Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine – a crisis that includes increasing loss of life among his military personnel – but isn’t making peace a priority as visions of past Soviet glory stir in his mind. Putin, a former KGB officer, wants to relive those days, his critics have long warned.
Trump and Putin talked for more than two hours Monday, but the call ended without an agreement for an immediate ceasefire in the war which started with a build-up of Russian troops along the border, then a full-scale invasion, in February of 2022.
Trump claimed progress after the phone call, stating that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately” begin ceasefire negotiations though the Kremlin has offered no timeframe for such talks.
U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-North Carolina) said on Washington Watch Tuesday that Putin seems bent on continuing the war.
“You're dealing with a bloodthirsty despot who really feels no remorse in sending his countrymen into a sawmill to kill them for what gain is beyond me,” the congressman told show host Tony Perkins.
Russian military deaths mount
A conflict Putin thought wouldn’t last long has now claimed more than 107,000 Russian soldiers, more than 5,000 officers.
Murphy recognized Ukraine's reputation for political corruption but expressed hope that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might have “turned a corner” in that regard. He said Zelenskyy is much more interested in getting a deal done.
In Putin’s case, however, “I don’t think he values human life whatsoever,” Murphy said.
As President Donald Trump tries to broker a peace deal, Putin plays along insincerely while enjoying a little “bounce” just by sharing the news cycle with Trump, Murphy said.
Getting inside the Russian president's head, the GOP lawmaker said Putin has not forgotten the fall of the once-powerful Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the influence of the Communist empire crumbled.
He believes Russia deserves a seat among the major players on the world stage. Associating with Trump makes Putin appear to be a political equal, Murphy said.
General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the British Army, told Newsweek in 2017 that Putin’s goal is to restore Russia as a “major power.”
“He sees modern Russia as the inheritor of the great power status which the Soviet Union used to have and I think he's trying to rebuild that,” Jackson said.
A BBC profile in 2014, during Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine at Crimea, described Putin as a patriot coming of age during Russian prominence and later stung by his country’s failures and weakened position.
He was largely unknown when he was named prime minister in 1999.
“Since then, he has seized every opportunity history has offered him, from the attacks of 11 September 2001 to the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013, in his bid to secure his aims. He has been tactically astute and ruthlessly opportunistic. At home and abroad, he wants Russia to regain the prestige it held when he was growing up,” the BBC wrote.
Putin’s real angle in peace talks
If history is a guide, maybe Putin is slow-walking a Ukraine peace plan because he sees its conquest as necessary to restore Russian dominance in the region and ultimately in the world.
“They’re much more of a dictatorship, monolithic czarist, if you will, society in that one person has central control, and Mother Russia should dominate. But that’s no the world’s view, and that's not why the United States is the leader of the free world,” Murphy said.
Sadly, the average Russian doesn’t have a clear picture of the outside world, of freedom, but instead just “suffers every day in a very miserable, dreary life,” he said. “But that’s OK with Putin. He really doesn’t care. This is a personal thing with him. It’s about glory and trying to get Russia back” to the days of former communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
