A great reckoning began in 2022, after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It wasn’t just for the Ukrainians, but for the Russian people too.
The invasion that was supposed to be a brief special military operation turned into a brutal war of attrition now well into its fourth year.
For centuries, Moscow has grounded its identity in imperial myths. It appropriated the legacy of the Kyivan Rus to proclaim itself the “Third Rome” and its ruler the Czar or “Caesar.” These narratives justified expansion and subjugation of Russia’s neighbors. But as Ukraine resists and defeats Moscow’s designs, those myths are collapsing. Now, the Russian people must transcend centuries of indoctrination and figure out what it means to be no longer an empire.
The last few years have forced Russians to confront a question long avoided: what does Russia look like without a subjugated Ukraine? For many Russians (and Moscow-sympathizers in the West), it is a difficult idea to fathom. For centuries, Russian imperial rulers tried to erase Ukrainian identity, insisting that Ukrainians and Russians were “one people,” much like what Putin claimed in his infamous 2021 essay that justified the full-scale invasion several months later. It’s a talking point he has continued to repeat, as once again in 2025, when he said, “Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and in that sense, the whole of Ukraine is ours.”
Yet history tells a different story. Russians evolved from the ethnically Slavic and Finno-Urgic Muscovites, who in the aftermath of Kyivan Rus’s collapse in the mid-thirteenth century came under the political and cultural sway of the eastward-oriented Mongols for hundreds of years. In contrast, Ukrainians evolved from the ethnically Slavic Ruthenians, who came under the political and economic influence of the westward-oriented Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
When the Cossacks fought against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth century and sought a new ally, chronicles recorded that Ukrainians and Russians considered each other foreigners — so much so that interpreters were needed for them to communicate.
Starting in the second half of the seventeenth century, Russia (as Muscovy was now called) progressively conquered most Ruthenian territory. There ensued nearly two centuries of forcible Russification of Ukrainian religion, culture, and language — a project that would have made no sense if Ukrainians and Russians had already been identical.
If there were any doubts about Ukrainian identity, they were dispelled in the twentieth century when Ukrainians, in both the eastern and western parts of their country launched national-liberation struggles that were ultimately defeated by Soviet Russian troops and secret police.
Vladimir Putin likens himself to Peter the Great, claiming to reclaim lost Russian lands. But the reality is far bleaker. H hundreds of thousands of Russians are now dead with little to show for it. As the state grows weaker and more fragile, many Russians may look toward a future Ukraine — freer, more prosperous, and independent — and begin to question whether the imperial project was ever worth it.
Perhaps in anticipation of Russian disillusionment with the war, Putin is tightening control at home, with law enforcement spending set to jump 13 percent in 2026 to 3.91 trillion rubles ($47 billion). Combined with defense costs, security will consume 38 percent of Russia’s budget, dwarfing welfare, education and healthcare. U.S. Vice President JD Vance was not wrong when he recently said, “Russians have got to wake up and accept reality: A lot of people are dying and they don’t have a lot to show for it.”
If the war ends with a failed conquest of Ukraine, the Kremlin will face another reckoning: What to do with the hundreds of thousands of veterans returning home. These soldiers were sent to fight under the banner of empire, only to discover that the promises of glory and Russia’s supposed greatness were lies.
As difficult as losing Ukraine will be for Putin and his propaganda apparatus, the greatest challenge will confront the Russian people. Who are they without Kyiv, the capital of Kyivan Rus? Who are they if Ukrainians successfully appropriate a large chunk of the imperial narrative and thereby demolish it? Can Russians abandon their imperial identity and simply accept that they are just one of many nations?
They will have to — if only because the alternative is endless, unsuccessful wars with the current or former non-Russian inhabitants of the Russian empire.
The choice before Russians will be painful regardless of what they do. They can either abandon the empire voluntarily, which would mean casting aside hundreds of years of historical baggage, or abandon it involuntarily, which would mean going down in flames.
The irony is that, had it not been for the war against Ukraine, Russians could have continued to live in their fantasy empire.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.
