Felipe Dana/AP Photo
An emergency worker is helped by local residents to carry a man to an ambulance following a Russian bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine, April 27, 2022.
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine may be entering its bloodiest and most dangerous phase. In retrospect, the initial invasion was marked by tremendous overconfidence from Vladimir Putin both in his own armed forces and in the weakness of Ukraine’s military. It turned out that Russian equipment was outdated and ill-maintained, and the morale of its soldiers weak, while Ukrainian forces were outfitted with the latest NATO hardware and doggedly determined.
Putin’s initial goal to decapitate the Ukrainian government in a lightning attack and install a puppet regime has failed. After taking heavy losses around Kyiv—and committing truly gruesome war crimes in the process—Russian forces have retreated to eastern Ukraine and regrouped. Now it seems Russia is beginning another offensive in the Donbas region.
Though a diplomatic settlement should still be pursued, the best hope for a peace worthy of the name is for Ukraine to win.
Let me start with the intentions of the participants. On the Russian side, the principal motivation is clearly old-fashioned imperialism. Just listen to Putin’s speech on the eve of invasion, when he delivered a lengthy argument that Ukraine is essentially a fake country—that it was given a fraudulent existence by Lenin as part of a cynical political trick, that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a disaster, and that Ukraine is rightfully part of “historic Russia.” (Incidentally, there is a long history of declining imperial powers lashing out in an attempt to regain their previous status.) As the war has gone poorly, the Russian government has turned to shrieking propaganda, smearing Ukraine as a Nazi state and blaming it for Russian war crimes.
What’s more, like so many despots before him, Putin appears alarmed at the prospect of Ukrainian democracy and popular revolution inspiring similar protests in Russia itself.
Conversely, if Putin were a hard-bitten realist as assumed by analysts like John Mearsheimer, the moment the war started going pear-shaped he would have started looking for a face-saving exit. He took a terrific gamble with this war, and rolled snake eyes across the board—Ukraine has mauled his army and its previously fearsome reputation, harsh sanctions threaten long-term economic ruination, previous stalwart neutrals like Finland and Sweden are likely to join NATO, and his largest customer for Russian oil and gas, Europe, is now scrambling to replace that energy as fast as possible.
It basically could not have gone worse for him. Yet not only is Putin not seriously looking for a diplomatic escape hatch (multiple sources tell the BBC Russian negotiators are not interested in a diplomatic settlement), he keeps escalating the conflict and making new threats. He seems to be attempting to bring Moldova into the conflict through the tiny Russian-controlled breakaway region of Transnistria, and just cut off Poland and Bulgaria from Russian gas supplies. “If anyone decides to meddle in ongoing events and create unacceptable strategic threats for Russia, they must know our response will be lightning-quick,” Putin said in a recent speech. “We have all the instruments for this, ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to.”
The West’s ability to influence events is limited, particularly when it comes to Ukraine’s willingness to fight.
As any scholar of American empire knows, imperialist chauvinism is often deeply irrational.
On the other side, for Ukraine this is a war of national survival. Ukrainians can see that Russia intends to destroy their democracy and impose a terrible despotism, if not attempt to exterminate Ukrainian culture altogether. They know what Russian forces did to innocent civilians in Bucha, the tens of thousands of body bags and mobile crematoria they apparently brought, the brutal “filtration camps” set up outside occupied cities, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to deep in the Russian interior. It’s all highly reminiscent of the murderous tactics Putin used to crush rebellion in Chechnya years ago, and it’s why the war has all but obliterated any pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, President Zelensky, who was previously flailing and deeply unpopular, has turned out to be an enormously effective war leader. By putting himself at serious personal risk by refusing to leave Kyiv and convincing Western powers to send gobs of money, equipment, and weapons, he further stoked patriotic fervor and the fighting spirit of Ukrainian troops.
Summing up: On the one side, Russia is clearly not going to back down if it can help it, and on the other neither is Ukraine. If Russia wins, or takes permanent control of any more Ukrainian territory, then any ensuing peace will be the silence of the graveyard—with civilians rounded up, tortured, raped, deported, and/or shot by the hundreds of thousands. The only prospect of a decent peace is for Ukraine to retake control of its territory, or for Putin to give up.
Of course, President Biden and European leaders should do all they can to keep a door open for further diplomacy, should Putin decide to cut his losses—and that should include an offer of serious concessions, like removing all the economic sanctions. It might also help to back Zelensky if he feels he needs to make a difficult compromise, perhaps by compensating with a big reconstruction grant. But at bottom, the West’s ability to influence events is limited, particularly when it comes to Ukraine’s willingness to fight. They will struggle to the bitter end, and I can’t blame them for a second.
It must be admitted this is a risky strategy. Russia is weaker than it seemed, but it still has thousands of nuclear weapons. If he gets truly desperate, Putin may decide to use them, and the potential worst-case scenario there is as bad as it gets. Hence it would be far too risky to start shooting down Russian planes (what the “no-fly zone” euphemism means), or to deploy NATO troops in Ukraine itself.
However, time is on Ukraine’s side. Western materiel is continuing to flow to Ukrainian forces, while Russia will struggle to replace its high-tech munitions thanks to sanctions. Western intelligence support has reportedly been extremely useful for Ukraine in providing advance notice of Russian strikes and troop movements. As military analyst Michael Kofman argues, the battered Russian military is likely capable of just one more major effort before it is exhausted and needs to either retreat or be resupplied with national mobilization.
Putin is well aware that pursuing failed wars has toppled Russian governments many times in the past. If Ukraine can hold out for just a few more weeks, then hopefully he can see sense. If not, then he deserves to lose.
