The Russia That Putin Made

Alexander Gabuev

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed the course of history. It did so most directly, of course, for the Ukrainians subjected to this brutal act of aggression. But the war also changed Russia itself far more than most outsiders grasp. No cease-fire, not even one brokered by a U.S. president fond of his Russian counterpart, can reverse the degree to which Putin has made confrontation with the West the organizing principle of Russian life. And no cessation of hostilities in Ukraine can roll back the extent to which he has deepened his country’s relationship with China.

As a result of the war, Putin’s Russia has become much more repressive, and anti-Westernism has only become more pervasive throughout Russian society. Since 2022, the Kremlin has conducted a sweeping campaign to quash political dissent, spread pro-war and anti-Western propaganda domestically, and create broad classes of Russians that benefit materially from the war. Tens of millions of Russians, including senior officials and many of the country’s wealthiest people, now view the West as a mortal enemy.

For three years, U.S. and European officials showed remarkable resolve in countering Putin’s aggression. But they also, at times unwittingly, played into Putin’s narratives that the West resents Russia and that its conflict with the country is existential. Western leaders’ strategy was marred by an absence of a coherent, long-term approach to Russia paired with rhetoric that could suggest it had a grander design than it did. In 2024, for example, Kaja Kallas—then the prime minister of Estonia and now the EU’s top diplomat, as the vice president of the European Commission and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy—stated that Western leaders should not worry that NATO’s commitment to a Ukrainian victory could cause Russia to break apart. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine eagerly circulated this statement to prove that dismembering Russia is the West’s endgame.