Vladimir Putin's 25-Year Campaign to Reshape Global Order
Vladimir Putin has systematically transformed Russia from a post-Soviet state seeking Western integration into an aggressive revanchist power waging war on its neighbors while cultivating unprecedented influence over American foreign policy. Over a quarter-century, the former KGB officer has seized territory from two sovereign nations, interfered in democratic elections across the West, weaponized energy and disinformation, and now appears to have achieved something his Soviet predecessors never accomplished: a U.S. administration that advances Russian strategic interests while pressuring Ukraine to cede territory won by military force.
The through-line connecting Putin’s rise amid suspicious apartment bombings in 1999 to the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Ukraine in 2025 reveals a pattern of escalating aggression met with diminishing Western resolve. Each time Putin faced limited consequences—after Georgia in 2008, after Crimea in 2014, after documented election interference in 2016—he drew the same lesson: the West prefers accommodation to confrontation.
From KGB Lieutenant Colonel to Kremlin Master
Putin’s path to absolute power began unremarkably in the intelligence services. He joined the KGB on August 1, 1975, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel during a five-year posting to Dresden, East Germany—described by biographer Masha Gessen as “essentially a backwater job” where Putin “was reduced mainly to collecting press clippings.” But one experience from those years shaped his worldview permanently: when crowds approached the KGB headquarters in December 1989, Putin called Moscow for military backup and was told the Kremlin was “silent.” That helplessness before popular revolt left a lasting mark.
After the Soviet collapse, Putin attached himself to Anatoly Sobchak, his former law professor who became St. Petersburg’s mayor. By 1998, Boris Yeltsin had appointed him FSB director, and on August 9, 1999, Yeltsin named the little-known bureaucrat prime minister and publicly anointed him as successor. Putin’s approval rating stood at just 2%.
What followed transformed Russian politics. Between September 4 and 16, 1999, a series of apartment bombings killed at least 293 people in Moscow and other cities, with the attacks blamed on Chechen terrorists. The bombings provided justification for the Second Chechen War, and Putin’s approval soared as he promised to pursue terrorists and “wipe them out in the outhouse.” But troubling questions emerged when FSB agents were caught on September 22, 1999, in Ryazan planting what local police identified as explosives in an apartment building’s basement. The FSB later claimed it was a “training exercise” with sugar—an explanation the local FSB office said “came as a surprise.”
Investigative journalists who questioned the official narrative met grim fates. Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in her apartment building on October 7, 2006. Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who co-authored a book alleging FSB involvement in the bombings, died of polonium-210 poisoning in London on November 23, 2006. On his deathbed, he accused Putin of ordering his murder. Duma deputies Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, both investigating the bombings, died under suspicious circumstances in 2003.
By March 26, 2000, Putin won the presidency with 52.9% of the vote. He immediately moved to crush any power centers that might challenge him. Media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky was arrested on June 13, 2000, and his NTV network—Russia’s only independent national television—was seized by state-controlled Gazprom on April 14, 2001. Oligarch Boris Berezovsky, one of Putin’s original patrons, fled Russia in November 2000 and later died under unexplained circumstances in London. Most dramatically, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s richest man with an estimated $15 billion fortune, was arrested by masked FSB agents at 5 a.m. on October 25, 2003, and imprisoned for over a decade. The message to other oligarchs was unmistakable: challenge Putin and face destruction.
The Munich Declaration and Georgia’s Warning
By 2007, Putin was ready to announce his break with the West. On February 10, 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, he delivered a 32-minute indictment of American hegemony that shocked Western leaders. “What is a unipolar world?” Putin demanded. “It refers to one type of situation—one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.” He denounced NATO expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust” and accused Washington of “almost uncontained hyper-use of force.”
Fifteen months later, Putin proved he was prepared to back rhetoric with action. The August 2008 invasion of Georgia established patterns that would recur in Ukraine: provocation through “passportization” (by 2008, approximately 90% of South Ossetia and Abkhazia residents held Russian passports), manufactured crises, overwhelming military force, and false claims of protecting Russian citizens.
The war itself was brief but brutal. After escalating artillery exchanges, Georgian forces entered South Ossetia on August 7-8, 2008. Russia responded with an invasion force of 14,000 troops in South Ossetia and 9,000 in Abkhazia, supported by 63 air sorties on the first full day alone. Russian forces advanced to within 40 kilometers of Tbilisi before a French-brokered ceasefire halted operations. The conflict killed approximately 850 people, displaced 192,000, and left Russia controlling 20% of Georgian territory.
The Western response established a dangerous precedent. The Bush administration condemned Russia and sent humanitarian aid, but imposed no significant sanctions. The EU suspended partnership talks—then restarted them by November 2008. Putin’s popularity soared to 88%, the highest ever recorded at that time. As the Atlantic Council later assessed, “The weak international response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia greenlighted Russia’s subsequent military assault on Ukraine.” Putin learned that small victorious wars boosted domestic approval while carrying minimal international costs.
Ukraine Becomes the Main Target
Putin’s obsession with preventing Ukraine’s Western integration culminated in the most significant military conflict in Europe since World War II. The path began in November 2013 when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, under Russian pressure, rejected an EU association agreement, triggering the Euromaidan protests. After Yanukovych fled on February 22, 2014, Putin moved within days.
The Crimean operation demonstrated sophisticated planning. Unmarked Russian soldiers—the “little green men”—began appearing across Crimea on February 20, 2014. On February 27, special forces from Russia’s 45th Guards Separate Reconnaissance Regiment seized the Crimean parliament and installed a new government. A March 16 referendum, conducted under armed guard without credible international observers, produced a claimed 96.77% vote to join Russia. Putin formally annexed Crimea on March 18, 2014. He initially denied any Russian military involvement; on April 17, he admitted Russian forces had been there all along.
In eastern Ukraine, the pattern was more violent but followed similar lines. On April 7, 2014, pro-Russian separatists declared the Donetsk People’s Republic; the Luhansk People’s Republic followed weeks later. Former GRU Colonel Igor Girkin (alias “Strelkov”) later admitted his role: “I’m the one who pulled the trigger of war. If our unit hadn’t crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out.”
The human cost of the Donbas war from 2014-2022 reached approximately 14,000 deaths and 2 million displaced. The conflict’s deadliest single incident came on July 17, 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over separatist territory, killing all 298 aboard—predominantly Dutch citizens. The Joint Investigation Team conclusively traced the Buk missile to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk. A Dutch court in November 2022 convicted three men of murder, sentencing them to life imprisonment in absentia.
The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 proved ineffective at resolving the conflict. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel later admitted the accords were partly intended to give Ukraine “time to become stronger”—a statement Russian propagandists seized upon, though it reflected defensive preparation against anticipated Russian aggression rather than any Western offensive plans.
The Full-Scale Invasion Reshapes Europe
On February 24, 2022, Putin launched the largest attack on a European country since 1945, claiming the goals of “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine—a nation led by Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish. The invasion initially struck on four simultaneous fronts, with Russian forces reaching within 20 miles of Kyiv on day one.
The assault failed to achieve its stated objectives. Ukrainian forces under General Oleksandr Syrskyi successfully defended the capital, and by April 7, 2022, Russian forces had fully withdrawn from northern Ukraine. But the Russian retreat revealed atrocities that shocked the world. In Bucha, discovered on April 1-2, 2022, investigators found 561 civilians killed during the 33-day occupation—bodies with hands tied behind backs, evidence of execution and torture. In Mariupol, a nearly three-month siege killed an estimated 21,000-25,000 civilians, destroyed 90% of residential buildings, and included the deliberate bombing of a drama theater clearly marked “CHILDREN” visible from the air—killing approximately 600 people.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on March 17, 2023—the first ever against a sitting leader of a UN Security Council permanent member—charging him with the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.
As of January 2026, Russia controls approximately 116,206 square kilometers—roughly 19.25% of Ukrainian territory, equivalent to the size of Ohio. The casualty toll has been staggering on both sides. British intelligence estimates Russian military casualties at 1.168 million killed and wounded through December 2025, including an estimated 240,000 killed. President Zelensky acknowledged 100,000 Ukrainian military deaths in April 2025, with 35,000 missing. The UN has confirmed over 15,000 civilian deaths, while recognizing the true toll is significantly higher.
The war continues to grind forward, with Russia gaining an average of 171 square miles per month throughout 2025, particularly around the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Ukraine’s power grid has been devastated—80% of thermal generation capacity destroyed—leaving Kyiv residents facing up to 16 hours daily without electricity.
Putin’s Expanding Sphere of Influence
Beyond Georgia and Ukraine, Putin has worked to extend Russian power across multiple domains. In Belarus, the 2020-2021 protests that nearly toppled Alexander Lukashenko transformed that country into a Russian dependency. Russian troops used Belarus as a staging ground for the Ukraine invasion, and tactical nuclear weapons have been deployed there, creating what analysts describe as permanent Russian military presence.
The Wagner Group—the private military company funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin with what Putin admitted was approximately $1 billion from May 2022 to May 2023—extended Russian influence across Africa. In countries from the Central African Republic to Mali, Libya, and Sudan, Wagner forces operated with documented atrocities: the State Department reported Wagner killed at least 1,800 African civilians by August 2023. Prigozhin’s bizarre June 2023 mutiny—a brief armed march toward Moscow—ended with his death in a plane crash on August 23, 2023, exactly two months later. Wagner has since been rebranded as the state-controlled “Africa Corps,” with violence involving Russian mercenaries doubling in late 2023.
Russian interference in Western elections has been extensively documented. The 2016 U.S. presidential election saw the Internet Research Agency wage what the Mueller Report called “information warfare” while Russian military intelligence hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign. Notably, within five hours of Trump publicly asking Russia to find Clinton’s deleted emails on July 27, 2016, the GRU targeted her personal office for the first time. Similar operations targeted the Brexit referendum (150,000 Russian-linked accounts tweeted about it), the 2017 French election (20,000+ Macron campaign emails leaked two days before the vote), and numerous other democracies.
Energy has served as another weapon. At its peak, Russia supplied 45% of EU natural gas imports. In 2021-2022, Russia deliberately withheld gas supplies, manipulated spot markets, and ultimately cut off Nord Stream 1 flows entirely. The resulting crisis cost Europe over €1 trillion in mitigation efforts. The mysterious September 26, 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines—the worst methane release in history—remains under investigation, with a Ukrainian suspect arrested in Italy in August 2025.
An American President’s Unusual Deference
No aspect of Putin’s quarter-century project has proven more consequential than his apparent influence over Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Trump’s admiration for Putin predates his political career and has survived Putin’s invasion of a U.S. partner, documented election interference in Trump’s favor, and the murder of thousands of civilians.
The record of Trump’s statements is extensive and specific. In December 2015, Trump called Putin “a strong leader” who was “making mincemeat out of our president.” In March 2014, after Russia seized Crimea, Trump said Putin “really goes step by step by step, and you have to give him a lot of credit.” Most strikingly, on February 22, 2022—one day before the full-scale invasion—Trump called Putin’s moves “genius” and “savvy”: “I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen.”
The July 16, 2018 Helsinki summit crystallized Trump’s posture. Standing beside Putin, asked whom he believed regarding election interference—his intelligence community or Putin—Trump answered: “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Senator John McCain called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”
Trump’s actions matched his rhetoric. Throughout his first term, he repeatedly questioned NATO’s value and threatened withdrawal, telling national security officials he “didn’t see the point of NATO”—a long-standing Putin objective. Congress was sufficiently alarmed to include provisions in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act prohibiting the president from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO.
Most directly consequential was Trump’s withholding of $392 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in 2019, conditioning its release on Ukraine announcing investigations into Joe Biden. The July 25, 2019 phone call with Zelensky—“I would like you to do us a favor though”—led to Trump’s first impeachment. The Government Accountability Office concluded the White House broke federal law by withholding the aid.
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has pressured Ukraine toward territorial concessions while blaming Ukraine for the war. At a February 28, 2025 Oval Office meeting, Trump and Vice President Vance confronted Zelensky on camera, with Trump declaring “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out” and defending Putin by saying he “went through a hell of a lot with me” during the “phony witch hunt.” The administration suspended intelligence and military aid for approximately one week afterward. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly stated that Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders are “an unrealistic objective.”
The Trump administration’s proposed peace deal reportedly puts formal U.S. recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea on the table, accepts Russian control over territories seized since 2022, and offers to lift related sanctions. As former National Security Adviser John Bolton assessed: “Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations have even begun.”
The Worldview Driving Putin’s Ambitions
Understanding Putin requires grasping his ideological framework. In his April 25, 2005 State of the Nation address, Putin declared that “the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”—a formulation placing lost empire above even the 24 million Soviet citizens killed in World War II.
Putin’s July 12, 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” laid the intellectual foundation for invasion, denying Ukraine’s existence as a legitimate nation and claiming Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are “one people—a single whole.” The essay is mandatory reading for Russian military personnel. Thirty-five legal and genocide experts cited it as “laying the groundwork for incitement to genocide: denying the existence of the Ukrainian group.”
The Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill has provided theological sanction for aggression. In March 2024, the World Russian People’s Council under Kirill officially described the Ukraine conflict as a “Holy War.” Analysis of Kirill’s sermons found consistent themes: downplaying peace, framing the conflict as metaphysical struggle against Western liberalism, and exhorting sacrifice. The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly called the ROC leadership “an ideological extension of Vladimir Putin’s regime complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Putin’s vision extends to fundamentally restructuring the international order. At the October 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan—hosting 36 countries—Putin declared that “the process of forming a multipolar world order is underway, a dynamic and irreversible process.” Russia has deepened its partnership with China, pursued alternatives to Western payment systems, and worked to expand BRICS as a counterweight to Western institutions.
Conclusion: A Test of Western Resolve
Putin’s 25-year trajectory reveals consistent patterns: probe for weakness, exploit opportunities, claim defensive motivations for offensive actions, and test whether the West values stability over principle. Each inadequate response—after Georgia, after Crimea, after election interference—confirmed his operating assumptions.
The current moment represents the most dangerous convergence yet: an ongoing war of conquest in Ukraine, a U.S. administration apparently willing to legitimize territorial seizures, and a Russian leader who has stated clearly that he considers Ukraine’s independent existence illegitimate. The Carnegie Endowment assessment captures the stakes: Putin’s goal is to “cleave the United States from Europe” while obtaining “the necessary concessions” from Ukraine.
What remains uncertain is whether this trajectory continues or reverses. European allies have begun substantial defense investments. Ukraine has demonstrated unexpected resilience despite catastrophic losses. And the unsustainability of Russia’s own casualty rates—potentially exceeding 1 million killed and wounded—raises questions about how long the war can continue at its current intensity.
But the fundamental question posed by Putin’s quarter-century is whether the international order constructed after World War II—based on territorial integrity, collective defense, and the illegitimacy of changing borders by force—will survive a sustained challenge from a nuclear-armed power that has found, in a U.S. president, an apparent admirer rather than an adversary.