This is how to defeat Vladimir Putin

 

Vladimir Putin inspects an honour guard at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, 20 May 2026
Photo by Maxim Shemetov

This is how to defeat Vladimir Putin

The Russian dictator’s dreams of greatness threaten Nato and the EU, not just Ukraine. Here are eight ways in which he can be thwarted

In Ukraine, I saw Trump’s ‘peace deal’ wouldn’t just trade away land – but lives, memories and homes

Timothy Garton Ash
Sat 23 May 2026

No dictator lasts for ever. One day Vladimir Putin will be gone. Recent reports suggest growing weakness in the Russian economy, discontent in society and a waning of confidence inside his regime – but it would be foolish to conclude the end is near. Only death or Russia can depose Putin, and nobody knows when or how that will happen. What democracies in Europe and beyond can do is hone a strategy to defeat his external ambitions. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of eight elements of such a strategy.

A woman outside her home after it had been occupied by Russian soldiers in the village of Ruski Tyshky, Ukraine, September 2023.

Photograph: Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA

In Ukraine, I saw Trump’s ‘peace deal’ wouldn’t just trade away land – but lives, memories and homes

This is how to defeat Vladimir Putin

Ukrainians I met in Kyiv and Lviv were grimly realistic about the end of the war. We should follow their example

This article is more than 1 year old

Timothy Garton Ash

Friday 24 May 2025

The next time a breathless news anchor talks about the prospect of a war-ending “deal”, with Ukraine “ceding land for peace”, I want to sit them down with Adeline. In Lviv last week, Adeline showed me on her phone map her lost home in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, just across the Dnipro River from the Ukrainian-liberated territory around Kherson. Look, she said, with tears welling up in her eyes, here on this satellite snapshot you can see the ecological disaster that followed Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023. And here’s the place where she dreamed of setting up a small art gallery. “Why should I give up on my home?” she cried. Why indeed.