The Telegraph reports:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/22/sir-laurie-bristow-interview/]

‘Peace in Ukraine is impossible while Putin remains in power’

Sir Laurie Bristow, former British ambassador to Russia, says Western leaders must acknowledge that Moscow and Kyiv are at an impass

But this regime change to solve the impass narrative is false.

The former ambassador has no clue whether any Putin successor - say Dmitry Medvedev for example - would be better or worse than Putin.

And neither does anyone else. So be careful what you wish for.

“Specifically on Russia, it is: understand the nature of the problem,” he told The Telegraph’s Battle Lines podcast when asked how he would advise the Prime Minister if he were still a diplomat.

“The key to thinking about how the war might end is first of all do away with fantasies. There is not a deal to be done with Russia where you trade some Ukrainian land for some other Ukrainian land and somehow Putin’s happy and goes home. That isn’t going to happen.

What the ambassador does not articulate, because it is not convenient to his narrative, is his understanding of the nature of the problem.

And it is not Putin.

The nature of the problem, that has been widely understood for decades, is that Russia does not want more NATO on its borders and especially in Ukraine. The only reason Russia wants Ukrainian territory is nothing to do with imperialism and everything to with the desire to create a buffer zone - that is an overfly zone for NATO missiles coming from the west to be defended against - once Ukraine decided it did not want to be neutral anymore after the Maidan coup.

The ambassador - and it seems many other people - conveniently forget that the last time Russia was invaded and lost millions of people as a result, it was from the west. So they are naturally a little sensitive to threats - as they see them - from the west. 

Something that is indelibly etched in the Russian psyche and denying the reality of history is simply nonsense.

The ambassador is not stupid. He knows this. But establishment thinking demands that this obvious understanding is denied.

What [Putin] wants to do here is essentially assert the rights as he sees them of a great power to a sphere of influence – essentially an empire in central and eastern Europe – and that cannot be reconciled with our interests.

What nobody ever explains is why Putin would want the enormous expense and hassle of re-creating the Warsaw pact full of rebellious 'partisan' Estonians, Poles, Ukrainians etc. who hate Russia and are backed by endless NATO weapons and targeting intelligence.

Why is this in his 'interests'? Why would anyone want that?

An Afghanistan in eastern Europe. Non-stop Russian military casualties fighting a revived NATO-backed SOE in eastern Europe..

But of course this convenient lie is required to play into the victim/villain narrative of 'defensive' NATO as victim and Putin as a Hitlerian madman directing his evil plan for European domination from his Kremlin bunker.

As the ambassador knows, every nuclear country asserts a 'sphere of influence' - including the UK, although arguably it is only a great power in terms of its subservient role as Airstrip One for the USA.

Everytime a Russian naval vessel sails down the English channel in international waters, the UK establishment is up in arms about Russia 'threatening' its sphere of influence.

The US claims a huge sphere of influence, via the Monroe doctrine, comprising the whole of the Western hemisphere.

China exerts its claims over its sphere of influence all the time.

Even the UN claims a global sphere of influence, albeit one that few nations take any notice of anymore.

The former ambassador is essentially denying Russia its right to a sphere of influence but not China, the UK and USA and many others.

We are back to that old 'rules-based order' chestnut: Our rules, your order.

This shows a lamentable distortion of reality and also how poor the quality of modern diplomacy has become when people persist in misunderstanding what is perfectly clear to everyone else.