The Russian Elite's Worldview Leaves Little Room for Compromise

An essay by Andrei Bezrukov, a former colonel of Russian foreign intelligence, now embedded in Moscow’s foreign-policy establishment, frames the war in Ukraine as an existential contest with the West.

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As Western governments weigh the terms of a possible settlement in Ukraine, it is worth examining how the war is described within Russia’s foreign-policy establishment. The question most often asked is what Russia's strategy is. A more fundamental question is what the Russian leadership and elites believe about the direction of history. Strategy is derived from that belief, not the other way round, and Andrei Bezrukov’s essay is especially valuable because it describes the worldview openly.

In July 2026, Andrei Bezrukov published an essay titled “The New War and What We Must Do” in the publication Russia in Global Affairs. Bezrukov is not a marginal commentator. He is a retired colonel of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, a professor at MGIMO and a member of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and his essay was prepared specifically for discussion at the high-level annual assembly of the council.

His diagnosis is bleak and, for someone in his position, unusually direct about Russia’s weaknesses. His central claim is that the war in Ukraine is not primarily a contest over spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. It is a wider struggle over whether the West can impose its will on Russia.

Within this framing, the war is existential. Bezrukov states directly that only a clear victory will satisfy Russia. Negotiations are presented not as an exit from the conflict, but as part of the struggle itself. Assuming this essay reflects an influential strand of Russian strategic thinking, a ceasefire or a compromise is not around the corner.

A Window into the Russian Worldview

Bezrukov’s unusual biography is a key reason why the essay deserves attention.

For more than two decades, beginning in the 1980s, he served in the KGB and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service as part of the illegals programme, living in the West under the cover identity Donald Howard Heathfield. He was arrested by the FBI, pleaded guilty in 2010 to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and was returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange.

He now serves as president of the Association for the Export of Technological Sovereignty and as a professor in the Department of Applied Analysis of International Issues at MGIMO, the university run by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that trains much of the country’s diplomatic and intelligence cadre.

More importantly, Bezrukov is a member of the presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy (SVOP), an established forum whose members include figures connected to Russia’s political, military and intelligence institutions. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov attended the council’s annual assembly in May 2026. The council is also a founding organisation of the Valdai Discussion Club, which Vladimir Putin attends regularly.

An essay written from his position can be interpreted in several ways. It may reflect ideas already gaining ground within the establishment, or it may test how particular arguments are received at home and abroad. Either way, an article prepared for the SVOP assembly by a member of its presidium deserves to be taken seriously. It is not an official policy document, nor does it represent the views of the entire Russian elite. It does, however, offer a credible view into an influential current in Russian strategic thinking.

A World in Redivision

Bezrukov’s starting point is that the world has entered “a period of another total redivision of the world” — передел мира — which will be defined not by prosperity, but by survival. It is also an official narrative of the Russian state leadership, that the world is undergoing a power transition into a multipolar world, where the Western countries do not hold a central position.

In his worldview, Western countries face the loss of their control over global financial, informational, logistical and political systems. Their military-technological dominance and their capacity to exercise influence through soft power are also, he argues, becoming things of the past.

He expects Western elites to fight to preserve their position. He frames their policies directed against Russia as a response to decline and describes war as one of the few remaining instruments through which they can maintain domestic power and global influence. In his worldview, nuclear deterrence remains essential for Russia, because the agreements, rules and expectations on which trust and predictability once rested have been destroyed.

The wars in Ukraine and Iran are presented as the opening stage of a wider struggle over the redivision of the world. Bezrukov expects more conflicts to emerge in the southern and eastern regions of the Eurasian continent, where the United States and China are competing for influence over what he describes as the world’s most promising future markets. He also points to, as catalysts for conflict, the region’s rapid economic growth, expanding military potential and defence industries, disputed historical borders, religious and ethnic divisions, large youth populations and increasingly ambitious political leaderships.

The weakness in his reasoning is its dependence on the expectation of inevitable Western decline and eventual collapse. Russian strategic thought has repeatedly treats the West as weak, divided and trapped in an irreversible trajectory leading to the loss of power. Yet Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine united Western countries in support of Ukraine and against Russia to an extent that few expected before the war. It gave the European project a renewed purpose and forced European governments to confront questions they had previously postponed.

This does not invalidate Bezrukov’s wider argument about a changing distribution of global power. It does, however, illustrate the danger for Russia of allowing grand historical and global narratives to overshadow the immediate consequences of Russian policy.

Three Challenges and an Admission of Weakness

The most striking part of Bezrukov’s essay is its honesty about Russia’s own condition.

He identifies three challenges that could destabilise the country within the next few years. The first is the transfer of power from one generation to the next, which he notes has “always been particularly difficult” in Russia’s vertical system of government. The second is the accelerating transformation of the technological base of the world economy, which could cost Russia its remaining competitiveness. The third is the bloody redivision of spheres of influence in the world, which already requires substantial sacrifices from Russia.

The first admission is particularly notable. Bezrukov is acknowledging that the present Russian political order is approaching a generational transition and that this transition carries a risk of destabilisation. He is equally direct about the system’s internal failings. He describes a socio-economic model that is unsuited to the country’s current tasks, an entrenched bureaucracy that slows down initiative and a group of beneficiaries in the upper levels of society who are capable of blocking change during peacetime.

The global struggle and war, in his line of argumentation, create an opportunity for transformation. It allows the Russian state to reconsider the economic and political system inherited from the 1990s, reorganise its institutions and remove obstacles that would otherwise remain protected.

This admission of weakness does not soften Bezrukov’s case for war. It hardens it. “If Russia does not mobilise for victory,” he writes, “the question of its survival will arise.” Russia’s fragility becomes an argument not for reducing its exposure to conflict, but for committing itself more fully to the war effort as part of the wider international struggle.

Only a Clear Victory

The most consequential ideas in the essay are related to Ukraine.

Bezrukov frames the war as “a struggle to eliminate an existential threat from the West”. It requires, he argues, the exertion of all Russia’s human and material resources, because “only a clear victory will satisfy Russia” — Россию устроит только явная победа. He is not necessarily calling for the conquest of all Ukraine. The meaning of “clear victory” is left undefined. Yet he is ruling out any outcome that resembles a draw or can be interpreted as a Russian defeat.

That distinction leaves little room for compromise. A negotiated ceasefire would most likely produce an ambiguous result. Both sides could claim success, the underlying political conflict would remain unresolved and the settlement would depend on agreements which Bezrukov already considers unreliable. In his reading, this situation would act as a prelude to renewal of hostilities in Ukraine or in another region. This is the underlying logic behind Russia’s commitment to the war and a primary obstacle preventing a ceasefire.

His reasoning is explicit. The war is not ultimately about drawing new lines of influence in Eastern Europe. It is about whether the collective West can impose its will on Russia. If it cannot, Bezrukov argues, the loss of Western influence will become inevitable. The stakes are therefore systemic. In his framework, a Russian victory would demonstrate that Western power can be resisted, while a failure to mobilise for victory would place Russia’s own survival at risk.

Bezrukov is also clear-eyed about Russia’s isolation. He correctly states that the “world majority” has not united behind Russia. China and India are attempting to avoid direct conflict with the West. China, he notes, is benefiting from supplies to countries involved in the conflict and from discounts on Russian natural resources.

Notably, he does not address the supply of components to Russia’s military industries through third countries, which has allowed sanctions to be circumvented in support of the Russian military industry. Yet his broader point stands: Russia is not leading a cohesive anti-Western coalition. Its major partners are pursuing their own interests, even taking advantage of the situation, and seeking to avoid the risks Russia has willingly chosen to accept.

This does not change the calculation expressed in his essay. Negotiations offered by the West are presented as a ruse: a game of “good cop and bad cop” in which European governments are escalating while the United States offers agreements that Bezrukov claims would not be fulfilled. Pressure and attrition towards Russia are not described as an incentive towards settlement. Instead they are the accepted costs of a struggle which is framed as existential.

The Limits of Compromise

The value of Bezrukov’s essay is that it makes explicit a worldview in which there is little opportunity for a negotiated ceasefire. If Western policy assumes that sufficient economic pressure and battlefield attrition will eventually produce compromise, it is confronting a Russian strategic framework which has sacrifice and struggle as its central element. In Bezrukov’s line of argument, economic losses, technological pressure and human sacrifice are not reasons to end the war. They are reasons to mobilise the state and society more thoroughly.

This does not mean that Russian policy can never change. There may be a threshold of military, economic or political pressure that forces a recalculation in Russian policy. Bezrukov’s essay is not evidence that the Russian leadership is willing or able to endure unlimited costs. It does, however, suggest that those who share his worldview do not believe that threshold has been reached. They expect Russia to endure more pain and to impose further costs on its economy and population rather than accept an outcome that can be interpreted as a defeat.

This produces an internal tension inside Russia that Bezrukov’s essay does not resolve. The Russian leadership may define the conflict as an existential struggle against the West, but the population was never asked directly to make that choice. Earlier widespread support for policies such as the occupation and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 rested, in part, on the assumption that ordinary Russians would not be required to bear intolerable costs for the country’s geopolitical ambitions. They could continue to work, live and remain largely separate from politics and conflicts outside of Russia’s borders.

The war in Ukraine is placing that assumption under increasing pressure. The Russian leadership must persuade the population to remain committed to a prolonged geopolitical struggle while the costs to businesses, livelihoods and standards of living continue to accumulate. Bezrukov’s answer is societal and economic mobilisation. His essay calls for Russia to become, organisationally and mentally, a “warring society”. Yet it remains unclear whether the Russian population will accept that transformation, or how long the political system can sustain it.

A War Without a Clear End

This is one essay, not a declaration of policy. Writing from within Russian elite circles may express consensus, advocate for a particular course or test domestic and foreign reactions. It cannot directly establish what policies and plans are being drafted inside the Kremlin. Nevertheless, Bezrukov provides a well-sourced account of how an influential section of the Russian foreign-policy establishment understands the war. The direction of his argument is consistent: there can be no ceasefire that resembles a draw, negotiations cannot be trusted and Russia must prepare to endure the costs of a prolonged conflict and the wider systemic struggle.

The essay therefore reveals a strategic contradiction. Bezrukov argues that the era of wars ending in decisive military victories is over. He describes a new form of conflict based on attrition, destabilisation and permanent pressure across military, economic, technological and informational spheres. Yet he simultaneously insists that only a clear victory will satisfy Russia. He demands a decisive political outcome from a form of war expected to continue without a decisive end.

How Russia proposes to organise its state, economy and society for that conflict, and how it intends to fight and endure an era of international power transition, will be the subject of the second part of this analysis. ֍

Notes

Andrei Bezrukov, “The New War and What We Must Do” [Новая война и что нам делать], Russia in Global Affairs [Россия в глобальной политике], vol. 24, no. 4, July/August 2026, pp. 32–49 (in Russian). DOI: 10.31278/1810-6439-2026-24-4-32-49.

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