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A woman waves a Russian flag as armed servicemen wait near Russian military vehicles outside a Ukrainian border guard post in the Crimean town of Balaclava March 1, 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin wrested control of the Ukrainian Black Sea region of Crimea from Kiev on Saturday citing a threat to Russian citizens and servicemen of the Russian Black Sea fleet based there.
The Crimean sticking point
Last week, the world marked the two-year anniversary of Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, but the active phase of this war really began 10 years ago today. On February 27, 2014, Russian troops began pouring into Crimea to seize this very important piece of real estate.
You’ll be hearing and reading about Crimea for many years to come. Here’s why…
Why did Russia invade Crimea?
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin worked for more than a decade to keep post-Soviet Ukraine from drifting toward closer ties with the European Union after taking power in 2000. In November 2013, protests erupted in Ukraine’s capital when then-president Viktor Yanukovych – a Putin ally/crony – announced Ukraine would not sign a much-anticipated trade agreement with the EU. Yanukovych ordered a violent crackdown before protesters forced him to flee to Moscow. This episode became known as the Maidan revolution, named for the central square in Kyiv where it began.
In response to Ukraine’s pro-European uprising, Putin ordered the seizure of Crimea, the one Ukrainian province where ethnic Russians made up a majority of citizens. (Here’s a good explainer on Crimea’s complex history.)
Ukraine had no sustainable military response. The US and EU condemned the move, and imposed sanctions, but were unwilling to risk a NATO-Russia war over the peninsula.
Why does this small piece of Ukraine remain so important?
Few recognized ten years ago that Crimea was just the beginning of Putin’s broader bid to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin’s control. But it’s certainly clear now that Crimea’s status will be the most difficult part of any future negotiation to end this war.
That bargaining won’t begin soon. Putin continues to signal that he expects bigger gains than the 18% of Ukrainian land Russian forces now occupy. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky also acts as if total victory remains possible, and he lacks the domestic political backing he would need to trade land for peace.
But if/when Russian and Ukrainian negotiators finally begin to haggle, Crimea’s symbolic and strategic importance will make it the toughest nut to crack. On the Russian side, Putin has staked enormous personal credibility on his argument that history makes Crimea part of Russia. Giving it back would cost him the fruits of his 2014 invasion, which he considers a great Russian victory. It would also force him to explain why he’s surrendering what he calls core Russian land.
On the Ukrainian side, the surrender of Crimea would force Zelensky to ask Ukrainians to swallow the loss of this symbolically important land that was internationally recognized in 1994 as part of Ukraine, even by the Russian government.
And both sides know that control of Crimea is crucial to Ukraine’s future access to the Black Sea, a crucial part of the country’s continuing economic viability as a nation – and therefore Ukraine’s potential place as a European Union member state.
Can Ukraine win the war?
Are NATO allies as united in their support for Kyiv as they were when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine two years ago? That was the question at the top of everyone’s minds at the Munich Security Conference, where world leaders gathered to discuss the biggest challenges to global security. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sat down with Deputy Secretary General Mirceǎ Geoana on the sidelines of Munich to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and what the conflict means for the future of the NATO alliance.
“Ukraine is more than Ukraine, and Ukraine is more than European security,” Geoanǎ explains, “Ukraine is an indicator of the willingness and the capacity of the West to be able to cope with challenges coming from China or anywhere else.”
Geoanǎ also called the recent death of Alexei Navalny a “wake-up call” for the West and challenged President Trump’s recent comments about allowing Russia to invade NATO countries that don’t meet the target of spending 2% of GDP on defense. While he admits Europe could do better, he points out that NATO allies are well above the 2% target on aggregate due to heightened security concerns in former Soviet countries and the Baltics.
“In the end, this alliance, [which will celebrate] 75 years in the next few weeks, will be as indispensable to America and to all of us like it’s been since the inception,” Geoanǎ says.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week online and on US public television. Check local listings.
What's the plan for Ukraine after two years of war? Ian Bremmer explains
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, what's the plan for both sides as casualties rise, Europe's support wavers and US funding for Ukraine hangs in the balance?
It’s been two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which shows no signs of ending any time soon. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer looks at how Ukraine and Russia have fared so far and what comes next for Kyiv and Moscow. So far, the numbers tell a grim story. Both countries have lost around 70,000 troops each, with hundreds of thousands more injured, according to recent estimates. Meanwhile, Russia still occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory. So what’s the plan?
On the Ukrainian side, the strategy remains the same: survive. After a disappointing summer counteroffensive and recent shakeup of Ukrainian military leadership, Kyiv is hoping recent attacks inside Russia can put Moscow on its back foot. The Kremlin, for its part, is waiting out the clock, banking on war fatigue in Europe and political infighting in the US to stem the flow of military assistance to Ukraine. A prospect that seems all the more likely if Donald Trump wins the US election in November.
Ninety-two percent of Ukrainian citizens say that the only acceptable end to the war would be a complete Russian withdrawal from their country, including Crimea. As the conflict enters a third year, 44 million Ukrainians overwhelmingly want to defend the territory, but is that enough to win?
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
What Ukraine needs after two years of war with Russia
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take for the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don'tknow what you give on a second anniversary, but I know what Ukraine wants. It's ammo, it's more weapons. It is an environment where they have lost their first city, more of a large town to the Russians since last May.
And the reason for that, it's not that Ukrainians aren't willing to fight. It's not a lack of courage. It's not even a lack of troops. It's a lack of support from the United States and Europe. Yes, from the United States and Europe. The United States, which is the largest military power in the world for now, does not have approval from Congress to continue sending military support to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Europeans are not digging deep. They do have more ammunition to send. But right now that's going to other countries around the world. They have contracts with like the UAE and their willingness to prioritize Ukraine over those contracts because of a national emergency. They'd rather make the money. Look, I understand all of that, but at the end of the day, the Ukrainians are the ones that are taking it on the chin.
And this is a real challenge for the future of the war and the future of NATO. Two years later, NATO is already feeling much more stressed than it was in the immediate aftermath of the war. You'll remember that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke of a Zeitenwende, a turning point where Germany would have to spend more on their national defense and would have to culturally get over their unwillingness to provide weapons for other countries to ensure that Ukraine could defend itself. We saw that from France. We saw it first and foremost from the front line countries like the Baltic states. Tiny but hitting much above their weight. The Poles, of course, not only sending enormous amounts of weapons, but also helping to train Ukrainian soldiers and hosting, even in their homes, millions of Ukrainians refugees that were fleeing from the country, fleeing from the Russian invasion.
Despite all of this, the war has changed its tempo. It's changed its trajectory. Right now. The Ukrainians are on defense. The Russians are taking somewhat slightly more territory, but they're also continuing to engage in missile strikes deep into Ukrainian territory. And we just found out that the first level of advanced weapons, missiles from Iran now being sent to Russia in addition to thousands of railway containers of ammunition and short range missiles from North Korea. This is not an axis of resistance, much closer to an axis of evil. Three chaos actors working together in military alliance to help ensure that there is more instability, more volatility in the world, and that the West is under more pressure. And that is a significant problem for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Two years on the ability of Ukraine to retake all of their territory seems a pipe dream.
It's almost inconceivable that they are not going to be partitioned and no one's going to accept that in the West, certainly not Ukraine, not the United States, at least not under the Biden administration and not any of the frontline NATO countries. And yet the Ukrainians will have no ability to retake that land. What does that mean? Can Ukraine still win?
Well, it depends on what you mean in defining victory. I can see Ukraine having strong security guarantees from the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, maybe some others that could prevent the Russians from taking more Ukrainian territory, prevent them from being able to overthrow Ukraine. I can imagine large amounts of money, especially from Europe, which has done the lion's share of the economic support from Ukraine even more than the United States has, though not many people talk about that over the last two years to help ensure that Ukraine will be able to reconstruct its economy, its infrastructure, its system.
And I can also see Ukraine being able to join the European Union over the long term, which allows them to have economic and political reforms that will improve the lives of the average Ukrainian. That is a win for Ukraine in the sense that it would afford the vast majority of Ukrainians a much better life and future than they would have had before the Russian invasion in 22 or before the Russian invasion in 2014. But there are no guarantees. And absent significant and committed support ongoing from the Americans and Europeans to ensure that future, the potential that the Ukrainians will be overthrown, they'll lose more of their territory and that the country will fall apart, becomes greater. And that certainly would feel like a Russian victory in Ukraine. It's not a Russian victory globally because of course in that environment Russia would still have the majority of its assets, hundreds of billions of dollars externally frozen. The Russians would have massive sanctions from the West and they wouldn't be able to do business with them going forward. That means particularly stranded gas because they don't have the infrastructure to pipe it anywhere else. It means that Russia is seen as a rogue state whose principal allies are countries like Iran and North Korea, not the friends that you really want to have on the international stage.
That's embarrassing for them. It's also a loss. It's a loss because NATO has expanded Finland and soon Sweden, which is ostensibly why the Russians wanted to invade Ukraine in the beginning because they didn't want more of a NATO's threat against them. And now they have much more that they have to defend against. Who do we blame for all of this?
Of course we blame Putin. But you know what? I also blame NATO. I do think that NATO's is responsible in significant part for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. You know why? Because when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, when they illegally annexed Crimea and when they illegally sent their little green men who we all knew were really Russian soldiers and occupied illegally, parts of southeast Ukraine, the West did virtually nothing. NATO did virtually nothing. The view was, “hey, these guys aren't a part of NATO. We're not responsible.” In fact, not only were sanctions very limited, but the Europeans sent heads of state to go and congratulate Putin for the World Cup that he was hosting at the very moment that the Russians were occupying illegally parts of Ukraine. This war has been going on for ten years and NATO has been unconcerned until the Russians finally decided in 2022, “Hey, we can get away with this. The Americans, the Europeans don't really care. Look at what just happened in Afghanistan. We're going to invade the entire country. We're going to get rid of Zelensky once and for all. “ A massive misjudgment on Putin's part. But the misjudgment wasn't about NATO's response. The misjudgment was about Russia's own capabilities. And if they had been strong enough to be able to overthrow Zelensky in the two weeks that Putin thought would happen and that the Americans and Europeans did as well, we'd be in a radically different position today. No, it is only the fact that Putin is an incapable leader who is massively corrupt and doesn't get good information from his own people. And it's only because the Ukrainians fought with incredible, almost inhuman courage over the first months and now over two years that Ukraine still has a shot today. It's only because of that that NATO isn't completely at fault for Ukraine falling apart.
But unfortunately, Ukraine's future still very much hangs in the balance and that's going to require a lot more political strength and unity from the United States, from Europe, the transatlantic relationship and NATO, then we may be able to expect going forward. That's where we are two years in.
That's it for me. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Yes, Vladimir Putin is winning.
It’s been two years since Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which makes it as good a time as any to ask a simple question: Is he winning?
Here’s the best argument we can think of for why the answer is “da.”
Just to be clear, it’s true that if Vladimir Vladimirovich thought it would take barely a week to topple the Ukrainian government, conquer Kyiv, and ram the country back into the Kremlin’s own courtyard of influence — he was wrong. In fairness, he’s certainly not the first Russian leader to misjudge the likelihood of a “short victorious war.”
Still, the lines in the steppe are what they are. Even after Ukraine’s successful pushback against the initial invasion, Russia controls more than twice as much Ukrainian land as it did at the start of the war, when Moscow already held Crimea and a decent swath of the Donbas. Russian boots are currently on the ground in about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory. In EU terms, that would be like an occupation of France and most of Spain.
Ukraine’s vaunted counteroffensive of 2023, of course, fell short and the situation today is a grinding battle of attrition in which the Kremlin, grimly and simply, has more bodies to throw at the front. Just last week, Russian forces made their first breakthrough in months, taking the strategic Donbas city of Avdiivka.
It’s true that even small advances have taken a huge toll on the lumbering and inefficient Russian military. But even an estimated total of 45,000 Russian dead – and as many as eight times as many wounded, totals that dwarf any Russian losses since World War II – hasn’t rattled popular support in a country where the Kremlin controls the media, most of the casualties are from remote regions, and penalties for protests are severe.
What about the economy? Russia has weathered severe Western financial and technology sanctions – in part because it’s been able to continue selling oil and gas to the world, and in part because Putin has dragged his country onto a war footing, tripling pre-war defense expenditures. All of that helped GDP to expand by 3% last year, and the IMF predicts 2.6% this year – not bad for a country under quite literally thousands of sanctions.
When it comes to weapons, two years of war have certainly depleted Russia’s arms caches, but pariahs like Iran, North Korea, Belarus, and Syria have happily sent Putin the shells, drones, and missiles he needs to keep firing at the front lines. Just this week, it emerged that Tehran has been sending hundreds of ballistic missiles to Moscow.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is in a tough spot. Kyiv is increasingly struggling to find the men and the ammo to defend its current positions, let alone push back Russian forces.
Part of the reason Kyiv can’t get the weapons it needs, of course, is that Ukraine’s once-united Western backers are now suffering from “Ukraine fatigue.”
The EU just barely pushed through a fresh financial support package that will help Kyiv to keep the lights on. And Putin can only delight in the ongoing failure of the US Congress to approve further military aid for Ukraine.
To date, the $42 billion in US military aid dwarfs that of all other countries combined. So while those pesky Czechs may now be scrounging together a few months’ worth of artillery shells for Ukraine, Putin believes that without Uncle Sam’s help, Kyiv would fold within “a week.”
Add to all of that the very real possibility of the world’s most prominent Putinophile, Donald Trump, returning to the US presidency this fall, and it’s not hard to see why Putin really is, despite everything, kind of sort of… winning.
He just needs to do one thing: wait.
The way things are headed now, it’s not unreasonable for him to assume that, before long, Ukraine will suffer a deficit not only of men, money, and materiel, but also morale. That will open the way to further gains that can force Kyiv and its Western backers to accept Putin’s terms.
That all, at least, is the argument for why Russia – despite all – is “winning.” Stay tuned for tomorrow’s counterpoint, which will ask: What exactly is Vladimir Putin really “winning”?
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A Ukrainian serviceman gestures next to a 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer before firing toward Russian troops, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a position on a front line in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine November 15, 2023
Ukrainian troops fight for key bridgehead over the Dnipro
Ukrainian troops have crossed the vast Dnipro River and established a bridgehead on the eastern shore, a significant breakthrough after months of agonizingly slow progress in Kyiv’s counteroffensive. If they can hold – and it’s a big “if,” as a Russian regional official says “a fiery hell has been arranged” for Ukrainian troops – the largest geographic barrier on the road to Crimea will be at their backs.
The lay of the land: The Dnipro is the longest river in Europe, and flows in a gentle north-south curve along the entire length of Ukraine. It empties into the Black Sea just southwest of Kherson, which Ukrainian troops liberated a year ago, and controls access thence to the Crimean peninsula, a major symbolic and strategic objective for Kyiv.
Ukrainian troops appear to have secured control over a strip of riverfront between Kherson and the strategic village of Krynky about 24 miles east-northeast. Porting the heavy equipment they’ll need to keep up the attack across the Dnipro is challenging, with most of the bridges in the region long-since destroyed, but a temporary bridge near Krynky, where the Dnipro is narrowest, could change the equation.
Don’t expect a rapid breakthrough: Even if Ukrainian troops do manage to bring over the armor and weapons they need to advance, Russia has multiple lines of prepared defenses to fall back upon. There are no easy countermeasures to the minefields and long-range strikes that have stymied Ukrainian progress since the summer. That said, successfully pulling off one of the toughest maneuvers in modern warfare could represent a morale victory, challenging notions that the conflict has ossified into a “stalemate,” as Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhniy put it recently.A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Sevastopol, Crimea, September 22, 2023.
Ukraine strikes Russian targets in Crimea
A rebellion among Republicans in the US House of Representatives is crystalizing a movement from some pro-Donald Trump conservatives to halt all US help for Kyiv. In a recent poll, just 41% of US respondents expressed support for military aid for Ukraine, down from 46% in May, with 35% opposed. And though leaders from 47 European countries issued a statement of support for Kyiv this week, Europe can’t make up for any financial and military shortfall if US support is suspended or significantly delayed. Ukraine’s failure so far to regain much territory from Russian forces has cast a pall over Western optimism.
And yet, Ukraine continues to use the weapons it already has to inflict serious damage on Russian forces in Crimea, the most hotly contested prize in the war. With both homemade drones and foreign-supplied cruise missiles, Ukraine has struck a number of important military targets in recent weeks. On Sept. 22, two Ukrainian missiles struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet during a meeting of senior officials. On Wednesday, Russia withdrew much of the Black Sea Fleet from its main base in Crimea to a port on the Russian mainland, perhaps over fears the vessels could not be protected.
It’s a reminder that even if US help is halted or delayed in the coming weeks – and that outcome isn’t yet clear – Ukraine still has the firepower to inflict heavy damage on Russian forces and morale as the war grinds on.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden greet President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the South Portico of the White House. Zelensky is meeting with Biden following his participation in the United Nations high-level meetings earlier this week.
Ukraine war sees escalation of weapons and words
After a week of high-stakes diplomacy, including stops in Washington, the UN General Assembly in New York, Ottawa, and Lublin, Poland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returned home amid fresh conflict in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The situation on the Crimean peninsula intensified in recent days with Kyiv launching a series of missile attacks on the port city of Sevastopol. The first targeted Russia's Black Sea Fleet headquarters, where high-level officials of the Russian navy were meeting, and reportedly killed nine people. This comes after Ukraine recently struck a Russian submarine and landing strip in Sevastopol, a strategic hub for Russia’s navy and one of the largest cities on the Crimean peninsula. Ukraine has been upping its attacks on the peninsula over the past month, aiming to degrade Russia’s defense systems – including its much-lauded S-400 systems – and to undermine Russian morale.
Then on Sunday, Russian air strikes on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson killed two people and injured several more. Ukraine’s air force claimed that Russia also carried out air attacks on the port city of Odessa and elsewhere in southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, were reportedly carried out using Storm Shadow missiles, supplied to Ukraine by the UK and France, prompting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to accuse Western powers of "de facto fighting against us, using the hands and bodies of Ukrainians.” Russia is only going to be more enraged now that the US agreed to give Ukraine ATACMS, which would allow Kyiv to strike Russia well beyond the frontlines.
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