The Ukraine War and Russia’s Status as a Great Power

Four years into the war in Ukraine, the conflict has become central to Russia’s attempt to reclaim great power status. These dynamics suggest that the war has not restored Russia’s great power status, but instead entrenched its decline.

Historically, post-Soviet Russia had claimed membership in the “great power” club based on what it inherited from the Soviet Union: a massive nuclear arsenal and a seat at the United Nations (UN) Security Council. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, especially the underwhelming performance of its armed forces combined with its international condemnation and isolation, undermined the perception of Russia as a great power. Over the last two years, Moscow has sought to regain its lost status by working through the BRICS, at the UN, and revamping its military. Nonetheless, these efforts have yielded only limited status recovery, as Russia has become consumed by the conflict in Ukraine.

Status, Power, and Recognition

The study of status has gained considerable traction among scholars, but at its core, it speaks to a simple idea: how states are ranked and recognized by others. Status is most commonly defined as a position within a hierarchy based on attributes such as wealth, military power, diplomatic influence, and cultural reach. States that occupy a higher rank benefit from advantages that go beyond material capability. They are often able to achieve their objectives without resorting to force, instead drawing on their standing in institutions such as the UN Security Council. 

Status also carries domestic weight. States, and their citizens, care about how they are perceived internationally, including whether they are seen as members of a high-status group. Governing elites often pursue recognition not only for influence abroad, but to reinforce legitimacy at home.

Yet recognition is far from guaranteed. Many states are frustrated when they do not receive the recognition they seek. Status depends on how others perceive a state and its efforts to gain recognition. Sometimes, their efforts do not meet the criteria established by those who already enjoy high status. At other times, the recognition that is granted does not meet the expectations of the status seeker. States can, and often do, react to the perceived “snubs” with outbursts and visible shows of displeasure, including military demonstrations or interventions in third states.

Ukraine and the Erosion of Russia’s Great Power Status

Post-Soviet Russia has been widely recognized as an ardent status-seeker. A diminished power, much weaker than the Soviet Union, it nonetheless aspired to be treated as a first-order state. In the 1990s, it was at its weakest point and sought accommodation with the West. Undertaking domestic reformism and integration was a way of winning recognition, but that never satisfied Russia’s expectations. 

Russia had struggled to win recognition in a peaceful way and was looked down upon by some for failing to modernize its economy and political system. Putin and his lieutenants have sought recognition by acting more forcefully, clinging to what some scholars have described as “anachronistic status markers” including the seat at the UN Security Council, a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, and also Russia’s dominant position in the former Soviet Eurasia. 

The invasion of Ukraine, which was in part driven by a desire to reaffirm Russia’s dominant role in the post-Soviet space, rather than solidify Russia’s clout over the neighbor, weakened its grasp and led to the slippage of its great power status. It exposed significant weaknesses in Russia’s military power.

As a violator of international law and the UN Charter, Russia became a pariah state, condemned by successive UN General Assembly resolutions since February 2022. The country also faced an unprecedented period of diplomatic isolation for a great power, with Putin meeting far fewer world leaders in 2022 than at any time before the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s Efforts to Reclaim Great Power Status

Over the last two years, Moscow had sought to reverse the contraction in status. The Kremlin focused on countering the diplomatic isolation, repairing the image as a violator of the UN Charter, and improving its military’s performance. 

First, the consequence of the collapse in Russo-Western ties over Ukraine fast-tracked Moscow’s turn to the East. Moscow has sought to present itself as one of the leaders of the non-Western world, especially within the BRICS association, which it helped establish. The annual summits presented an opportunity to showcase that Russia had friends, despite the West’s attempts to isolate it. 

Hosting summits allows states to project visibility and reinforce claims to status. In October 2024, Putin welcomed representatives of 35 states in Russia, including leaders of China and India, as well as the UN Secretary General, thus seemingly defying Western attempts to cast him as an isolated global pariah.

Moreover, while embarrassed by the General Assembly’s condemnation of its war in Ukraine, Russia sought to exploit the unexpected eruption of the Israel-Hamas war to reclaim positive visibility at the UN. Over the first few months, Moscow circulated ceasefire proposals, spoke in favor of a peaceful resolution, and attempted to rebrand itself as an alleged defender of international order. It also harshly criticized Israel, rhetorically embraced the Palestinian cause, and sought to turn the tables on the West by highlighting its double standard in responding to humanitarian crises in Europe and outside of it. While Moscow’s diplomatic maneuvers put it back in the spotlight and appealed to pro-Palestinian circles in the developing world, Russia played no role in securing the January 2025 ceasefire and was omitted from the October 2025 peace summit in Egypt.

A third area where Russia was desperate to show improved performance was the military. Historically, its claim to high status rested largely on its position as a great military power. Hence, the poor performance of its forces in 2022 shattered that image when a much smaller neighbor pushed back and humiliated the invading force. However, over the next two years, the Russian military showed resilience and adaptability by thwarting Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive and reclaiming the lead in drone development. It retook the initiative and more land during 2024-25. Despite these improvements, more than four years into the war, Russia is nowhere near defeating a much weaker opponent. It remains stuck in 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and has not even been able to take the entire Donbas region.

An Uncertain Status Recovery

Russia faces a long road to regain the status it once held. While partially bouncing back in diplomatic and military spheres, a continuous drain on Russia’s status remains the unresolved Ukraine conflict. The war saps away the attention and resources from other areas of activity of Russian foreign policy. 

Russia was active in the Middle East before 2022, most visibly in Syria, where in 2015 it intervened on behalf of the former Assad government. Despite defending Assad, Moscow was still able to develop and maintain good working relations with most of the regional actors, thus positioning itself as an influential external player. However, since 2022, Russia has had less ability to be present in the region and watched from the sidelines as Assad was overthrown by the Islamist rebels in the winter of 2024. Furthermore, in the summer of 2025, Moscow was again on the sidelines, primarily extending words of support but little visible beyond that to the partner Iranian government, which was being bombed by the Israelis and Americans. Great power status endows states with the opportunity (and often responsibility) to become involved in solving major international crises. Russia’s war in Ukraine has reduced its ability to act elsewhere, as resources and attention are concentrated on the conflict. During the renewed Spring 2026 Israeli-US-Iranian fighting, Moscow appears to follow a similar pattern of providing visible rhetorical support and behind-the-scenes technical assistance, as well as shared intelligence. In a sign of visibly declining status, though, Moscow’s offers of mediation between Washington and Tehran have been dismissed by Trump.

Even more significant was Russia’s apparent loss of privileged position as a security broker in its neighborhood, which, as pointed out, was one of the traditional sources of its claim to status. Once described as an area of Russia’s “privileged interests,” the Ukraine War had seen Russia’s reduced attention to the disputes on its periphery, to the extent that outsiders had stepped in to mediate between Moscow’s nominal allies – most visibly the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, where the peace was brokered by the Trump Administration. The longer the war continues, the more it entrenches a central paradox: the strategy Russia pursued to restore its status has become the main constraint on its ability to reclaim it.

Janko Šćepanović recent article, “The Russia–Ukraine War at Four: Russia’s Attempts to Regain Status,” is published in the International Journal and can be found here.