# OPEN LETTER: To Vladimir Putin — You Can Win Battles, but Not History

> I have no illusions. You will not read these lines. You do not read Canadian columnists who write from countries where freedom of the press still exists. And if by chance one of your advisers stumbled upon this text, he would not pass it along — either out of fear, or because he has learned, like all those around you, that truth is a dangerous currency in your court. I am writi

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Open letter
- Published: 2026-06-27
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-a-vladimir-poutine-vous-pouvez-gagner-des-batailles-pas-l-histoir

## Introduction: Mister Putin, I am writing to you

### Why write to a man who does not listen

I have no illusions. You will not read these lines. You do not read Canadian columnists who write from countries where **freedom of the press** still exists. And if by chance one of your advisers stumbled upon this text, he would not pass it along — either out of fear, or because he has learned, like all those around you, that truth is a dangerous currency in your court. **I am writing to you anyway.** Because open letters are not written for their addressee. They are written for the witnesses. And the witnesses of what you are doing to **Ukraine**, to Europe, and to your own people deserve to have things named clearly.

On **June 23, 2026**, you reaffirmed that **Russia** is ready for peace negotiations with **Ukraine** — but only on the basis of the **Istanbul Protocols of 2022**, your June 2024 speech before the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the supposed "**Anchorage agreements**" from your meeting with Trump in August 2025. What all of this means, in plain language: **the total capitulation** of Ukraine. The withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all of the **Donbas** — including territories your armies never managed to take on the battlefield. The renunciation of **NATO**. Demilitarization. What you call "**denazification**." **I am writing to tell you why that will not work.**

### What this sequence reveals

*I write to Putin not because I believe in dialogue with him, but because truth spoken aloud, publicly, in a **free democracy**, is in itself an act of resistance. Authoritarian regimes fear words. Even words they do not read.*

## On your reading of History: you cite 1022, but you live in 2026

### The obsession with origins as a strategy of legitimation

Mister Putin, in 2021 you produced a **5,000-word essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians**. You said that **Ukraine** does not exist as a distinct nation — that it is an artificial construction of Lenin, an accident of Soviet history. This thesis you have been defending for years. It is the philosophical foundation of your war. It is also, fundamentally, **false**.

Ukrainians have an identity, a language, a literature, a collective memory, and a national will distinct from **Russia** — documented for centuries, not since 1991. The **Holodomor** of 1932-1933, in which millions of Ukrainians died of starvation through deliberate Soviet policy, is precisely the proof that **Moscow** always knew that **Ukraine** was **something else** — enough of something else to deserve a distinct instrument of destruction. You do not starve a people for three years that you believe to be the same as yourself. This bloody coherence refutes you, Mister Putin, far more effectively than any diplomatic argument.

### What the historical facts contradict

*Putin's historical argument is not just false — it is self-refuting. If Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, then you are conducting a civil war, which is an even more horrific category than invading a foreign country. You cannot win with that rhetoric.*

## On your peace demands: they are not peace demands

### What your conditions actually mean

You say you want peace. You said, on **June 23, 2026**, that **Russia** is "ready for peace talks." Allow me to translate your conditions into the language of reality. When you demand that **Ukraine** withdraw from all of the **Donbas** — including parts your armies have not conquered — you are asking **Kyiv** to give you militarily what you could not obtain on the ground after **two and a half years of large-scale offensive**. The **Institute for the Study of War** (**ISW**) noted in June 2026 that the pace of your advances has been steadily declining since November 2025. You are asking in diplomacy what you can no longer obtain by arms. That is the definition of a position of weakness masked as an ultimatum.

When you demand that Ukraine renounce **NATO**, renounce the right to defend itself, organize elections under your implicit supervision, you are not demanding peace: you are demanding a **total capitulation** of sovereignty. What President **Zelensky** said, what the **European Union** said, what the **E3 — France**, **Germany**, the United Kingdom — said in their joint declaration of **June 7, 2026**: borders do not change by force. A sovereign state does not demilitarize under the constraint of an invader. **These principles are non-negotiable** — not out of stubbornness, but because they are the condition of any viable international order.

### What the diplomatic translation reveals

*There is a terrible irony in Russia's diplomatic posture of June 2026: Putin presents himself as the one who wants peace while his demands make peace impossible. This is war communication disguised as peace communication. And part of the world is still letting itself be fooled.*

## On the Ukraine you wanted to break and that holds

### What you did not foresee

On **February 24, 2022**, Mister Putin, you had planned a military operation of a few days. Your intelligence services told you that **Kyiv** would fall in **72 hours**. That **Zelensky** would flee. That the Ukrainian army would disintegrate. That the West would divide and **NATO** collapse under pressure. None of these predictions came true. **Kyiv** did not fall. **Zelensky** did not flee — he asked for ammunition, not evacuation. The Ukrainian army resisted, counter-attacked, and retook territory in **Kharkiv** and **Kherson**.

Your summer 2026 offensive, designed to occupy the Ukrainian part of the **Donbas** and bite into northern and southern Ukraine, **failed**, according to **ISW** and Al Jazeera in June 2026. Your supply lines have been weakened by the Ukrainian campaign of long-range strikes. Your territorial advance rate is declining. You have lost tens of thousands of soldiers — your own masked data confirm it through the demographic deficits that independent Russian demographers have documented. **Ukraine holds.** And this fact, Mister Putin, should tell you something about the nature of this conflict.

### What the summer 2026 offensive says about military reality

*I am not claiming that Ukraine is winning easily. The war is horrible, Ukrainian losses are real, the country is suffering. But "holding" against the second army in the world for more than four years is, objectively, already a military and moral victory. And Putin knows it — that is why he wants to negotiate on the terms of a victory he has not obtained.*

## On Zelensky: the man you want to erase

### What your refusal to recognize him means

You refuse to negotiate with **Volodymyr Zelensky**. Your spokesman **Peskov** says his mandate is "expired." Your propagandists call him a "Nazi" and an "illegitimate **Kyiv** regime." Allow me to introduce this man factually. **Volodymyr Zelensky** was elected in 2019 with **73% of the vote** in the second round — one of the highest scores in a pluralist democracy. He stayed in **Kyiv** on **February 24, 2022** when everyone thought the city was about to fall. His speech filmed in the nighttime streets of **Kyiv** that evening — "**We are here**" — is one of the most powerful declarations of resistance of the 21st century.

When you say that **Zelensky** is not legitimate, you are saying in reality that the **44 million Ukrainians** who voted and who resist do not have the right to choose their own destiny. You are saying that your definition of legitimacy — yours, the one you have exercised for 26 years without a free election — is worth more than that of a people who vote with real ballots counted by independent scrutineers. This claim, Mister Putin, is precisely what the liberal **international order** was built against after 1945. And it is precisely this claim that **the free world** cannot accept, whatever the cost.

### What his refusal to leave says about him

*Zelensky is not a movie hero — he is a politician in a real war, with impossible decisions. But his refusal to leave on **February 24, 2022** changed history. That evening, he proved that resistance was possible. Putin will never forgive him for that.*

## On the five European conditions: what you rejected

### What France, Germany, and the United Kingdom put on your desk

On **June 7, 2026**, the European **E3** leaders — accompanied by President Zelensky — published a joint declaration setting out **five conditions** for a just and lasting peace. First condition: an **immediate and complete ceasefire**. Second condition: the **current contact line** as the starting point for negotiations — not your claimed borders, not illegally annexed territories, but where soldiers face each other today. Third condition: **robust and legally binding security guarantees** for Ukraine, including the deployment of a multinational force. Fourth condition: **Russian assets remain frozen** until **Russia** ceases its aggression and compensates Ukraine. Fifth condition: any agreement must **safeguard European security**.

You rejected these conditions. Your minister **Lavrov** published an essay on **June 19, 2026** explaining that Europe cannot be a third-party mediator, that Europeans are preparing a future attack on **Russia**, and that Russia cannot negotiate "under ultimatums." **ISW** analyzed this rejection as a reaffirmation of your 2022 maximum objectives — forced Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and "denazification." In plain terms: you reject any proposal that does not give you the total victory your armies cannot obtain on the battlefield.

### What Lavrov's rejection confirms

*When you refuse five conditions whose first is simply "stop fighting," you confirm that you do not want peace. You want victory. And in the meantime, you keep killing. This reality requires no rhetoric — it speaks for itself.*

## On your soldiers: what you owe them and are not paying

### The truth that official Russia cannot say

Mister Putin, your soldiers are dying. Not as heroes in a necessary war: they die at rates your own state media dare not publish, in frontal assaults against fortified Ukrainian positions, often without adequate equipment, with officers who prefer to send human waves rather than risk their careers by refusing orders. Independent analyses of Russian mortality, demographic and military data estimate that Russian losses since February 2022 number in the **hundreds of thousands** — dead and seriously wounded.

These men — many of them young conscripts, men from poor regions who did not have the resources to flee mobilization — died for a war you launched on the basis of a false premise. Ukraine was not going to attack Russia. **NATO** was not going to invade your territory. **None of your original justifications** — the denazification of a country led by a Jewish president who lost family members in the Holocaust, the protection of Russian speakers that no one was attacking — survived first contact with the facts. These soldiers died for your historical miscalculation. For your **imperial obsession**. Not for Russia.

### The human cost of the February 24, 2022 decision

*I am not saying this to insult Russian soldiers — most of them did not choose this war. I am saying it to name the responsibility: it is entire, exclusive, and non-shareable. Putin launched this war. Putin pays the price with lives that are not his own.*

## On the Istanbul Protocols of 2022: why you invoke them now

### A reference chosen for what it erases

You invoke the **Istanbul Protocols of 2022** as the basis for any negotiation. These protocols were negotiated in March-April 2022, when your forces were surrounding Kyiv and holding large swaths of northern, eastern, and southern Ukraine. They had been designed at a moment when Ukraine was negotiating under maximum military constraint — before the **Kharkiv and Kherson counter-offensives**, before your forces were pushed back from the north, before the world understood that Ukraine could hold and counter-attack.

Invoking these protocols in June 2026 is demanding that Ukraine negotiate on the basis of the **worst military position it experienced** in this war — a position that has not existed since autumn 2022. **ISW** stated this clearly: **the battlefield conditions of 2026 are fundamentally different from those of April 2022**. The Russian demand amounts to wanting to negotiate as if the last four years had not happened. This is not diplomacy — it is denial of reality.

### Why these protocols are obsolete in 2026

*There is no polite way to say this: asking Ukraine in 2026 to negotiate on the basis of Istanbul 2022 is like **Germany** demanding in 1945 to negotiate on the basis of Munich 1938. The battlefield has spoken. The Istanbul protocols died on the plains of **Kharkiv** in autumn 2022.*

## On the West you want to divide

### What you have underestimated from the start

Your strategy since 2022 has included several bets on Western division. You bet that Europe could not do without **Russian gas** — Europe reduced its dependence spectacularly, at the cost of a difficult winter in 2022-2023. You bet that European public opinion would tire and force their governments into a **hasty settlement** — some wavered, but governments held. You bet that **Trump** would become your tacit ally by cutting American military aid to Ukraine — Trump pressured for a deal, but did not cut support definitively, and Europe compensated.

You underestimated something fundamental: solidarity is not just ideology. It is also well-understood self-interest. European countries — especially the Baltic states, **Poland**, **Finland**, and Sweden — know they are next on your list if Ukraine falls. This calculation of existential self-interest is stronger than war fatigue, stronger than political divisions, stronger than energy price pressure. You have unified Europe against you in a way that no diplomatic conference, no second-generation Marshall Plan, could have accomplished.

### What Europe has learned since 2022

*There is a profound irony in the fact that Putin, by seeking to weaken **NATO** and European unity, produced exactly the opposite: Finland and Sweden in **NATO**, record European **defense budgets**, and a solidarity with Ukraine that did not exist at this level in 2021. The effect of his actions is the inverse of his intentions.*

## On North Korean soldiers and Iranian munitions: your coalition of shame

### What your allies say about you

Mister Putin, you have received **Iranian munitions** — Shahed drones that have struck Ukrainian cities. You have received **North Korean soldiers** — men sent by **Kim Jong Un** to fight and die in your trenches in exchange for military technologies and oil. You have received **Chinese electronic components** that go into your missiles. The second army in the world needs **North Korea** to hold.

Let me tell you what this means in the reading of History. When you invoke Stalingrad, Kursk, the Great Patriotic War, the heroic resistance of the Soviet people — and you are in the process of bringing in North Korean conscripts to fill trenches in Ukraine, you have lost the moral argument before you even opened your mouth. **This does not mean you are losing the war** — wars are not always won with the moral argument. But it means that the narrative you are building for your people, for History, for future Russian generations, is a narrative **fundamentally compromised**.

### What this dependency says about your narrative

*I think of the Russian families who lost a son or a husband, who believe he died for the homeland, to protect Russian speakers in the **Donbas**, for the great cause of denazification. What History will tell their children is that their father died in a **war of aggression** that neither the facts, nor the law, nor morality can justify. Putin stole from them not only their loved ones, but their narrative dignity.*

## On what History has in store for you: not what you think

### Empires that believe themselves eternal and the lessons they refuse

Mister Putin, you are 73 years old. You have led Russia for 26 years. You have survived internal challenges, imprisoned or dead opponents, economic crises, sanctions. You have built around you an apparatus that tells you what you want to hear and executes what you order. But none of these facts changes the trajectory you are following — and that History knows well.

Leaders who launch wars of aggression based on a national mythology, who deny the sovereignty of their neighbors, who repress all internal dissent and chain their country to a ruinous conflict — these leaders end badly. Not always quickly. Not always spectacularly. But they end badly. Cromwell, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, Saddam Hussein. These comparisons exasperate you — I know. They exasperate you because they place you in a series you refuse to accept. But **History does not ask for your agreement** to classify you. It classifies according to acts. And your acts since 2022 have classified you.

### The documented trajectory of conquerors

*I am not prophesying. I have no certainty about how and when this story will end. But I can say with certainty this: no leader who has invaded a sovereign country, killed tens of thousands of civilians, destroyed hospitals and universities, and denied the right to existence of a neighboring nation has been judged favorably by History. Not one. That is an empirical data point.*

## On Zelensky and his letter of June 4, 2026

### What you could not ignore and did not want to accept

On **June 4, 2026**, President Zelensky sent you an **open letter** proposing direct talks between the two heads of state — with the active participation of the **United States** and Europe. This offer was public, documented, and clearly expressed a disposition toward direct dialogue. You refused. At the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, you said that your war objectives had not changed and that there was no reason to hold **peace negotiations**.

This refusal cannot be presented as a defensive posture. Zelensky — whom you call illegitimate — was offering you a table. You said no. **This refusal says everything** about your true intentions: not peace, but victory. Not negotiation, but Ukrainian capitulation. Not dialogue, but imposition. And this is precisely why Ukraine, Europe, and the world's democracies cannot trust you as a good-faith interlocutor — whatever the diplomatic channel, whatever the mediator, whatever the proposed framework.

### What your refusal says about your intentions

*Zelensky offered his hand. Putin said no. If this sequence were reversed — Putin offering, Zelensky refusing — the international press would be devoting entire pages to Ukrainian intransigence. The fact that it is the other way around is, itself, a political fact that must be named.*

## To Russia, beyond Putin

### What this letter says to Russians, not just to their president

I want to address for a moment not the president, but the Russian people. The millions of ordinary Russians — teachers, doctors, engineers, mothers, retirees — who live under this regime without having truly chosen it, who may have voted for it out of habit, out of fear, or out of a lack of credible alternative. I do not hold you responsible for this war. I know that Russian dissidents risk their freedom and their lives to oppose it. I know that thousands of Russians have fled the country rather than participate in this war.

What I want to tell you is that Russia's future is not permanent war. It is not **economic isolation**, technological decay, dependence on Iranian drones and North Korean soldiers. Russia's future — the Russia that could be, not the one that is — lies in integration, in mutual dignity with its neighbors, in the extraordinary culture your country has produced since Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky. That Russia is possible. But not with **Vladimir Putin** in power.

### What a different Russia could be

*I know that this distinction — between a regime and its people — is sometimes accused of naivety. Sometimes it is. But I refuse to abandon the possibility of a different Russia. Not believing in it means condemning **144 million people** to be the enemy forever. That is not politics — it is intellectual laziness.*

## On what this war has already decided

### What nothing can erase anymore

Mister Putin, some things are already decided, whatever happens now. Finland and Sweden are in **NATO**. What you most wanted to prevent — the expansion of the Alliance to your immediate border — you provoked. An additional **1,300 kilometers** of NATO border with Russia that you yourself created through your decision of **February 24, 2022**. Ukraine has military, economic, and political Western support that did not exist at this level in 2021. Europe has begun to rearm — **historic defense budgets** everywhere, from Berlin to Warsaw to Stockholm.

These changes are permanent. Even if a **ceasefire agreement** were signed tomorrow, even if the front line were frozen where it is today, these structural geopolitical facts would remain. You wanted to weaken **NATO** — you strengthened it. You wanted to neutralize Ukraine — you created a nation that has proved its capacity to defend itself against the largest army on its continent for four years. **These Ukrainian and Western victories are secured**, regardless of what the negotiating table will produce.

### The irreversible geopolitical realities

*Ukraine has already won something irreversible: it proved it existed as a sovereign nation capable of resistance. Even if it lost territory tomorrow — which I do not wish — this proof of collective existence is engraved in History forever. Putin cannot erase that. No one can.*

## Conclusion: You can win battles — you cannot win History

### What this letter leaves as judgment

Mister Putin, you can still gain ground. Your armies can still advance, centimeter by centimeter, across the Ukrainian plains, at the cost of human losses that your regime is willing to absorb because it controls information. You can still force a **ceasefire** agreement through exhaustion if Western support falters long enough. You can still, perhaps, obtain some form of international recognition of certain territorial acquisitions. I do not deny this possibility.

But you cannot win History. History records facts, not state narratives. It has recorded that you launched a war of aggression against a sovereign country. It has recorded that you bombed hospitals, markets, apartment buildings. It has recorded that your armies occupied Ukrainian cities and killed civilians. It has recorded that you refused, on **June 8, 2026**, an offer of direct negotiation. And it will record, page after page, that in the face of all this, Ukraine held. **Zelensky was there.** Europe was there. And **Maxime Marquette**, from his desk in **Quebec**, was there too — writing these lines you will never read, in a free democracy you cannot censor.

*I write these last lines with a conviction I do not try to soften: justice ultimately prevails. Not always quickly. Not without a terrible price. Not without painful compromise. But the arc of History bends toward justice — not because it is guaranteed, but because peoples, when given the choice, choose freedom. Ukrainians chose it. And that choice belongs to them.*

### Resistance as an act of civilization

This open letter will change nothing on the ground. It will not change Putin's posture, nor the calculus of leaders in **Moscow**, nor the position of soldiers in the trenches of the **Donbas**. It does not pretend to any of these ambitions. What it does pretend is to name the truth as the available facts allow us to see it: an illegal war of aggression, founded on a false national mythology, conducted in contempt of **international law**, and resisted by a people that had the right to resist.

### What cannot be stolen

The **Ukrainian resistance** since **February 24, 2022** is one of the most important political facts of the 21st century. It proved that peoples can hold against empires when they have the will and the necessary support. It challenged the idea that wars are won with mass and iron rather than with law and **legitimacy**. It showed that the West — imperfect, divided, slow — can nevertheless come together when fundamental principles are threatened. **These lessons belong to History.** Mister Putin cannot steal them. Not even with all his armies.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 23, 2026 — June 24, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23-2026/)

- [UNN — Putin demands Ukraine cede territories to begin negotiations, Peskov — May 13, 2026](https://unn.ua/en/news/putin-again-demands-ukraine-cede-territories-to-begin-negotiations-peskov)

- [EU Perspectives — Beware any ceasefire that helps Putin. E3 leaders bring no breakthrough — June 8, 2026](https://euperspectives.eu/2026/06/beware-ceasefire-that-helps-putin-e3-leaders-bring-no-breakthrough/)

- [ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 19, 2026 — June 20, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-19-2026/)

- [Al Jazeera — As Ukraine seizes first chance to win, war horrors come home to Russia — June 25, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/25/as-ukraine-seizes-first-chance-to-win-war-horrors-come-home-to-russia)

### Secondary sources

- [Reuters — Kremlin sticks to demand that Ukraine cede all of Donbas in talks — January 26, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-sticks-demand-that-ukraine-cede-all-donbas-talks-tass-reports-2026-01-26/)

- [Chatham House — How a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire could imperil Ukrainian and European security — May 2026](https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/05/how-russia-ukraine-ceasefire-could-imperil-ukrainian-and-european-security/03-russia)

- [Carnegie Endowment — Can the Disparate Threads of Ukraine Peace Talks Be Woven Together? — February 26, 2026](https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2026/02/russia-negotiations-purpose)

- [Kyiv Independent — Ongoing coverage of the war and Ukraine-Russia negotiations — June 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/)

- [ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 13, 2026 — May 14, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-13-2026/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-a-vladimir-poutine-vous-pouvez-gagner-des-batailles-pas-l-histoir