ISW: Putin doubles down on 2022 invasion goals, rejects U.S. peace proposal

Analysts at the Washington-based think tank believe the interview, given to English-language outlet India Today ahead of Putin’s Dec. 4 state visit to India, was aimed at shaping the international information space during ongoing backchannel negotiations.

ISW highlighted several key points from the interview:

• Putin said Russia will end the war only when it achieves the goals he set out at the start of the full-scale invasion.
• He warned that Ukraine’s “best option” would be to accept a peace deal similar to the one Russia tried to impose in 2022 — a reference to the Istanbul talks, which would have meant full Ukrainian capitulation.
• When asked what would count as a victory for Russia, Putin claimed Moscow wants to “protect” ethnic Russians, the Russian language, and the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine — a list of demands ISW says is routinely used to disguise the Kremlin’s goal of toppling Ukraine’s elected government and replacing it with a pro-Russian regime.
• He reiterated his demand that NATO halt its eastward expansion, effectively calling for the alliance to abandon its open-door policy and return to its 1997 borders. But ISW noted that Putin’s original war aims went far beyond Ukraine — he also sought to undermine NATO and seize full control of Ukraine.
• Putin tried to retroactively recast his war objectives as limited to Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. He falsely claimed that Russia “had no choice” but to recognize the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” and had merely “offered” Ukraine a chance to avoid war by withdrawing from all of Donetsk and Luhansk — a proposal Ukraine allegedly “rejected.” Putin then said Russia would either seize Donbas [“and Novorossiya,” he added — ed.] militarily or force Ukraine to withdraw from those areas.

But, ISW emphasized, this narrative ignores Russia’s initial invasion strategy, which aimed to capture far more territory — including Kyiv — and install a puppet government to control all of Ukraine. After the failure to take the capital, Russia was forced to shift to more limited operations in eastern Ukraine. ISW said Putin’s revisionism is part of an ongoing disinformation effort.

The Kremlin also appears to be hiding its rejection of a recent U.S. peace proposal. Putin referenced his meetings with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, claiming the American plan “in one way or another” reflected terms supposedly discussed between Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska. He admitted there were aspects of the U.S. offer Russia could not accept but refused to share details, saying he didn’t want to “derail” Trump’s peace process.

However, ISW believes the Kremlin is deliberately withholding information about the Dec. 2 meeting to obscure its rejection of the U.S. plan — which Ukraine had been involved in drafting — because it did not meet Russia’s maximalist demands.

Against this backdrop, ISW noted that other Kremlin officials have echoed Putin’s hardline position. Leonid Slutsky, chair of the Russian Duma’s foreign affairs committee, said Russia will not change its “core” demands: banning Ukraine from NATO, demilitarizing Ukraine (which ISW interprets as making Ukraine unable to defend itself), and “denazification” — a term the Kremlin uses as code for regime change.

Slutsky claimed Russia is fully capable of achieving these aims on the battlefield.

Separately, Andrei Kolesnik, a member of the Duma’s defense committee, threatened that Ukraine could lose its statehood — not just territory — and warned that it would be “better” for Kyiv to reach a negotiated settlement before “the situation deteriorates further.”

ISW assessed that Moscow is waging an aggressive cognitive and information warfare campaign to influence perceptions during the ongoing talks. The Kremlin’s strategy, the analysts said, is to promote the idea that Russia’s battlefield victory is inevitable and near — so the West and Ukraine should give in now.

But ISW concluded that Russia’s victory is far from guaranteed, and the West still holds considerable influence over how the war ends.