Drafted 1 June, updated 5 June 2025
The appeal of the former KGB chief is absolutely logical and straightforward if one focuses on the fact that Russia is now a war economy. This is one of the reasons why Putin will never sign peace.
Another reason is Russian imperialism: these days Putin is deploying troops – 10,000 soldiers – in Transnistria, to try to destabilise Moldova, which wants to join the EU.
We have discussed this at length here in this article.
In his previous life, Evgeny Savostianov did this. “I used to analyse, study documents, make predictions”. Whether he was head of the Moscow KGB, or inside some ministry first under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, his job was always one. He has lived abroad since 2023, as a consequence of his rejection of the Special Military Operation that turned him into a ‘foreign agent’. By virtue of his past, he was allowed to stay at home. But he preferred to leave. ‘In very different ways, Vladimir Vladimirovich and I have a very low degree of pliability’.
What is it that Putin does not compromise on? ‘He absolutely wants to go down in history as “The Great Harvester of Russian lands”, the one who reversed the disintegration of the empire that began in 1867 with the sale of Alaska to the US. It is not just for himself: the inclusion of Ukraine and Belarus in a single state would allow him to increase ‘his’ population to around 188 million, with an expansion of mobilisation resources, the domestic consumer market and employment frameworks. It was a theory dear to the old KGB: the smaller it is, the more ungovernable Russia becomes. Its main objective has both practical and ideological underpinnings’
Is Europe right to worry? “It should first wake up, and it should do so quickly. Putin’s second goal, a direct consequence of the first, is to regain the role of European and global hegemon, lost with the dissolution of the USSR. It matters little whether this is achieved through compliant governments or regimes. Nothing new: as a veteran of the KGB, he was subjected to the imperial-expansionist spiritual influence of the Pgu, the KGB’s First Directorate, which dealt with foreign intelligence, today Svr, and the conservative nationalist ‘barrage’ typical of counter-intelligence officers. In his first team, these two camps were well balanced. There were representatives of both foreign espionage such as Sergey Ivanov, Igor Sechin, Sergey Chemezov, and counter-espionage such as Viktor Ivanov and Nikolai Patrushev. The fact that ‘foreigners’ prevail today is significant of the dynamics of Putin’s moods’.
What is the Russian president looking for from the current negotiations? ‗He will only accept a complete truce when he is sure that he can achieve his big goals. In the little that Ukraine represents to him, it is clear that he needs a Russian outpost on the right bank of the Dnepr. Kherson and the surrounding area, to be clear. So he can keep pressure on Odessa, Transnistria and Chisinau. That is why it will never accept the deployment of European deterrence forces in Ukraine. These are Putin’s ‘red lines’.
Is real peace possible? ‛I do not believe an end to the war is possible without a substantial change in the balance of power on the front in favour of Russia, even more pronounced than at present’.
What can Europe do? �”Take on the burden of responsibility for its own destiny. Starting with Ukraine. Or it can resign itself to de facto submission to the alliance of China, Russia and their assorted satellites. I fear there is no perception on your part of the risk you are taking. I am not referring to possible invasions, Putin today does not want to and cannot. But to the danger of irrelevance, primarily of your own democratic values’.
Is rearmament a solution? ‗Also. But on its own it is not enough. Today you are under the sway of two powers like Russia and this new US, who deeply detest your value base. They are united by what they consider to be a common enemy: you. You are surrounded, somehow. Any plan to strengthen Europe’s defensive capacity must start with a powerful information campaign that explains the new reality to citizens, that unmasks and isolates the accomplices of what is not an ongoing cultural revolution, but a masked aggression.”
