Western analysts frequently measure Russia's progress in Ukraine by territory gained or lost. But the author of this TrendCompass opinion argues that Moscow's longer-term objective may be to reshape Ukraine's political system rather than simply occupy more land.
IN DEPTH: Originally published by TrendCompass, 6 November 2026.
With all the excitement going on all over the place, the war in Ukraine almost became background noise. Observers, including yours, truly, have been predicting Ukraine’s imminent defeat for the best part of the last three years, but Ukraine is still there, fighting the bad fight to the last Ukrainian. Along the way, Ukrainians have been able to deliver some painful blow against Russia, leading many pundits to declare that Ukraine can yet win the war.
Russia bogged down in Ukraine?
One of the often repeated refrains is that Russia has won barely any territory over the last four years. In particular, I listened to an interview with the American political scientist, professor Robert Pape, one of the most highly qualified analysts of international affairs and geopolitics.
He teaches political science at the University of Chicago and specializes in international security affairs with a focus on air power, political violence, terrorism and economic sanctions. Professor Pape is also the founder and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.
In spite of his stellar credentials, I was a bit surprised to hear professor Pape tell his listeners that Russia is doing very poorly in Ukraine because, during the last 3 years, they took only 1% of Ukraine’s territory. Today, Russia is in control of about 19% of Ukraine’s territory, but they took the first 18% in the initial ten months of the Special Military Operation (SMO). Professor Pape concluded that Russia got bogged down and is having great difficulty advancing much further.
Pape’s view is, in fact, typical in American academia as though territorial gains and the colors on military maps are the only gauge against which we can measure success or failure: if you’re conquering territory, you are doing well. If you’re not conquering territory, you’re bogged down. To my mind, such analyses might be short on imagination.
Consider this: when Russia launched its SMO, it clashed with an intact Ukrainian army, armed to the teeth with heavy weaponry, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, air defences, and everything else they prepared for this war, including over 300,000 well trained and well equipped combat troops. That’s the force that the Russian army confronted at the outset and managed to take 18% of Ukraine’s territory in only ten months.
If that is so, then why would a much larger Russian force be bogged down now, against a significantly weakened AFU? Certainly, the advent of drones could be an issue, but it is not the decisive factor. It may not have occurred to Professor Pape that conquering territory isn’t a high priority for Russia - certainly not a reason to rush its advance to impress Western analysts.
At the very outset of the SMO, President Putin articulated its four specific objectives:
- Ukraine must recognize Crimea as Russian territory
- Ukraine must officially renounce joining the NATO alliance
- Ukraine must negotiate directly with the breakaway republics (too late now).
- Ukraine must be demilitarized and declared neutral
This last part, that Ukraine must be demilitarized, may explain why Russia has been advancing as slowly as they have done during the last three years: for as long as Ukraine and their Western helpers and sponsors are throwing resources against the Russian army, they are becoming steadily demilitarized.
In effect, Russia has created a reinforced grinding machine that’s destroying everything the AFU and NATO are throwing against it. With the slow approach, not only are they demilitarizing Ukraine, they are also giving their sponsors ample time to bankrupt themselves.
John Mearsheimer: Putin doesn’t know how to end the war
Another American Academic who articulated similar views is none other than John Mearsheimer. He also said that Putin doesn’t know how to end the war. When asked what Putin’s objectives in Ukraine are, Mearsheimer said that Putin wants to reduce Ukraine to a small enough territory and population until it would no longer posed a threat to Russia.
Professor Mearsheimer didn’t hear any of that, either from Vladimir Putin or from any other Kremlin official: he simply ventured to speculate about what Mr. Putin is thinking. But about two months ago, Putin articulated a specific plan for ending the Ukraine war, encompassing the following six requiremens:
- New parliamentary elections in Ukraine
- Appointment of an acting president to replace Volodymyr Zelensky
- Referenda (it is not clear what kinds of referenda are planned)
- Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) forms a new government
- Constitutional amendments needed to conclude peace (the current constitution prohibits negotiations with Russia and enshrines Ukraine’s aspiration to become a NATO member country) and affirm Ukraine’s neutrality as per her 1991 constitution.
- New presidential elections, which must be recognized and certified by the United Nations
None of the six points have anything to do with territory or with colors on military maps. They all refer to Ukraine’s system of governance and it is surprising that this point escapes both Professors Pape and Mearsheimer (and pretty much all other Western analysts I have been following).
It’s the “governance,” stupid!
Historians should be aware that taking control of a territory’s or a nation’s system of governance is a far more powerful tool of control and security than holding territory. The Vatican never needed a large territory nor a large population to have huge political influence over much of the past two thousand years.
Venice was a small city in northern Adriatic, with a small population, but it was able to build a large Mediterranean empire during the Middle Ages, rivalling the Ottoman Empire. The City of London also spawned a large empire without having a large territory or a large population. It did so by taking control of target nations’ systems of governance.
The recent attempt to seize control of Polands’s Constitutional Tribunal was the perfect example of this. A handful of insiders, backed by domestic security and police forces could have altered the political power in Poland just as the February 2014 coup changed political power in Ukraine. Military invasions were never necessary and territorial percentage gains were utterly irrelevant.
It may be that our historical curriculum deals with narratives about military conquests, with maps and colors, to such an extent that the question of governance simply gets overlooked and our good professors and analysts devote little attention to it. Or, perhaps they do understand the importance of governance, but can’t imagine that the primitive, boorish Russians could possibly understand it.
Well, perhaps the boorish Russians do understand it perfectly well, and they are not rushed. Vladimir Putin isn’t worried about mid-term elections, being impeached, or any other deliberately contrived paralysis-inducing mechanism of Western democratic governance. From his perch, for as long as the Western powers are frantically throwing everything and the kitchen sink into his Army’s grinding machine, he is content to humor them and see them slip-slide into bankruptcy that’s gathering - gradually at first, and then all of a sudden.
Original opinion: TrendCompass — Russia’s goals in Ukraine: governance, not territory