“You have to look at Putin and Russia as an expansionist power,” Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, recently acknowledged. “He wants to re-establish the Russian Empire — just look at history.” 

What Putin is aiming for is the restoration of Russia as an imperial power. He said as much in his comments to Russian entrepreneurs at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022. He sees himself as a modern-day Peter the Great – only Ukraine thwarted his plans.

The acquisition of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is the initial phase of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to reunite the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. His assumption was that the three non-NATO and non-European Union countries could be brought back under Soviet rule in short order without any interference from the West.

He was wrong.

After three-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine, Russia has suffered 1.1 million casualties, faces economic collapse and has been reduced to a dependent state reliant upon external sources. Putin’s Russia now relies on support from China, North Korea, Iran, and Chechnya to sustain its war effort, and its Collective Security Treaty Organization has fractured.

Nevertheless, Putin continues his current course of action. Considerations such as casualties and the welfare of Russian citizens, particularly those outside Moscow or Saint Petersburg, do not appear to be a primary focus in his strategic calculations. His central objective remains the full capitulation and subjugation of Ukraine, a goal that has yet to be realized.

Despite the setbacks, Putin continuously looks for ways to project strength. He has turned now to calling upon the ghosts of Russia’s past — beginning with the renaming of the city of Volgograd back to “Stalingrad.” The change, which Putin deceitfully insists is purely a local matter, is intended to conjure up memories of when Russia was once feared and respected — a world power.

The nickname name “Stalin” — “man of steel,” adopted by Soviet dictator Joseb Dzhugashvili — evokes strength and fear. Russians remember Stalin’s political purges of the late 1930s and the purges that continued after World War II up till his death in 1953. Historian William D. Rubinstein estimated in his book “Genocide” that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of at least 7 million people, or about 4.2 percent of the USSR’s total population.

Russians remember the secret police, the gulags, and Stalin’s iron-fisted rule. Only after his death, when Nikita Khrushchev came into power, would Russian citizens feel safe again in their own country.

Putin acknowledges the Stalin affect — both internally and externally. Emphasizing rather that “It is wrong to forget Stalin’s role in the victory in the Great Patriotic War.” It is a message to Russian citizens as well — the state above all else — and a message that Ukrainians know all too well.

Putin’s trip down memory lane to the Stalin era, however, may have finally hit a roadblock. Trump, in a highly welcomed move, posted on Truth Social that Ukraine is winning and that, with the European Union’s help alongside purchases of U.S. weapon systems, Ukraine is capable of retaking all of its territory. This is the first time he has said anything like this.

Now that Trump is calling out Putin, the dictator known on Telegram channels as “grandpa in his bunker” is looking more like Khrushchev than Peter the Great. Like Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Putin appears to be misjudging an American president’s red lines.

Putin is facing the same dilemma economically. As Trump pointed out in his Truth Social post, Russia’s economy is imploding, especially its oil and energy sector. As we observed recently, Russia may be losing as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day due to Ukrainian deep-precision strikes against Russian oil and energy infrastructure, including hits on 16 of Russia’s 38 oil refineries since the beginning of August.

For Putin, this may be turning into his Mikhail Gorbachev moment in time. When the costs of Soviet military losses in Afghanistan came due under Gorbachev, the people of Russia, including its military, had had enough — particularly the mothers. Gorbachev survived the coup attempt that followed, but only as the weakened leader of a union in collapse.

Putin, in the face of his current setbacks, needs to create a distraction in Eastern Europe — especially in Poland, Finland or the Baltic States. He needs a NATO miscalculation — a threat to the Russian regime — to justify a full mobilization to the Russian people. 

This may explain the recent Russian drone attacks in Poland, and the three MiG-31 aircraft that overflew Estonian airspace for 12 minutes last week while equipped with missiles. Conversely, Putin might have simply misread Trump and felt he would cause NATO support for Ukraine to collapse.

Either way, Putin miscalculated. NATO has responded by establishing Eastern Sentry air patrols to protect its Eastern flank — an active air defense to counter Russian drone and fighter jet incursions. Poland and Ukraine are in active discussions to establish a no-fly zone in Western Ukraine – something we have long called for.

A defeated Russia in Ukraine would solve many problems. Last week we argued that Putin was winning World War III. This week, to his great credit, Trump has said, “Not so fast!”

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.