Vladimir Putin’s\u00a0troubles\u00a0are adding up.\u00a0His public denials\u00a0notwithstanding, the war in Ukraine and economy at home are heading in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n
His implied social contract with his subjects \u2014\u00a0you support me in this\u00a0war\u00a0and I will shield you from its consequences \u2014 is beginning to fray.\u00a0An assault on a NATO member state, followed by a nuclear ultimatum to end the war on Moscow’s terms, debasing the alliance in the process, is looking like an increasingly attractive\u00a0option.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Four factors are forcing Putin’s hand.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After an estimated 1.2. million Russian dead and wounded,<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0around 35,000 average\u00a0monthly casualties, the “special military operation<\/a>” has turned into an endless war of attrition he cannot win and cannot afford to lose. Russia’s key advantage over Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0cannon fodder\u00a0\u2014\u00a0has become all but irrelevant. Throwing 300,000 more men into the trenches by ordering another “partial mobilization<\/a>,” as even the militaristic Russian “Z” bloggers<\/a> warn, will only result in the draftees’ dying without\u00a0altering “the nature of the war.<\/a>”\u00a0A “technological breakthrough<\/a>”\u00a0is needed, the bloggers declare, to counter Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n But despite Putin’s promises, none appears on the horizon.<\/p>\n On the verge of recession for most of 2025,Russia’s economy shrank in the first quarter of this year. Disappointing gas and oil revenues no longer cover the estimated $900-million-a day war<\/a>, which consumes 70\u00a0percent<\/a>\u00a0of the budget. A 14.25-percent interest rate<\/a>\u00a0depresses the already battered and deflated civilian sector. With average inflation at 5 percent, the prices of Russians’ diet\u00a0staples like\u00a0bread and chicken have ratcheted up\u00a0to twice the official rate.<\/a><\/p>\n Ukraine’s drone strikes at some of the largest oil\u00a0refiners have\u00a0reduced gasoline production by over a quarter.<\/a>\u00a0Rationing and long lines at gas stations are now standard even in Moscow<\/a>.\u00a0The bombings of Moscow<\/a>\u00a0and St. Petersburg<\/a>\u00a0embarrassed the Kremlin,\u00a0forcing it to scale down<\/a> its military\u00a0parade on Russia’s\u00a0main national holiday,\u00a0Victory Day.\u00a0Weeks of drone attacks have wrecked the transport and electricity systems in occupied\u00a0Crimea, causing\u00a0the declaration of a state of emergency<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the first time,\u00a0even court pollsters registered the diminution of his popularity<\/a>.<\/p>\n And then there is the unique and time-limited opportunity offered by the Trump White House: the ambivalence of its commitment to NATO,\u00a0and the amorality of its unwillingness\u00a0(or inability) to distinguish between just wars and wars of aggression. \u00a0<\/p>\n President Trump once compared President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin to “two kids fighting in the park<\/a>.” The former was publicly berated in the Oval Office<\/a> by Trump,\u00a0in front of television cameras. He was cold-shouldered in collective meetings with other heads of state. Meanwhile, the latter was given many warm phone chats with Trump<\/a> and feted at a summit, complete with\u00a0red carpet, honor guard, and a ride in the U.S president’s limo<\/a>. Trump has at times also seemed to accept<\/a> the former KGB lieutenant colonel’s assertion that Ukraine started the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, assailing NATO is tempting because of the\u00a0vulnerability of the alliance’s member states on Russia’s border: Estonia (population 1.36 million<\/a>) and Latvia (1.85 million),<\/a>\u00a0with ethnic Russians one-fifth and almost one-fourth of their citizens, respectively.<\/p>\n Ploys already abound. Russian intelligence services<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0begun plotting a false flag legend by claiming that Ukrainian drone operators were in Latvia to prepare strikes against Russia.\u00a0Don’t count on NATO “protecting<\/a>” you in the case of Russia’s response, the Russian ambassador to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya, told his Latvian counterpart: It would be you who “provoked Russia’s action.”<\/p>\n An invasion is liable to start with Russia pulverizing the runways with drones and missiles to prevent by-air reinforcements and putting out of commission the Warsaw-Kaunas railway, which is NATO’s only rail link to the Baltics. Under the circumstances, NATO’s 40,000-strong high-readiness multinational Allied Reaction Force<\/a>\u00a0would take days,\u00a0if not weeks,\u00a0to move its key assets to the battle theater.<\/p>\n Such deployment would\u00a0also\u00a0have to wait until\u00a032\u00a0heads of allied states\u00a0in Brussels\u00a0unanimously agree that an aggression took place,\u00a0and then decide, pursuant to\u00a0Article 5 of the NATO Treaty<\/a>, on “such action as [they] deem necessary, individually or in concert with the other Parties to assist the Party or Parties so attacked.”<\/p>\n But\u00a0Putin\u00a0is\u00a0not looking for a conventional confrontation with NATO, whose military strength is orders of magnitude superior to his own. Instead, the Kremlin would aim to occupy either of two small patches of Estonia or Latvia: the 1,150-square-mile\u00a0Ida-Viru county,\u00a0where three-quarters of the population is ethnic Russian<\/a>,\u00a0or the 5,600-square-mile\u00a0Latgale province, which is\u00a0one-third Russian<\/a>.<\/p>\n After either of these areas is “accepted” into Russia following a fraudulent “referendum” under the barrels of Kalashnikovs, Putin only\u00a0has to\u00a0invoke Article 18<\/a>\u00a0of the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which gives the president the right to use nuclear weapons even in a conventional conflict if he determines that the state is under “critical threat.”\u00a0A\u00a0direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, Foreign Minister Sergei\u00a0Lavrov warned the West last month,<\/a>\u00a0“could quickly escalate\u00a0into an exchange of nuclear strikes with catastrophic consequences.”<\/p>\n To avoid such “consequences,” Putin would appeal to NATO to step back from the precipice of nuclear Armageddon and reach a\u00a0settlement that would secure “a lasting peace<\/a>”\u00a0in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Russia’s conditions\u00a0\u2014\u00a0all of which the Kremlin had pressed on the West before and spelled out in Trump’s “28-Point Peace Plan”<\/a>\u00a0and in the Russian foreign ministry’s list of demands<\/a>\u00a0before the invasion of Ukraine\u2014 are certain to include the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donbass; international recognition<\/a>\u00a0of Russia’s sovereignty overCrimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and the occupied portions of Kherson and\u00a0Zaporizhzhya; and a two-third reduction<\/a>\u00a0of Ukraine’s armed forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n Putin’s other terms are likely to reflect his “New\u00a0Yalta”\u00a0agenda<\/a>: an abiding ambition to reshuffle, Stalin-like, the post-Cold War strategic boundaries of Europe. To eliminate what he has repeatedly cited as the “root causes<\/a>” of the war on Ukraine, all “foreign troops” would have to be removed from the post-1990 NATO member states, effectively reversing the alliance’s eastward 1999-2004 expansion, and no new members ever to be admitted, especially Ukraine. There shall\u00a0not\u00a0be “any military activity”<\/a>\u00a0by NATO anywhere on the territory of the former Soviet Union and no large-scale military exercises in the proximity to the Russian borders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Will Putin roll the dice to extricate himself from the quagmire of the unwinnable war, luxuriate in immense popularity at home and, in one fell swoop, cement a place in history with a feat that even his beloved Soviet Union couldn’t\u00a0pull off:\u00a0humiliating\u00a0and perhaps fatally degrading\u00a0the West’s armor? And will NATO consider such a choice “far-fetched” and “speculative,” or start preparing for it today? We may not have to wait long for answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Leon\u00a0Aron\u00a0is the author, most recently, of “Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.<\/a>“<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n