Why Putin says Russia could ‘cease to exist’ if it loses

Ever since things in Ukraine first went sideways for Vladimir Putin back in the spring of 2022, the Russian president and his officials have said that, not only were they fighting Nazis and responding to NATO aggression, but that the stakes of the conflict were so high that Russia may cease to exist should they fail.

This claim has always been puzzling, because it seems so absurd. And yet such a belief would help explain the extent to which the Kremlin is now ramping up attacks on Ukraine, expanding its campaign of hybrid warfare in Europe and — by announcing massive budget transfers from nondefense to military spending — risking discontent at home.

Putin touched on the idea yet again earlier this month in his annual address to the Valdai Club conference of foreign policy and Russia analysts. Harping on a 2022 comment from then-NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith that the U.S. sought Russia’s “strategic defeat,” Putin said this put his nation’s “very right to exist” in question.