Vladimir Putin has been at the helm of Russia for a quarter of a century — a time in which he has built a specific social contract: internal order and stability versus political passivity and loyalty to the state. This "eerie calm", as some call it, has been achieved through a skillful balancing act between nationalist rhetoric, controlled repression, and economic adaptation.
But the war in Ukraine, launched with the ambition to restore Russia's geopolitical influence, calls this fragile balance into question. This analysis by Michael Kimmage, a professor at the Catholic University of America, examines what lies behind Russia’s apparent stability, what risks the ongoing conflict poses, and the extent to which Putin is willing to sacrifice domestic equilibrium for the sake of foreign policy greatness.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved an eerie calm at home. Shortly after taking office in 2000, he tied once-independent oligarchs to the state while appeasing a growing middle class with rising living standards and greater material comforts. Gradually, he has pieced together a governing ideology from fragments of Russia’s past that is nationalist enough to inspire pride but not so nationalist as to be divisive.
As a result, after a quarter century in power, Putin has brought Russia to a point of equilibrium. Russian life can now be reassuringly predictable, even if it sometimes requires adjustment. Chaos grips the Middle East, American politics can be turbulent, and Europe is witnessing its worst war since 1945. But Putin has given Russians the gift they most craved: stability. The country is experiencing no visible disruption or political turmoil. In fact, there is almost no politics in Russia - it lacks real political parties and does not organize real elections. The state, which reserves the right to repress, represses mostly those who dare to show their disapproval - a vanishing minority of Russians. With this social contract, the Kremlin retains control, and most Russians can go about their business in peace, as long as they do not interfere with power.
Another reality overshadows this carefully crafted balance. Putin has long promised Russians a country gilded with ambition, power and glory. He emphasized "faith in the greatness of Russia" as early as his "Millennium Manifesto" from 1999 - an article published in a Russian daily shortly before he took office. In this essay, Putin suggests that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, brought Russia to its knees, in part by allowing post-Soviet and former Warsaw Pact states to slip out of its orbit. Putin's historic task, as he sees it, is to restore Russia as a major player on the international stage. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, he addressed the West with no respect, berating the United States and its allies for "unilateral and often illegal actions" that "have caused new human tragedies and created new hotbeds of tension".
Four months later, Putin sent tens of thousands of Russian troops into Georgia, seizing a fifth of that country's territory. In 2014 Russia invaded the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. The following year, the Russian military demonstrated its expeditionary capabilities in Syria. And in 2022, Putin launched a full-scale war against Ukraine, intent on redrawing the map of Europe and asserting his global influence.
Yet, excessive influence abroad has left Putin in a dilemma. Russia’s foreign policy has been increasingly marked by failures. The war in Ukraine is at a stalemate. Contrary to Putin’s hopes, the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2024 has not forced the West to abandon Kiev. In the Middle East, Israel is attacking Russia’s clients and partners. It may be tempting to see these developments as harbingers of Russia’s eventual withdrawal from Ukraine, but they are not.
Putin can afford to lose influence in the Middle East, which is not an existential theater for him, but he will not change course in Ukraine, where he recognizes no dilemma. If forced, he is likely to sacrifice Russia’s equilibrium for mass mobilization and harsh coercive measures. Russia’s rise to greatness may be Sisyphean for Putin, but he will go to extremes to avoid defeat. In Ukraine, Putin will risk everything.
For him, the balance — the complacency he has instilled in the Russian people — is in danger of becoming a faded luxury. The grim necessity is war.
An ominous calm
Russia’s current calm stems largely from the changes of the past decade. Putin’s popularity, always high, soared after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russians greeted the more powerful foreign policy with a pride that was hard to find in the late Soviet decades and early post-Soviet Russia. This patriotism did not require sacrifices from Russians. In the end, the rift with the West was limited; the sanctions that Western countries imposed on Russia in 2014 proved weak.
Putin began this balancing act — of acting confidently abroad while insulating the home front from risk — two decades ago. By 2022, he had perfected it. The public initially struggled to understand the full-scale war against Ukraine, but Putin used the conflict to strike a patriotic chord and consolidate loyalty to the state. He was helped by the exodus of many Russians opposed to the war, and dozens of journalists and media figures critical of the government.
Putin has never welcomed criticism. After 2022, he can now denounce any attempt at political opposition as an affront to the war effort. Vaguely defined anti-war sentiment has been criminalized, and many vocal critics have gone into exile or been jailed.
For many Russians who remained, the war has brought opportunity. Economic activity in defense-related manufacturing sectors has picked up, and the unemployment rate has fallen sharply. It is currently at a historic low of 2.2%. The Kremlin has managed to attract hundreds of thousands of young men, luring them with substantial enlistment bonuses while most Russians could ignore the war altogether.
Sanctions and visa restrictions have curtailed some high-end consumer pleasures, and holidays in Europe are mostly off-limits to poor Russians, but many countries continue to export to Russia, and Russians can travel freely to much of Asia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the South Caucasus. One can get by and get ahead in Putin’s Russia without being a fervent patriot—as long as one avoids being noticeably unpatriotic.
Unlike Joseph Stalin, Putin has not maximized the dictatorial potential of the state. The Russian president has avoided mass bloodshed at home. Instead, he has become adept at the practice of representative violence. There are now about 2,000 political prisoners in Russia. Their growing numbers serve as a warning to everyone else. Although young people are increasingly subjected to indoctrination, apolitical adults can lead their professional and personal lives largely unimpeded by the government. The state rarely makes heavy demands on Russian society, leaving the urban and middle classes largely to their own devices.
Even with compulsory military service, Russians are more or less free to choose how much and whether to participate in the system. Some choose military patriotism, volunteering, or simply waving the flag at rallies. The silent majority, while remaining silent, enjoys relative prosperity and the relative indifference of the state.
Increasing pressure
The balance Putin has created, however, is more fragile than it seems. A short, victorious war in Ukraine would preserve the status quo at home. Successful wars strengthen the domestic political positions of the victors, and Putin may have been talking about a triumph over NATO and the United States, which once claimed credit for winning the Cold War. On the eve of the invasion, Putin may have had this outcome in mind: a strengthening of Russian nationalism, deep enough to allow him to anoint a successor and keep the ship of state afloat.
But unfortunately for the Kremlin, the war in Ukraine is anything but a triumph. By February 2026, the war will have lasted as long as the struggle against Nazi Germany for the Soviet Union. World War II catapulted the Soviet Union to superpower status, while now Russia’s standing in Europe and the wider world is deteriorating. By pouring vast resources into the war, Moscow has limited its military position elsewhere. In 2023, Russia did nothing when its partner Armenia lost Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
And late last year it failed to prevent the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Another of Russia’s key partners, Iran, is under attack from Israel and the United States, while Moscow stands helplessly on the sidelines. Russia is increasingly dependent on China for access to foreign markets and for dual-use goods that fuel the war effort, but Chinese direct investment and technology transfer are limited.
Overall, Russia has burned through vast resources in a war it is not winning. Ukraine itself is far from winning, but the country’s largest cities and much of its territory are beyond the Kremlin’s reach. The territories Russia has managed to occupy do not constitute a vital bridge to Europe. Instead of thriving colonies, they are places scarred by impoverishment and war. Ukraine’s talent for technological innovation poses another problem for the Kremlin. In May, Ukraine mounted an extraordinary attack on air bases deep inside Russia. As the war drags on, the Ukrainian armed forces could pull off similar bold surprises.
Last week, Trump reversed course on Ukraine. He promised to provide the country with modern weapons through NATO and criticized Putin for unnecessarily prolonging the war. Meanwhile, Europe is spending more on defense, and NATO member states are increasing military coordination. In the unlikely event that the United States abandons Ukraine altogether, Europe will not follow suit. Prosperous, powerful European countries will continue to support Kiev. And no major European country is likely to lift sanctions or return to pre-war levels of trade with Russia.
In the face of this mounting pressure, however, Putin is not backing down. Determined to win at any cost, he has chosen to subject the Russian economy to war, devoting more and more resources to military production. Due to sanctions, the loss of the European market, and inefficient wartime spending, the Russian economy is stagnant, with high inflation and slowing growth. The Kremlin recently acknowledged that a recession is imminent. And crises outside Russia, such as the collapse of the Iranian government or a global economic downturn, could make matters worse.
Unbound dictatorship
These developments could upset the equilibrium that Putin has worked so hard to cultivate. Far from rebelling against the regime at the moment, Russians could begin to turn against the war, refusing to enlist and publicly questioning the merits of this seemingly endless conflict. In the summer of 2023 The mercenary commander Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a small rebellion, sending a convoy of tanks to Moscow before making a deal with Putin and dying two months later in a plane crash that was almost certainly orchestrated by the Kremlin.
Soldiers and veterans, exhausted and disillusioned by the war, could prove to be Putin’s more serious opponents. For this reason, the Kremlin is appeasing them with money and privileges. Another potential source of disruption is the Russian elite itself. Although there has been no sign of defiance so far among government-dependent Russians who have the wealth and power to do so, some might be tempted to explore subtle forms of dissent, testing the waters by suggesting that the war be moderated, delayed, or ended.
To quell potential political threats, Putin would surely double down on the war, bidding farewell to his domestic balancing act. He can agree to a temporary ceasefire and cosmetic diplomacy, even the pretense of a negotiated settlement, but he cannot give up on one simple fact: that the Russian military, by his logic, has not achieved enough. Russia does not control Ukraine, and any agreement that leaves Ukraine outside Russian control—that is, a Ukraine free to integrate into Europe—would be tantamount to defeat. So far, the war that Putin waged to stop Ukraine’s westward turn has only pushed Ukraine westward. That remains an outcome Putin will never accept.
In Russia, Putin has many options. He commands the infrastructure for mass mobilization, including the security services and the state-controlled media. He could wage a ruthless, ideological campaign of conscription, with harsh penalties for those who refuse to sign up. If Putin has so far refrained from taking this path, it is not because he is unwilling to use coercive force in Russia, but because he is hesitant to destroy the calm he has so painstakingly built.
If he abandons this balance, Putin will cling to victory in Ukraine, drawing Russia even deeper into the fold and causing even greater destruction to the Ukrainian people. He will be unbridled as a generalissimo abroad and a tyrant at home. As such, he could turn a silent dictatorship into a full-fledged one, with dark political prerogatives at home and unbridled geopolitical appetites abroad.