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Andrew Chakhoyan 🇺🇦July 30, 2026 at 4:33 PM EDT

Who is Schrödinger's putin? A man who can end the war tomorrow, yet also can't [my latest op-ed in a 🧵 thread] Few medieval figures loom larger in 🇷🇺’s origin story than Yuriy Dolgorukiy, the prince who founded an outpost on the Moskva River from which russian empire arose 1/28

But the man moscow claims as a forefather is buried not in 🇷🇺, but in 🇺🇦 Dolgorukiy’s ambition was to rule Kyivan Rus from its true center – let the name be a hint. He died there as Grand Prince in 1157 and was laid to rest at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, which Russia struck on June 15 2/28

The barbarism of the attack crystallizes the very contradiction in which Russia's war is rooted. Putin oscillates between insisting Ukraine does not exist and dismissing it as a fabricated state, yet Moscow's own origin story keeps leading back to #Kyiv. 3/28

A shapeless, nagging terror has gripped russian rulers since time immemorial: the risk of discovering that what lacks meaning, substance, and coherence is 🇷🇺 itself, a fragmented empire of peoples #moscow colonized in a hurry, forever searching and never finding a unifying national idea 4/28

🇷🇺’s war-criminal-in-chief made the decision to invade 🇺🇦 But putin the puppeteer is also a puppet in the hands of russian imperial ethos. The instrument of Moscow’s efforts to reassert its right to rule over colonial possessions (aka Federation) 5/28 kyivindependent.com

Therein lies the paradox. Schrödinger's Putin: the autocrat who could stop the killing tomorrow but remains captive to the predatory and violent political tradition he embodies. 6/28

The record leaves no ambiguity In 2014, on Putin’s command, 🇷🇺 troops without insignia appeared in #Crimea 8 years later, he ordered a full-scale invasion. Both were acts of aggression under the UN Charter/ choices made unilaterally by a tyrant who has spent 20+ years concentrating power 7/28

The same Putin possesses ample authority to end the war. No parliament can overrule him. No meaningful opposition can mobilize against him. No independent media can challenge his narrative, for it was cowed into obedience long ago 8/28 kyivindependent.com

On any given Tuesday morning, Putin could dismiss generals, reshuffle ministers, purge oligarchs, declare military objectives fulfilled, and hold a parade on Red Square if he felt like it. 9/28

When Bashar Assad fell in 2024, #Putin simply informed his people that 🇷🇺 had, "in general," achieved its objectives. The absurdity of that statement was plain embarrassing. Having propped up the Assad dynasty from 1971, Moscow had lost its client. Yet the news was absorbed without difficulty. 10/28

The Kremlin’s justification for its war on #Ukraine keeps changing: protecting Russian speakers, “demilitarization,” “denazification,” NATO encirclement, then a civilizational struggle against the “Anglo-Saxons.” A regime that invents reasons for war so freely can invent one for ending it. 11/28

Russia occupies roughly 1/5 of 🇺🇦 The Kremlin could freeze the front and sell its gains as a historic triumph. In a country where citizenship brings neither rights nor duties, politics is a spectator sport. Most Russians would meet “victory” with relief, resignation, and a shrug. 12/28

🔴 Moscow's categorical imperative Most explanations for 🇷🇺's commitment to the war on 🇺🇦, in its 12th year, focus on regime survival. Putin cannot end the war, the argument goes, because he would appear weak before the siloviki, the security elites, who are the only constituency that matters. 13/28 🇷🇺 has never developed a reliable way to transfer power. Its tsars and commissars usually left office through death, palace intrigue or revolution. putin knows this history and has reason to fear for his life. Yet the specter of a coup explains his anxiety, not how the system itself works. 14/28

To understand why Moscow cannot quit its war on 🇺🇦, the more important question is not how the war assures Putin’s survival, but what Russia is – a patchwork of subjugated peoples and territories ruled from the center 15/28 theatlantic.com

Every despot is tempted by a small-victorious-war to tighten his grip. In Russia's case, however, that explanation is incomplete. Aggression directed at neighbours isn't about an ideology or regime, but Moscow’s mandate to rule over internal colonies 16/28 nypost.com

Hoping russia will outgrow this doom-loop is nostalgia for a country that has never existed. When the outer shell of the Soviet empire fell in 1991, many took it for the end. It was not. Within one prison of nations, another was waiting – the russian Federation. 17/28

A Dutch imperialist could go home as a Dutch citizen when the empire fell apart. The Buryats, Tuvans, Bashkirs, and dozens of other peoples whose identities Moscow spent centuries trying to erase have no such civic homeland. via #Yermolenko 18/28 theukrainians.org

Neither, for that matter, do ethnic Russians. Strip away the imperial essence, and there is no Russia to return to. Moscow's founding myth was always a con. Kyiv appears in historical records from the fifth century; Moscow from the twelfth. 19/28

When Ivan the Terrible crowned himself Tsar of All Rus in 1547, he was not inheriting a civilization. He was claiming one that had flourished for centuries without him, the Kremlin or Moscow. 20/28 thehill.com

The forces that could compel Putin to end his war as a way to preserve the state are indistinguishable from forces that demand he keep going to preserve Russia – the idea. That is the categorical imperative Moscow cannot escape, and that no negotiation table will dissolve. 21/28

🇷🇺's war on 🇺🇦 is not a temporary crisis tied to the whims of a mad ruler. As long as 🇷🇺 remains an empire stretching from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka, centralized to the extreme and searching for “national unity” through aggression, it will remain a well-defined threat to Transatlantic security 22/28

The former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis asked the right question: "Who cares what Putin would do if Russia loses? We should worry more about what he would do if Russia wins." 23/28

The haggling over lines on a map is self-deception on the side of Ukraine's allies. The question is not where the border ultimately runs. The question is whether naked violence works and whether the Transatlantic deterrence posture is backed by capability and credibility. 24/28

Russia formally recognized Ukraine's 1991 borders in multiple treaties and agreements. That should be the only border that matters in Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, and Washington, unless Kyiv says otherwise. 25/28

Moscow’s aggression against 🇺🇦 functions as a legitimating ritual for its grip on Tatarstan’s oil, Yakutia’s diamonds, and the political agency of 140M inhabitants. Such a war will not end if a predatory state is allowed to feed its imperial ambition 26/28 kyivindependent.com

The world can shape the incentives under which Moscow operates, but it cannot decide when Russia de-imperializes. That is for Russians to work out, but their future rulers must learn the big lesson: wars of conquest bring ever larger costs, not rewards 27/28 nypost.com

Schrödinger's Putin may end the war tomorrow. The political tradition he embodies makes that outcome perpetually elusive. Empires rarely choose to stop being empires. They are made to stop. 28/28 END realclearworld.com

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