More than a million Russians have either lost their lives or suffered severe injuries in the conflict zones of Ukraine. Nonetheless, one man’s survival hinges on this continuous bloodshed.

For Vladimir Putin, the onset of peace would spell certain demise – through assassination, political overthrow and execution, or life behind bars as a convicted war criminal on the international stage.

The Russian leader’s only viable means of ensuring his survival in the corrupt system he has fostered is to either prolong the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine or achieve such a resounding victory that he can set his sights on other former client states and new targets.

Survival, after all, was Putin’s objective in launching the invasion in 2022.

In his extensive and often rambling discussions about history, Putin projects a facade suggesting that all of Ukraine – beyond just the eastern territories of Donbas, Donetsk, and Crimea – belongs to Russia’s historical empire.

Putin claims that it is his mission to reunite former territories while denying Kyiv the chance to join the Nato alliance with the West.

From the point of view of Russian interests, these might seem to make sense as a rationale for the war.

But if rationales can change, Putin’s true, cynical motives cannot.

His approach to maintaining power – and thereby his life – is directly inspired by Niccolo Machiavelli, the shrewd philosopher renowned for his treatise on authoritarian governance.

War, he taught, is the one essential lever of power. And the psychopathic Putin can use this lever particularly effectively because he is willing to sacrifice millions of lives in his own interests – those of Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans and even Americans if necessary.

Europe is fortunate that Ukraine has proven such a dogged and courageous adversary. If the Ukrainians had not fought so ferociously against an enemy who outnumbers them many times over, Putin would have turned his war machine on another target – quite probably Poland.

War is the reason he has remained Russia’s ruler for more than 25 years. If he had not been able to create distractions, he would have been booted out of office long ago.

Standards of living have been slowly eroded to the point that many people are worse off than they were even under the Soviet government. 

Russia’s economy has stalled, inflation has soared to 10 per cent and even the country’s much-touted energy revenues are in decline.

Corruption is too weak a word to describe the wholesale plundering that replaced Communist bureaucracy. Russia is the ultimate mafia state and Putin is its godfather.

I have good reason to know. There has been a price on my head since 2005, when I was denied entry to Russia and put on a wanted list in a naked bid by Putin to take control of my asset management firm and steal $230 million of taxes my business had paid to the Russian government.

Four years later, my lawyer and close friend Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Russian isolation cell for exposing this vast fraud.

Murder by the state has become so common in Russia that the death of any prominent figure is widely assumed to be an assassination – typically by car bomb, poisoning or falling from a high window.

Putin is paranoid about his personal safety – and with good cause.

As instability rumbles, he will be all-too aware of the threats that loom from anti-government activists, foreign ‘enemies’ and even power-hungry officials inside his own tent.

One way or another, it is very likely that when he leaves the Kremlin, it will be in a coffin.

Like any gangster, Putin’s primary instinct is for survival. After that comes money.

When he flew to Alaska for the so-called peace talks last Friday, he had two real objectives: to avoid financial penalties; and re-establish himself as a respected international power-broker. In both of these aims, he succeeded.

In truth, Donald Trump had already been outmanoeuvred before the US presidential jets touched down in Anchorage. He had boxed himself into a corner by repeatedly boasting before last year’s elections that he was going to end the war in 24 hours.

When that proved impossible, Trump issued a series of ultimatums, with much tub-thumping about tariffs, sanctions and taxes if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. Each of those deadlines passed without consequences.

Trump had already lost much of his leverage when he ceased sending military aid to Ukraine.

And when Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was bullied in front of the cameras at the White House in February, Putin knew he had carte blanche to continue waging war indefinitely.

But this did not guarantee that the Kremlin delegation could safely thumb their noses at the Trump administration on American soil.

The US President does have the power, after all, to cripple Russia’s economy if he chooses. This cannot be done by direct measures. But, indirectly, Trump can wield financial doomsday weapons.

By threatening China, India and Brazil with sky-high tariffs, he can make it impossible for Moscow’s major trading partners to keep doing business with Russian companies. And, with no one to buy his oil and gas or send him weapons, Putin would swiftly be finished.

Friday’s so-called summit, then, was an opportunity for the Kremlin to ensure the disaster didn’t happen. So, Putin gave Trump everything he needed – starting with praise. The war would never have happened, he said, if Trump had been President in 2022.

Every gangster needs a fall-guy, and former president Joe Biden fits that bill.

Next, Putin offered empty pledges that his goal was peace.

The only obstacle, he said, was Ukraine’s war-mongering government. This has been his disingenuous position from the outset: if the Ukrainians would simply accept they have no right to independence, Russia could rule their country without any need for violence.

Finally, and behind the scenes, he will have ensured Trump is fully rewarded.

We don’t know what private deals might have been done under the table in regard, for example, to Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

But we do know that Trump is a man who regards other countries as ‘real estate’, waiting to be exploited.

We also know he accepted a luxury Boeing 747 worth an estimated $400 million – complete with gold-coloured walls and furnishings – from the Qatari royal family when he signed up to a business partnership with them.

Whether Putin has found ways to outdo this, we do not know.

But however it was managed, Russia has avoided those Armageddon tariffs.

Yet that was only half of Putin’s agenda in Alaska. He was also intent on demonstrating his legitimacy as a world leader.

He could have been arrested as a war criminal the moment his plane landed. Right now, he should be where his crimes deserve – wearing an orange jumpsuit, shackled in a cage in Guantanamo Bay.

But there was never the slightest risk of that. Instead, he has flaunted his power, reminding the world that he is ‘untouchable’, however illusory – in reality – that might be.

For Russia is a laden juggernaut, labouring up a steep hill that never ends.

The driver dares not take his foot off the accelerator, because he will stall fatally – and be dragged out of the driving seat.

Putin has to keep going, ignoring the screams from the engine, mowing down anyone in his path.

And he will.

• Sir William Browder is the author of two books about his time in Russia: Red Notice and Freezing Order