Russian Brutality will last long after Putin

Despite Ukrainians’ prayers that Russian brutality, aggression, subjugation and war crimes will end with the demise of führer Vladimir Putin’s reign, objectively that will not come to pass. Russia’s bloodshed, violence and carnage will continue.

In foreign relations, this defies logic. This defies logic in the minds of Presidents and other inhabitants of today’s White House because they believe that a human being runs a country and with his or her nonviolent transition or violent end, the malicious policies and actions will also end. At least two experts believe that is not the case with Russia and Russian leaders be they tsars, commissars or presidents. It is worthwhile to heed their observations.

One of them, Askold S. Lozynskyj expressed his views in the Fall 2025 edition of The Ukrainian Quarterly, of which I am editor in chief.

In his article “The Only Solution,” Lozynskyj makes the following significant points about Russia and its leaders:

· My opinion of Russians that I have met as well as Russian culture and way of life is very negative. This view I will not attempt to hide in my analysis. I submit that Russia is the aggressor here, guilty not only of starting this war but of conducting it without any regard for the lives of Ukrainian civilians including children.

· International law or norms do not sway Russian behavior and over the course of the decade Russia has become more brazen in this regard. 

· Russia fights because it is driven by an evil, psychotic disposition to be an empire. This is a cultural psychosis. Russia does not need Ukraine except that without Ukraine Russia is not an empire of historical note.

· Russian clerics have provided the “mens rea” and made it abundantly clear that the purpose of “special military operation” is to erase Ukrainians from the face of the earth.

· Russian history and culture prove that the state and its people are hostile and inveterate imperialists. The Russian Federation today consists of 11 time zones. Only one legitimately belongs to Russia. The remaining are territories that were invaded and annexed by force. Some 150 nationalities reside within the Russian Federation. More than half are indigenous. What that means is that their lands do not legitimately belong to Russia.

· Putin did not make Russia. Russia made Putin. This is the most important fact that the West cannot comprehend. Even a marginal study of the history of the Russian empire would make this most abundantly clear. While Vladimir Putin is brutal, he follows in the footsteps of a long list of Russian criminal leaders. Putin himself has patterned his rule and spoken out about his progenitors, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. They were great only by the measure of Russian historians. To be sure, they expanded the empire, but they did so with much bloodshed.

Another analyst, Thomas Nilsson is head of the Military Intelligence Service of Sweden. He too believes that Russian brutality will far outlast Putin. He has been quoted extensively in the past few weeks.

Lieut. Gen. Thomas Nilsson is a high-ranking official, serving as the director of the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (widely known by its Swedish acronym, MUST). He is a career Swedish Air Force officer who took over the top intelligence role on May 1, 2023, following an extensive background that includes serving as Sweden’s military representative to both NATO and the European Union.

According to Nilsson, Russia is likely to remain a security threat long after Putin leaves office. He opined this on June 30 in an interview with Bloomberg, describing Moscow’s confrontation with the West as “deep, structural and enduring.”

Nilsson emphasized that Stockholm does not view the current clash with Moscow as a temporary blip. He stated that Russia has chosen a path of deep, structural, and enduring strategic confrontation with the West that will persist long after Putin is out of office.

He recently made waves by describing the scale of Russian casualties in its war against Ukraine – which MUST estimates at over 1 million dead and seriously wounded over the course of the war – as “unimaginable.”

Nilsson has noted that while Russia currently has to prioritize its immediate operations, its long-term intelligence blueprints still involve establishing a vastly expanded, structured military force stretching all the way from northern Finland down along NATO’s eastern flank once resources allow.

“We don't see this crisis as a temporary one; Russia has chosen its path, and there is no way back,” Nilsson said.

The intelligence chief also said Sweden saw no signs that Russia’s political system or Putin’s grip on power were under immediate threat, despite economic strains caused by the war and Western sanctions.

“Political opposition has effectively been eliminated – through exile, imprisonment, or, in the worst cases, assassination,” Nilsson said, adding that there was no political force capable of channeling public dissatisfaction into an alternative to the current regime.

The intelligence chief also said Russia was planning to expand its military presence along NATO's northeastern flank, stretching “from northern Finland all the way down.” While many of those plans remain on paper as Moscow prioritizes its war against Ukraine, Sweden expects Russia to pursue them once it regains sufficient resources and military capacity.

Nilsson's comments came after Nordic media recently reported, based on satellite imagery, that Russia was expanding military infrastructure near the Finnish border. Scandinavian countries, like the former captive nations of Russian subjugation, have been especially concerned by the Kremlin’s actions.

Moscow has previously said such deployments were a response to Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO. According to him, Russia’s plan is to build a base that can house 80,000 soldiers when the war in Ukraine is over. “We don't believe they exist just for show. It's about being able to face NATO in a larger conflict later on,” Nilsson said.

Russia has repeatedly criticized both countries’ decision to join the alliance.

Sweden has remained one of Ukraine’s key European partners since Russia’s full-scale invasion. On June 18, Stockholm announced an additional $108 million in military aid through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative alongside additional assistance pledged by Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The problem rests with Russia and not with any of its leaders regardless of the color.  It is essential for the leaders of the free world to keep their eyes peeled and their fingers on the ready.