Russia has stepped on the accelerator of war production to such an extent that the war is no longer a reversible political choice, but the very engine of the State.
The essay “The Inertia of Russia’s War: Why Putin Can’t End the Conflict,” authored by Seva Gunitsky and Jeremy Morris in Foreign Affairs, dismantles many Western clichés. The two authors have deep knowledge of the society and dynamics of the former Soviet bloc. Seva Gunitsky is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto and an expert on authoritarian regimes. Jeremy Morris is a professor of global studies at Aarhus University and an ethnographer specializing in post-Soviet Russia.
It is usually thought that the invasion of Ukraine continues only due to Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions or the Kremlin’s geopolitical designs. Yet the two scholars show something different and deeper: a mechanism now running on its own, where the conflict shapes daily life, banks, and institutions that are now estranged from any horizon of peace.
WAR AS THE BACKBONE OF RUSSIA
The Russian public framework has changed from top to bottom, shifting the axis of gravity of its functions. The analysis by the New York bimonthly makes clear that the military aggression is not a matter confined to the front, but the backbone of the country. Around this transition, an economy and a network of internal power have arisen where laying down arms does not mean reopening the doors to the old normality, but rather risks a political earthquake with unpredictable consequences for those in power.
Putin thus finds himself in the curious and difficult position of being a hostage to the monster he created: a force of inertia that makes ending hostilities a political gamble almost impossible to pay.
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF THE DEFENSE ECONOMY
Reorganizing factories to supply frontline units has ended up doping Russia’s accounts. The rivers of rubles injected by the state into the production of ammunition and weapons push GDP upward, offering a facade of solidity that covers very serious structural cracks. Behind this artificial growth moves a new class of entrepreneurs and speculators who make enormous profits solely thanks to orders from the Ministry of Defense.
If fighting were to cease suddenly, this dirigiste house of cards would collapse instantly: thousands of subsidiary companies would find themselves without orders, opening the way to a very heavy recession due to the sudden halt of state stimuli.
The budgets of local administrations and even the shadow economies of the most depressed territories of the federation are now calibrated on war spending. In historically poor provinces, the two authors observe, the generous wages guaranteed by arms factories and the substantial compensation paid in case of death or disability at the front have guaranteed millions of families their first real income increases in a decade. A sudden peace would destroy this unexpected peripheral prosperity, turning into a boomerang for social stability and probably triggering protests capable of overturning the balances at the central level.
THE ISSUE OF VETERANS AND THE TERRITORIAL PARADOX
Two further aspects often underestimated by many observers emerge when looking at society. The hypothesis of freezing the conflict opens two hot fronts for Russian security. On one side, there is the enormous unknown of the return home of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Reinserting into civilian life men marked by trench trauma and accustomed to violence risks igniting cities, especially in a labor market deprived of the rich contracts guaranteed by the army. On the other side, permanent war propaganda is the perfect tool to silence opposition, since every criticism is branded as betrayal of the homeland.
LIMITED ROOM FOR MANEUVER FOR THE LEADERSHIP
There is also the constitutional hurdle of the four Ukrainian provinces formally annexed: for Moscow’s doctrine, stopping without complete military control would mean ceding national territories, an intolerable blow for the nationalist wing that would tear apart the narrative of the final triumph.
The Foreign Affairs essay highlights how this new social and political hierarchy, born from blood and subsidies, effectively limits the leadership’s room for maneuver. For the governments allied with Ukraine, for all European peoples, the analysis issues a clear warning: deterrence must reckon with a structurally changed adversary, for whom the risks linked to ending hostilities now outweigh the costs of a grinding war of attrition.
This explains why Putin, despite his public statements, has no real intention of opening a peace negotiation table that leads to a concrete result. And why the hypothesis of an endless war, even without prospects of a near victory, may appear to Kremlin strategists (so far not particularly sharp) as the lesser evil.
