Those in the West who still believe that a negotiated peace with Moscow is achievable are refusing to confront a basic reality: the Russian state cannot survive a post-war environment. The structure of Putin’s system has become so dependent on permanent conflict that the very notion of “peace” represents an existential threat to it.
Let us consider what would happen if a ceasefire were declared tomorrow and Russian forces withdrew from the front line.
1. A peace settlement would collapse Russia’s economic model
The Russian economy today is nothing more than a wartime subsidy scheme.
Military procurement, frontline salaries, payments to the families of dead soldiers — all of it is financed through monetary emissions, covert borrowing and increasingly primitive mechanisms of state pressure.
War is the anaesthetic. Remove it, and the patient does not simply wake up — the system goes into cardiac arrest.
Defence spending is not one of the pillars of the Russian economy. It is the only pillar still standing.
2. A reduction in defence spending would devastate Russian industry
A sharp cut in military orders would trigger mass layoffs across metallurgy, machine-building, chemicals and transportation. Entire industrial regions would see incomes collapse. Hidden state obligations — currently disguised by war spending — would immediately surface.
In peacetime Russia does not generate sufficient added value to sustain even a modest standard of living. The population, already strained by inflation, would face a sudden and brutal contraction in real income — a shock the Kremlin knows it cannot afford.
3. Russia cannot shift to civilian production
Western politicians often assume Russia can simply “convert” its defence plants to peaceful output. This is fantasy.
The country attempted this between 1988 and 1995. Tank factories produced kitchenware; missile plants tried to manufacture household goods. The result was technological ruin. Today’s starting point is even worse: Russia’s civilian industry is decades behind global competitors, cut off from technology and dependent on smuggled components.
A return to “pots instead of tanks” would not be an economic transition — it would be collapse.
4. Peace would destabilise the Kremlin’s power structure
War is not merely a foreign policy instrument for Moscow. It is a tool of internal discipline.
- It justifies the swollen budgets of Russia’s security services.
- It keeps the population rallying around the flag.
- It suppresses elite rivalries by binding them to a single objective: survival.
A ceasefire would immediately weaken all three pillars. Rival factions within the regime would resurface. Security agencies would compete over shrinking resources. Public dissatisfaction would grow faster than the Kremlin can contain it.
Put plainly: peace would destabilise the very system that keeps Putin in power.
5. The return of radicalised veterans would trigger a security crisis
Tens of thousands of men will return home after years of violence, indoctrination and easy access to money. Many have no professions other than the use of force. Crime is already rising in regions with high mobilisation rates; a full-scale demobilisation would accelerate this dramatically.
The 1990s — often invoked as Russia’s period of chaos — may soon look tame by comparison. The scenario resembles the post-1945 crime surge, but with weaker institutions and no functional state ideology.
The unavoidable conclusion
The crisis Russia would face after any ceasefire would make the post-Soviet collapse appear orderly.
This is not a country that “prefers war”. It is a country whose ruling elite cannot politically survive peace.
The Kremlin is effectively controlled by a tight circle of security officials who understand perfectly well that the end of the war means the end of their power. For them, negotiations are not a path to resolution; they are a trap.
This is why every Western attempt at “dialogue” inevitably fails.
Not because the West is making mistakes — but because Russia’s system is structurally incompatible with peace.
There may be pauses, as there were between the two Iraq wars. But the strategic reality remains unchanged: Russia’s military machine will have to be defeated.
There is no scenario in which the Kremlin voluntarily disengages.
