How Ukraine Can Weaponize Russian Elites in Peace Talks
The ongoing war is Iran is revealing to the world Russia’s waning influence in the anti-Western bloc of nations. Ukraine can now weaponize Russia’s eclipsing sway.
Kyiv Post
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The war with Iran will not end in a manageable diplomatic stalemate. It will end one of two ways: either the current regime will survive in some rearranged personnel lineup, or it will be broken as a system of power. For Ukraine and its partners, the second scenario matters most.
A serious defeat for Iran’s current system would redraw the map of the Middle East. But its significance would not end at the region’s borders.
For years, Iran has been a key pillar of an informal axis of regimes hostile to the West: supplying weapons, helping Russia evade sanctions, offering diplomatic cover, and projecting an image of shared resilience. If that pillar cracks, it will be a heavy blow to Vladimir Putin’s regime at a moment when the Kremlin is already sliding into a deeper internal crisis.
The strain is visible. The list of wounded or shaken partners – Syria, Venezuela, now Iran – weighs on Moscow. Each “brother‑in‑arms” who stumbles adds another stone to the burden. Under this pressure, even longtime advocates of Russian dominance have begun to adjust their language. Even the Russian propaganda machine, which once promised inevitable victory, now produces scandals on its own political talk shows. One minor informer, too candid on air, has already been recast as a latter‑day Pyotr Chaadayev (the 19th-century Russian philosopher declared “insane” by Tsar Nicholas I) and dispatched to psychiatric care.
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that due to Russian electronic interference, both could be Ukrainian drones.
More telling is what more influential figures now say.
In a recent Kyiv Post column, “The Great Game – A Sea Change in Russian Perception?” we analyzed an interview with Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on CIS affairs and a longtime pillar of Russian imperial thinking. For decades, Zatulin has preached Russian “dominance” in the post‑Soviet space.
In a prime‑time interview with Dmitry Simes, the regime’s propaganda heavyweight and veteran intelligence operative, Zatulin calmly delivered a line that would have been unthinkable on Russian state television two years ago:
“Objectively speaking, some of the goals declared by our President are difficult to implement or simply unattainable. There is what is desired and what is possible. It is hard now to believe that Ukraine, as an independent state, can disappear from the political map of the world.”
None of this changes the basic truth: the war’s outcome will be decided by Ukrainian arms and Western resolve. But politics runs in parallel.
Two loyal men of the system, on the main state channel, start by treating as self‑evident that their president set erasing Ukraine as a goal. They then agree on something else: in their eyes, the goal is “honorable” but impossible.
Zatulin goes further, hinting that pursuing this impossible aim could push Russia itself toward disaster.
Two conclusions follow:
First, Zatulin has not been silenced or purged. In today’s Russia, that almost certainly means he is voicing what a significant part of the upper elite privately thinks. He is not a lone dissident. He is their careful, televised conscience.
Second, he keeps repeating the message. That suggests he wants it heard not only in Moscow’s corridors, but also in Kyiv. By drawing a sharp line between “desired” and “possible,” he signals that some in the establishment now fear the cost of chasing imperial fantasies more than they fear failing to realize them.
What should Ukraine do with such signals?
One answer is to ignore them and focus solely on the battlefield. Another is to weaponize them.
Ukraine’s parliament could formally invite the State Duma’s CIS committee to hold Russian‑Ukrainian parliamentary consultations on ending what both sides, for their own reasons, still call a “fratricidal” war between two Slavic peoples. The goal would not be to legitimize aggression or trust the Duma. It would be to force those who privately admit the war’s limits to confront them in a public institutional setting.
The obvious stage is Minsk, under the “mediation” of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. After a quarter‑century as junior partner in the union with Russia, Lukashenko has his own grudges and ambitions. He would embrace this mission with enthusiasm, and any such format would expose, rather than resolve, the contradictions in Moscow’s position. He does not love Putin any more than many Ukrainians do, and perhaps less than some of the Russian negotiators themselves.
None of this changes the basic truth: the war’s outcome will be decided by Ukrainian arms and Western resolve. But politics runs in parallel. Iran’s fate will reverberate in Moscow. Russian insiders are already conceding, on air, that “the fantasy of erasing Ukraine has hit a wall.” Ukraine has every reason to exploit both realities.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
Dr. Andrei Piontkovsky is a Russian scientist, political writer and analyst, member of International PEN Club who was forced to leave Russia in 2016. For many years he has been a regular political commentator for the BBC World Service, Radio Liberty, Voice of America. Piontkovsky is the author of several books on the Putin presidency, including Another Look into Putin's Soul and Russian Identity (published by Hudson Institute). In 2017, Piontkovsky was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize for “Courage in Journalism.” In 2019, he was recognized by the Algemeiner publication as one of the Top-100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life. Dr. Andrei Pointkovsky, Wikipedia
Anton Eremin is a Washington D.C. founder and leader of a civic, nonpartisan community focused on human rights, the rule of law, and a democratic future for Russia.
