SEYMOUR HERSH
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NO END IN SIGHT FOR UKRAINE
Hopes for and end to the war have dwindled
SEYMOUR HERSH
OCTOBER 2, 2025
PAID
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting during the World Atomic Week international forum last week in Moscow. / Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.
A recent series of interviews with knowledgeable American officials, some linked to the Trump White House and others with long-standing diplomatic ties to Russia, has made it clear to this reporter that there is no end in sight for the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine that was initiated in February 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Still unyielding, Putin is now seen by some intelligence experts in the Trump administration as vulnerable in the long run, despite Russia’s current vast superiority in manpower, wealth, and seized Ukrainian territory. There is revived talk—pernicious perhaps—about Putin being obsessed by a desire to be seen among the most famed of Russian leaders, such as Peter the Great, the eighteenth-century tsar who spent twenty-one years of warfare conquering land from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
I also was reminded in recent talks, which echoed the early satisfied chatter of the Biden administration, that Putin failed to gain immediate traction in the first days of the war and directly threaten Kiev, the Ukraine capital, after the most elite Russian paratroopers and combat units did not achieve success in the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine. The surprise attack, planned by Putin to threaten Kiev and force an immediate concession, led to huge troop and tank losses, and an abject Russian retreat that was celebrated and overemphasized by the Biden administration. The Russians did not know how to win that fight, but nor could the outgunned Ukrainians fully repel them. It was the beginning of a murderous stalemate.
The war plods on today as a war of attrition. After noting that a twelve-hour Russian attack Sunday in Kiev and elsewhere killed at least four Ukrainians and injured dozens, one American intelligence official caustically and accurately told me that the dead-and-wounded toll seemed to be “an acceptable number.” The air-and-drone war continues day after day.
Putin, I also was told, is clearly far less interested now than he seemed to be before the August Alaska summit with Trump in consolidating his gains—he has won substantial territory in four eastern Ukrainian provinces—and agreeing to a ceasefire, and an eventual peace agreement that would legalize his on-the-ground successes. The American official’s view is that Putin is consumed by huge economic problems that are straining his military reserves and his relationship with the Russian oligarchs. There is undoubtedly some truth to the story of Putin’s continuing economic problems. It’s widely known that Putin has been borrowing heavily from Russian banks and selling his crude oil cheaply, but the Russian army is continuing, albeit slowly amid some fierce resistance, to fight and move deeper into Ukraine. Putin, too, may be confused and even bewildered by Trump’s changing assessments about the Ukraine war.
That the president’s on-and-off hope of working out a peace plan with Putin—and increasing his chances of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—is not going well, was made clear last Sunday when Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News that the Trump administration was considering the sale of long-range Tomahawk missiles—capable of hitting Moscow and beyond—to Ukraine. One goal, he explained, “is asking the Europeans to buy that weaponry that shows some European skin in the game. I think that gets them really invested in both what’s happening in their own backyard, but also in the peace process that the president has been pushing for the last eight months.” The European leaders are aware that Russia, unlike Ukraine, has intercontinental missiles with the ability to strike targets throughout Europe. (It is unclear who would be responsible for firing the Tomahawks, if they were supplied to Ukraine. The missiles are submarine and ship-based, and Ukraine has no ability to fire either.)
In a later interview with Fox, retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who is Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and an avowed Russia hawk, said of using Tomahawks against the Putin regime, “The answer is yes. Use the ability to hit deep.”
President Trump’s hot-and-cold relationship with Putin seemed to be having some success after his second inauguration in January. There was early talk about settling the war: Russia could consolidate its gains on the ground in Ukraine and the US would gain access—perhaps through a friendly private company—to rare earth minerals along with a chance to develop resorts in Crimea and at least one of the Russian-controlled provinces in occupied Ukraine.
The American official’s view is that Putin’s economic position has deteriorated since then. “Putin cannot act alone” in continuing the war. “He needs money and structures to support him. He is not a Superman. What else can he win? What is he in this war for? What is his objective?”
The official continued: “It’s not about conquering Europe. He’s not Catherine the Great” (who overthrew her husband and became empress of Russia for more than three decades in the late eighteenth century). “He’s got to know he has limited resources.”
“At one time,” the official said, in the American-led negotiations to end the war with Ukraine, “There was an agreement that you”— Putin—“would get the land” that Russia had won in the war—at least three provinces—and “Ukraine would get peace. And now,” he added, referring to more recent talks, “we told Putin he can’t get any of it. The president said land is not on the table any more. Putin overstepped and he walked away. The war will go on until he is killed or there is a revolt” in Russia. “In other words,” the official said, “it’s an open door” full of imponderables.
The official’s view today “is to let Putin stew in his own choices. He will never get Ukraine, and his summer offense failed miserably.” The American policy now is to put as much economic pressure as possible to help bring down the Russian economy. Putin is now busily selling Russia’s “sour” crude oil—known as such due to its sulphur content—with India as one of his main buyers. Thirty percent of Russia’s current economy, the official told me, now comes from the sale of Russian gas and crude oil. Putin, he said, “has no choice but to continue fighting a war that is destroying his economy.
“Russia,” he concluded, “has been brought to its knees.”
At this point, I asked the official how does this war end, if Putin and Zelensky stay in power, as is likely, and Russia is as depleted as he claims? The official view, he said, is that the United States, under Trump, is now a fixed ally of the Ukrainian people, while far from an avid supporter of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Therefore, he added, “we will just sit here and hold the line you [Putin] cannot currently break until you are too weak in resources and internal support. Then the war just peters out without any formal agreement or long-term solution.”
I asked a similar question in an email to Jack Matlock, a former US ambassador to Russia, long retired, who is still considered among the wisest of Russian experts in Washington. I got a succinct and cynical reply:
“Trump should meet with Putin and listen carefully [to] what he says. For the war to stop and there to be any semblance of stability in that part of the world, Ukraine must recognize that Crimea belongs to Russia because that is the will of the population of Crimea. The Donbas also if Ukraine concedes that and agrees to stay out of NATO. Putin might withdraw from the other provinces, assuming Crimea is secure.
“That is probably going to require a different Ukrainian government,” Matlock said, “because Zelensky will probably be assassinated by the Neo-Nazis if he makes such a deal.”
Matlock’s wisecrack about Zelensky reminded of a horrid lapse in judgment I made, as a journalist, last July when I reported that there were significant elements in the American intelligence community—honorable professionals—who wanted President Zelensky out of office—quickly—to make way for a Ukrainian general who was considered more trustworthy. I also wrote that if Zelensky refused to leave, he would “go by force.”
The wishes of even the best and best intentioned in the US intelligence community don’t always come true.
https://substack.com/redirect/b1ed8be6-1a7a-4098-a13c-121ef710e772?j=eyJ1IjoiazgwN3IifQ.xtYFQgBEMwmKCxGA-cjjVxvLZ6dLzaPfgBUxhvs8OnU
