The claim at the recent press conference with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that peace in the Ukraine War had now been “90–95 percent achieved” struck objective analysts as already wishful thinking. However, President Trump then rocketed into the stratosphere of surreal nonsense by stating repeatedly that “Russia wants Ukraine to succeed.”

In contrast to the pro-Russia voices in the White House, President Kassym-Jomaert Tokayev of Kazakhstan is one observer whose feet are firmly on the ground. He understands the political, ideological, and economic realities with which the Kremlin is dealing. Tokayev is keenly aware that these realities could have a direct impact on the future of his country, because some of the reasons Russian president Vladimir Putin cited for launching the Ukrainian war could also apply to Kazakhstan.

The first reality is that the leaders of autocracies are almost invariably focused on their own interests and those of their closest supporters, not on those of their country. Personal prestige, no matter how spurious, and personal wealth, no matter how ill-gotten, eclipse most other concerns. Unless an autocrat is perceived by his subjects as anointed by God, he (most autocrats have been men) has one fundamental need to maintain his position: the image of power.

This makes him implacably opposed to any rival institutions that could command respect, loyalty, or wealth— elected legislatures, non-aligned churches and religious hierarchies, civil society, academia, a free press, even the entertainment industry. To co-opt the elites of business, the justice system, the security services, and the military, the leader must constantly demonstrate his power. The moment the would-be czar shows weakness or failure, the whole structure begins to teeter.

The second reality is that an aggressive, resentful nationalism has become the tiger of choice for Putin’s ride in power. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, followed by Russia’s decade-long attempt to become a democracy, produced social and economic chaos. At the start of the new millennium, Putin astutely manipulated the resulting widespread sense of disorientation, grievance, and wounded pride to establish himself as the leader who could restore stability, prosperity, and a sense of greatness. He presented Russia’s difficulties and failures as due not to the inherent complexity of establishing democratic institutions where they have not previously existed, but to the deceit, malice, and greed of the West, intent on dismembering and colonizing Holy Mother Russia.

The third reality is that a critical source of the illusion of a recovered greatness is the spectacle of military successes on foreign stages, even if these are achieved against much weaker opponents: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and francophone Africa. The assertion of control over Ukraine was meant to be the piece de resistance of this restoration of international “respect,” bringing Russia not just enormous agricultural and mineral wealth but also the satisfaction of humiliating the EU and the United States.

The Kremlin anticipated that the West, cowardly and impotent, would merely watch, shrug glumly, and return to “business as usual.” Had Russia attempted to seize Ukraine back in 2014, it might have succeeded militarily at least in the short term. Yet by 2022, Ukraine, with the help of Western military cooperation, had become a different nut and had surprised the world by refusing to crack.

Kazakhstan understands further that these three realities have created several serious problems.

First, Putin’s personal fate depends on avoiding a perceived defeat and on satisfying........

© The National Interest