At the recent Munich Security Conference, President Volodymyr Zelensky posed a simple question: What is Putin without a war? This question is not rhetorical because the answer determines whether Europe will have an escalating war or a lasting peace.
Today, Russia’s political system is fused with permanent militarization. War is not a temporary deviation from normal governance, like in Ukraine, but it is the organizing principle of power. Budget priorities, industrial policy, media narratives, and political legitimacy all orbit around aggression. Military production rather than defense function, is an economic engine, a tool of social control, and a source of regime stability.
One concrete example illustrates the scale and direction of this shift. Russia has localized the production of Iranian-designed Shahed-type drones and plans to increase the production from 400 to 1,000 units per day. This is not emergency procurement. It is industrial normalization of long-range terror weapons. Localized production means supply chains, skilled labor, research adaptation, outsource of critical components, and sustained capital investment. It means factories running on multi-year projections, not wartime improvisation.
A state preparing for peace does not expand its capacity to produce at least 300,000 kamikaze drones annually. That number exceeds immediate battlefield necessity, and it signals institutional commitment. When production is scaled to this level, it embeds militarization into the labor market, regional budgets, and political patronage networks. Governors compete for defense contracts. Enterprises depend on state military orders. Entire communities become financially tied to continued aggression.
In such a system, war ceases to be a policy choice and becomes an economic ecosystem. Reducing aggression would then require not only diplomatic decisions but structural economic reorientation. Thus, ceasefire agreements without Russia’s demilitarization, leave the underlying machinery intact and are unlikely to be sustained.
So, the first principle of any durable settlement must be clear: Russia’s military production must be reduced to the minimum. This means that many more sanctions, especially technological sanctions should be applied to both Russia and its allies, such as China and Iran. Russia depends on the Western technology — that’s why shutting off the Starlink was so effective. However, dozens of Western technological firms remain in Russia, and every drone or missile that it launches at Ukraine contains components from the US, Europe, Japan, etc. Imposing sanctions is not enough, there should be enforcement, as well as secondary sanctions. Unfortunately, the discussion is going in the direction of weakening, rather than strengthening, sanctions, despite the fact that Russia shows no genuine interest in ending the war. On the contrary, on February 23, 2026, Putin announced strengthening of the Russian army and navy “taking into account the international situation and battlefield experience.”
If sanctions are lifted while Russia retains its full military-industrial capacity, that capacity does not simply dissolve. Production lines do not close themselves, supply chains do not unwind voluntarily, and skilled defense labor does not disappear. Industrial infrastructure built for large-scale drone and missile manufacturing will continue to operate.
The only real question is where that output will go. It will either be redirected toward renewed aggression once geopolitical conditions are favorable, or exported abroad, strengthening other destabilizing actors (in just one contract, Russia recently promised to Iran 500 missile launchers).
This is the strategic choice facing the West. One way is to normalize Russia’s continued expansion through aggression and modernization of high-volume drone and missile production. In this way, Russia will soon attack NATO countries, and the outcome of this attack is unclear. The alternative is to change the cost-benefit calculations. This means providing Ukraine with the capabilities necessary to defend and deny Russia any prospect of victory: expanding defense production, removing artificial constraints on long-range strikes, and deepening intelligence cooperation. Russia must understand that continued aggression against Ukraine will fail and that negotiations cannot be used as a spectacle while military pressure continues.
Credible negotiations also require credible humanitarian preconditions. Before the start of these negotiations, Russia should be required to return deported Ukrainian children, other civilian detainees and prisoners of war. The systematic abduction of children and abuse of captives are central violations that test whether Russia is prepared to act in good faith.
Ideally, we would like Russia to recognize its wrongdoing, pay reparations and undergo democratic reforms. That transformation is not achievable today but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. Durable peace in the region and beyond depends on structural change inside Russia. At present, however, there are no prerequisites for this: over ¾ of the Russian population support the aggression, and despite the high death toll, there is no deficit of people willing to kill Ukrainians for money. The Russian economy is militarized, as discussed above, and China supports Russia both economically and politically.
What, then, can be the current leverage of democratic countries over Russia? The first two parts of it are discussed above: stronger sanctions and expanded defensive capabilities for Ukraine. Furthermore, despite talking about “degrading Europe” etc., the Russian political elite keeps its money, property, and children in the EU and UK. These should not be allowed to enjoy the protection of law and civil liberties which Russia destroyed domestically and tries to destroy elsewhere.
Finally, there is an international tribunal for Russia being established right now. As the Nobel-prize winning Ukrainian civil rights activist Oleksandra Mtaviichuk argues, this should not be “another Nuremberg” since Nuremberg was the court of the winners, and thus crimes of the Soviet Union and its role in unleashing WWII were swept under the rug. This tribunal should protect human rights and establish justice irrespective of how the war ends.
Only if we are able to tell right from wrong and be on the right side instead of being “neutral” can we expect a better future.
Photo: depositphotos.com
