin and his successors, while hoping for a less perilous course. In particular, the West should take steps that over time will reduce the salience of those three expansionist narratives in Russian strategic thinking.

In broad terms, NATO countries should pursue four measures.

• Enhance deterrence to stabilize the Russia-West frontier. NATO’s European members are finally getting serious about defense—in response to Russia’s aggression and, perhaps more so, President Donald Trump’s threats of abandonment if European allies do not take on a much greater share of providing for their own security. If Europe puts real resources into that effort, it will enhance deterrence against Russia. The immediate goal should be to bolster deterrence on NATO’s eastern flank to help stabilize the long Russia-West frontier, stretching from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea, with the segment running through Ukraine to be set by the eventual ceasefire line in the Russia-Ukraine war.
• Aim for domestic consolidation to reduce the scope for Russian meddling. Each NATO ally, especially those on Russia’s borders, needs to make a concerted effort to overcome political polarization and acute socioeconomic cleavages. The goal would be to limit Russia’s temptation and opportunity to meddle in their domestic affairs as a way of undermining NATO’s unity and preparing the ground for further conquest. In that regard, countries with substantial ethnic Russian minorities, such as Estonia and Latvia, should now be making a great effort to ensure those minorities are fully integrated into their political communities. Such efforts will go a long way toward creating the strong states that have historically limited Russia’s westward expansion.
•  Support the preservation of a sovereign Ukrainian nation-state to tame Russia’s expansionist impulses. Even if Putin’s territorial ambitions are limited to Ukraine, the West would find advantage in supporting the emergence of a strong, prosperous, independent, and sovereign Ukrainian nation-state, if only on the Ukrainian territory that Russia does not currently occupy. Success would erode the idea of a single Russian nation split into three branches and create the conditions in which Russia itself, for the first time in its history, could become a genuine nation-state, like other major European countries. Such an outcome could end Russia’s long history of seeking security in expansion and Russian rulers’ attempts to gather Russian lands. In the best-case scenario, Russian rulers could even reinterpret Russian history to develop a new narrative for Russia’s greatness and global mission that appears less threatening to its immediate neighbors.
• Begin a dialogue with Russia about coexistence to lay the foundation for a more secure and peaceful future. Even as the West seeks to counter Putin’s territorial ambitions, it should propose a discussion on how to manage relations responsibly in the years ahead. No matter how the Russia-Ukraine war ends, Russia is going to remain a rival power on the European continent, certainly under Putin and likely under his immediate successors. As during the Cold War, the dialogue should focus on lessening the costs of maintaining stability along the Russia-West frontier and reducing the risks of conflict. Coexistence with a nuclear-armed Russia remains a geopolitical imperative. Making that point a central element of the West’s public presentation of its Russia policy would have the added benefit of reassuring parts of the Russian political elites that there is a way forward from today’s tense adversarial relationship to a less fraught one in which their interests will be properly considered. Although the immediate benefits should not be exaggerated, such an approach could also elevate the domestic pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest a settlement to his war against Ukraine. In the long run, it will almost certainly lead to a more secure and peaceful future for Europe.

Conclusion

Putin has no incentive to articulate clearly the limits of his territorial ambitions. Indeed, perhaps he himself does not know where they end. Much will depend on the circumstances and opportunities that arise. What is certain is that he will justify any seizure of territory as an attempt to defend Russia or right a historical injustice perpetrated against it by the West. 

As the narratives above suggest, that approach is hardly novel for a Russian ruler—and the challenge to the West is not new. To halt Putin today, the West needs to do what it has done to blunt Russian expansion in the past. It should build a countervailing force, as it opens a dialogue on coexistence. That is not an impossible task. The West has the resources. It only needs a strategy to put them to effective use.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.