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Ukrainian servicemen fire a multiple launch rocket system toward Russian troops near a front line in Zaporizhzhia region.
Is Ukraine picking up the pace?
As we wrote three weeks ago, the single most important (realistic) objective of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian invaders is to persuade backers in Europe and the United States that Ukraine can make good use of more weapons, training, and money to finally win the war. The immediate hope shared in Kyiv, Washington, and European capitals is that in the coming months, Ukrainian forces can drive a wedge to the country’s southern coast, separating Russian forces in Crimea from those in the eastern Donbas region.
So far, progress has been slow. Even President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted that battlefield progress has been “slower than desired,” though he adds sensibly that lasting victory, not quick victory, is the attainable goal.
In recent days, however, there are signs of more significant Ukrainian gains. Pro-Russian online activity reports that Ukrainian forces have crossed the Dnipro River in the Kherson region north of Crimea and established an important bridgehead that can bring more gains. On Tuesday, a UK defense ministry spokesperson called it “highly likely” that Ukraine has recaptured land in the eastern Donbas region that Russian forces and Russian-backed separatists have held since 2014. Zelensky has hinted at recent military progress too.
Is the counteroffensive truly gaining steam? It will probably be weeks before anyone can have confidence that gains can be sustained and will continue.
The Autocrat's Curse
Thrilled to announce that GZERO has won the Bronze Telly Award for general history for this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer (which was originally published online May 2, 2022.)
Two months ago, Joe Biden said invading Ukraine would cost Russia and Vladimir Putin dearly.
Since then, not much has gone Putin's way. But can he climb down without a win he can sell back home?
While the Russians focus on the Donbas, the US now seems to think it can make Russia lose — which could trigger an escalation if Putin feels he's out of options.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to political scientist Ivan Krastev, who believes Putin has the autocrat's curse: his back is against the wall because he can't be perceived as weak.
Krastev unpacks many of Putin's mounting problems, including his long-term fear of a shrinking Russian population, his miscalculations about the war, and why his biggest blunder has been to misread Ukrainians.
Bonus: What do people in America's largest Russian-speaking community think about the war? We visited "Little Odessa" in Brooklyn, where most have distanced themselves from Russia, support Ukraine and condemn the war itself — but there are still tensions below the surface.
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- Putin has "mummified" Russia: Ivan Krastev On the Putin Effect - GZERO Media ›
Nuclear weapons could be used; Russia's war gets more dangerous
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. I have to talk about Russia. There's plenty of news in the world. There's Brazil, there's United Kingdom, there's Iran, but no, Russia is the biggest story, and it's because we've just seen the worst week in the war in terms of escalation and danger that we've had since the initial invasion on February 24th. President Putin, after meeting with some of his closest remaining friends on the global stage, the Indian prime minister, the Chinese president, the Kazakh president, all telling him directly, "Hey, the war is a horrible idea. Please end this as soon as possible." Putin does exactly the opposite and escalates. Calls up a minimum of 300,000 additional troops in a mobilization, something he had been dragging his feet on and avoiding over the last months because he knew how unpopular it would be in Russia.
Putin also announcing annexation of four separate territories in Ukraine. By the way, territory he did not completely occupy at the time that he announced, the referenda the first time I think that's ever happened in history. But nonetheless, very clearly a significant escalation with the war in Ukraine, telling the Ukrainian people, "We are taking this land from you, you are not getting it back. We will consider it Russian territory and we will defend our territory to the death." Some 7 million people on the ground in these territories annexed some 15% of Ukrainian territory. Beyond that, we had pipelines that were suddenly sabotaged, Nord Stream 1 and 2. No hard evidence as to who is behind that, though all NATO members believe both publicly and privately that the Russian government engaged in that attack as a demonstration effect, kind of similar to what the Iranians did against Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. The largest refinery in that country saying, "We can do a lot more if you continue to behave to isolate us the way you have been."
And now of course, we also have the Ukrainians taking land back, significant counter offensives that had started a few weeks ago and are being extended in Kherson, in the south, just north of Crimea, as well as in Donetsk, part of the Donbas, which has been the focus of this second phase of Russia's special military operations. So what is all of this mean? Well, it means that Putin is increasingly really in a box. He's now announced to his own population, "We have taken this territory. We're fighting for it. It's ours. It's going to cause real sacrifice. It's going to mean that we're going to send your young men into the battlefield, and a lot of them are going to face injury and death."
The Russians don't have adequate weaponry to give them to fight this war. They don't have the time to adequately train them. Many are being sent to the front without either, and that means that they're going to continue to underperform. Though Russia can send a lot more people into the field in southeast Ukraine than the Ukrainians themselves can marshal in the near term. Meanwhile, more sanctions are coming from the West. The US, the UK have already announced some in response to the annexation. The EU will have a unanimous eighth round of sanctions later this month. No one is asking now, "Are the Europeans about to break?" Despite the fact that that's what everyone was asking a couple of weeks ago before these escalations. Whether it's the US, the UK, or the Europeans, at least for the coming months, what we're seeing is more aid for the Ukrainians, more weapons and intelligence for the Ukrainians, more willingness to do everything they can to help the Ukrainians fight and take as much land as possible before the Russians get enough troops in to defend territory and hold the line.
In other words, this is a full-fledged, not only proxy war, but increasingly has elements of a hot war between Russia and NATO. And perhaps the most disturbing piece of all of this is if you watch Putin's speech that he gave last week, or if you look at Russian state media, it is all about Russia losing land, losing in the battlefield because they're fighting NATO, because of everything NATO's doing. And so the willingness of the Russians to increasingly take the fight to NATO is growing. And of course, the more we see that, the more dangerous it gets, the greater the potential for this war to actually expand. I don't, as I mentioned, believe that we are close to a nuclear weapon actually being used in battle. But I recognize it's now possible, and I wouldn't have said that a couple of months ago. I'll tell you, after the Russian speech, after Putin speech announcing the annexations and the mobilization in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking about "The Day After", which I haven't thought about in decades.
This was a movie that some of you will remember. I saw it in high school and the next day we had a day off basically where all we did was talk to local leaders and civic leaders about what would happen if there was a nuclear war. I had nightmares for months. There's no way you can watch Putin rattling nuclear savers with his singular capability to have that finger on the button to say that he is prepared to do everything possible to defend land that he will lose and not be somewhat horrified that we could, again, for the first time since World War II see nuclear weapons used in battle. Everything possible has to be done to avoid that. And yet so far, the United States and Europe have done a fantastic job in punishing the Russians. They've done a fantastic job in supporting the Ukrainians, but they've done a really poor job at deterring Putin.
They haven't been able to change his behavior. They haven't stopped him from escalating on the ground in Ukraine. And of course, the more he does that, the greater the desperation. The economic desperation, the international desperation, the domestic political desperation, that is what we are increasingly seeing from Putin. At some point, Putin needs to not be humiliated, but he needs to recognize reality.
He needs to understand that the future of Russia is not in the occupation of Ukraine. And unless he's prepared to get that and he's making it harder and harder to get that on himself, then we are heading towards a much more dangerous confrontation even that we've seen since February. So that's where we are presently. I wish I had some better news for everyone. It's going to be a very tough winter, certainly for the Europeans, even more so for the Russians, and particularly for the Russians that are being sent to the front lines. I don't envy them at all, but I wish we could find a way to deescalate. Unfortunately, for now, that appears to be not in the cards.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Risks of Russia losing: Putin, Ukraine, and potential for escalation ... ›
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Russia inches closer to taking the Donbas
Russia inches closer to taking the Donbas
Russia got one step closer to capturing the Donbas region of Ukraine last Sunday when its forces seized the eastern city of Lysychansk after weeks of heavy fighting. Ukraine’s military announced it had been “forced to withdraw” by Russia’s overwhelming firepower and personnel superiority there in order to avoid “fatal consequences.”
"We continue the fight. Unfortunately, steel will and patriotism are not enough for success—material and technical resources are needed," the Ukrainian military said in a Facebook post.
Following Russia’s takeover of the neighboring city of Severodonetsk just a week prior, Lysychansk had become the last remaining Ukrainian holdout in the Luhansk region. Now, Russia has control of Luhansk, which together with the neighboring Donetsk region makes up the Donbas—the industrialized eastern part of Ukraine that has long been the epicenter of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
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Kremlin-backed separatist forces have been fighting an insurgency there since 2014. Before he invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized Luhansk and Donetsk as independent republics. After his troops failed to take over Kyiv and overthrow the Ukrainian government, Putin declared the top aim of the “second phase” of the war to be the capture and annexation or independence of the Donbas.
Slowly but surely, and despite Ukraine’s fierce resistance, he is succeeding.
For the last month and a half, Russian forces have been making small but steady advances in Ukraine’s east and south. After overrunning Luhansk, the Russian offensive is now turning its focus further west toward the Donetsk, with Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Bakhmut, the region’s three largest cities still in Ukrainian hands, coming under heavy shelling in recent days. Local authorities have called for the 350,000 remaining civilians in the area to evacuate immediately.
The capture of Luhansk hands Putin a significant, if mostly symbolic, win, both on the ground and in the propaganda war. But by no means does it spell an end to the fighting or a decisive Russian victory.
Ukraine still controls nearly half of the Donetsk region, and Russian forces are unlikely to gain a hold of the entire region soon. Ukrainian forces are also advancing in multiple directions, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. The fighting will likely continue through the fall and possibly the winter, dealing heavy casualties to both sides. As long as Western weapons and aid continue to flow, Ukrainians can prevent Moscow from achieving a definitive victory.
The big question is whether Ukraine can get enough advanced weapons from the West at the pace needed to halt the Russian advance, before domestic political pressures erode the level of international support. The Ukrainian government increasingly worries the answer is 'no.'
Kyiv has been desperately asking for more and faster equipment shipments, particularly of heavy artillery and ammunition. While the United States—Ukraine’s top donor in absolute terms—recently provided advanced missile systems and its defense industry is ramping up production to meet demand, stockpiles are getting depleted fast, meaning there isn’t a whole lot more high-capacity artillery readily available for delivery.
Actually getting the materiel to the front lines has been complicated by Russian attacks on rail lines and bridges. And even if getting hardware into place wasn’t a problem, it can take weeks and even months to train Ukrainian soldiers on how to operate certain weapons systems.
Meanwhile, Moscow is stepping up efforts to establish Russia-controlled administrations in the occupied territories and increasing attacks in other parts of the country, including in Kharkiv.
The Ukrainian government is concerned that the level of Western support will only diminish as the conflict drags on, winter makes the energy crunch more acute, and the U.S. midterm elections approach. And rightly so: if they don’t get as much military and financial aid as they possibly can as soon as possible, their ability to fight will suffer, and their odds of success will diminish.
None of this means that Russia can win the war.
As I’vewritten before, no matter what happens on the battlefield, Putin’s decision to invade will turn out to be a catastrophic strategic mistake. Zelensky is an international hero, and Ukraine is now decidedly and permanently anti-Russian. The transatlantic alliance has a newfound sense of purpose. Europe is increasing its military spending. NATO is expanding both its membership and its activities along Russia’s borders. American and European sanctions are effectively permanent, and they will cause significant long-term damage to the Russian economy. There’s no conceivable scenario in which Russia comes out of this war economically and geopolitically stronger than before February 24.
But when it comes to the narrow fight for the Donbas, Putin increasingly finds himself in an ever more comfortable position.
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Pro-Russian troops ride through the city of Lysychansk in Luhansk, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: Russia captures Donbas province, Sri Lanka runs out of fuel, Argentine economic jitters
Russia takes Luhansk
President Vladimir Putin declared victory in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk province on Monday, a day after Ukrainian forces withdrew from their last bastion of resistance there. Luhansk is one of two provinces — along with Donetsk — that make up the Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army since 2014. Capturing Luhansk will free up the Kremlin's military resources to attack Donetsk, about half of which is now under Russian control. Seizing the entire Donbas would be a big win for Russia that some analysts predict might lead to Putin declaring a unilateral ceasefire. Over time, the Russian leader may hope this will dampen Western support for Ukraine and for sanctions against Russia. For his part, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky recognized the defeat but vowed to continue fighting to reclaim the territory. Although that seems unlikely in the near term, perhaps Zelensky is buying time so he can secure more weapons from his Western allies to mount a counter-offensive against the Russians. Now that the war increasingly looks like it's headed to a deep freeze in the Donbas, both sides are signaling that they intend to play the long game.
Sri Lanka grinds to a halt
Earlier this year, we warned that Sri Lanka's debt crisis could get really bad. By that we meant that the island nation would default, cutting it off from the foreign credit it needs to save its COVID-battered economy from collapse. Since then, the situation has deteriorated both economically and politically, and now Sri Lanka has run out of fuel to keep the lights on in all but essential services. On Monday, the country had less than a day's worth of fuel, and the next shipment wasn't expected for another two weeks. The government is scrambling to get emergency supplies from Malaysia and Russia, drawing from a credit line backed by India, the only country that is still lending to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, schools are closed, people are clashing outside gas stations, and embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa remains holed up in his palace because protesters have been blocking the entrance for two months. Last week, Sri Lanka ended 10 days of talks with the IMF without agreeing on a bailout package because Colombo won't commit to the tough reforms the lender demands. UNICEF warns that a humanitarian crisis looms.
Argentine minister throws in the towel
In a move that will likely further destabilize indebted, inflation-ridden, and politically divided Argentina, the country's finance minister resigned on Saturday. Martín Guzmán's departure was forced by differences within the ruling Peronista coalition, a leftist faction led by powerful VP Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She wants Argentina to spend its way out of the economic crisis, while the moderate Guzmán had pushed for cuts required by the $44 billion debt restructuring deal with the IMF the country signed earlier this year. Guzmán is the fourth cabinet member to step down in 2022, which doesn't bode well for unpopular President Alberto Fernández, who is up for re-election next year. Guzmán's resignation raises questions about the future of the IMF deal and about whether the government can do anything to tame inflation, which is expected to soon hit a whopping 70%. His replacement, Silvina Batakis, the former economy minister for Argentina's largest and richest province of Buenos Aires, is more aligned with the VP. Batakis has her work cut out for her: she needs to stop the run on the peso, which crashed nearly 15% against the US dollar on Monday.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to present state awards for outstanding achievements on Russia Day in Moscow.
What We’re Watching: Putin’s progress, Italy’s right turn, a not-so-great Iraqi resignation
Putin’s progress
It’s been a positive few days for Russia’s president and his war on Ukraine. Russian forces appear close to capturing the strategically important city of Severodonetsk, bringing them a step closer to control of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. If they can accomplish that, Putin may well move to annex the entire area. Ukrainian officials have called urgently for faster delivery of heavy weapons to counter superior Russian firepower, but plunging stock markets in Europe and the US will strengthen the arguments in the West from those who oppose continued large-scale financial and military help for Ukraine. A new report from the independent Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds that higher global oil prices and a loophole that allows Europe to receive boycotted Russian oil via India have kept Russia’s oil revenue relatively high. Meanwhile, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to insist he will block the admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO. Though concessions might change his mind, there’s no guarantee he’ll back down. Russia’s military gains are incremental, and they will come at a great cost to Russia’s economic future. But for now, momentum is with the Kremlin.
Far right gains ground in Italian elections
Sunday’s local elections in 1,000 Italian cities confirmed the advance of right-wing parties nationwide, especially the Brothers of Italy party. The far-right Brothers strengthened its coalition with the fellow far-right Lega and the center-right Forza Italia parties, taking the lead in the regional capitals of Genoa and Palermo. A few key insights emerge. First, the far-right coalition has carved out a secure space in the Italian political landscape in the run-up to the 2023 national election. Second, the exclusion of Brothers from the government no longer looks sustainable. Third, the local elections suggest that the current Draghi government is operating on a weak foundation. While it’s impossible to predict whether Italy’s next government will overturn recent policies, including the country’s strong anti-Russia stance in the Ukraine war, this election demonstrates that far-right, anti-EU, and anti-immigration sentiments are gaining ground in the third-largest net contributor to the EU’s budget. Further challenges to EU unity lie ahead, the most formidable of which may very well come from Italy as early as next year.
Why did dozens of Iraqi parliamentarians resign?
Iraq’s tumultuous national politics were dealt another blow on Sunday when 73 lawmakers who make up the biggest parliamentary bloc resigned en masse. The bloc’s leader — powerful Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — called on allies to vacate their seats after eight painstaking months of negotiations during which opposition groups refused to back a vote that would appoint the next president, a crucial step needed to tap a new prime minister and Cabinet to steer the country’s legislative agenda. Al-Sadr, an Iraqi nationalist who led his supporters to fight US occupying forces in the early 2000s, said he was throwing in the towel so that the country could move past the period of crippling political deadlock. But some analysts say this move could spark even more instability and protests from disgruntled al-Sadr supporters. Many Iraqis are also concerned that this could pave the way for the more radical Coordination Framework — a coalition led by Iran-backed Shiite parties — to fill the political vacuum. Notably, this bloc, which pulled the levers of power before al-Sadr’s alliance gained the most seats in general elections last fall (though few Iraqis showed up to vote), has long used heavy-handed tactics to quash dissent.
Macron's speech weakens the West's unity against Putin
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Happy Monday, and a Quick Take to start off your week. I am Ian Bremmer. And the latest in the Russia war. Over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron, calling on NATO, the international community, as we occasionally call it, though a narrower version thereof, not to humiliate Putin and Russia in the war. And furthermore, Macron saying that he is willing to, interested in, wants to, facilitate negotiations after the fighting concludes between the West and Russia. There's a lot going on here.
I consider it a problematic public statement because it implies that the West is not holding together well. And therefore, that if Putin can hang on, that there is more of a divide to take advantage of that there wasn't really in the first two, three months of the fighting since February 24th. I will say that privately, the German government is very much of a piece with the French government in wanting to try to find a way to bring the war to an end as soon as possible. And if that means sort of giving up some negotiating space to Putin and pressuring the Ukrainians to give up some additional territory beyond what was taken before February 24th, then so be it.
But that is absolutely not the American position, the UK position, the Polish position, the Baltic position, the Finnish position, the Swedish position. And perhaps most importantly right now, it's absolutely not the Ukrainian position, and they're of course the ones doing the fighting.
So what exactly is Macron thinking about? Well, first of all, purely power politics. He's looking at what he thinks is likely to be the outcome, and therefore being ahead of others in identifying that space that he thinks the conflict is going to be frozen. He thinks the Russians are de facto going to take more territory than they had before. They'll keep the land bridge, they'll annex a bunch of it and that you have to live with that reality. So why not do it earlier rather than later? That's the first point that Macron is making. Again, that undermines the Ukrainian position. It weakens the West. It makes it more likely that Putin persists rather than not. But if he thinks that's the inevitable outcome, then he's occupying that space before others do. Secondly, he recognizes that the West cannot make Russia into North Korea. That no matter how tough the sanctions are going to be from the United States and Europe, that the Russians will export a large amount of oil, of gas, of food, of fertilizer.
And if the West doesn't want to buy it directly, they'll pay higher prices and effectively buy it indirectly. And so Macron, and this is interesting because France's own economy is less dependent on Russia than most of the other European economies, especially in terms of energy because France powers most of its electricity from nuclear energy, which is not the case for other major European economies. So they don't have the gas and the oil floats that the Germans do, for example, the Poles, the Italians do, but the French certainly are much more willing to go their own way politically and economically.
And again, if that means that they're going to be ahead of where they think the Europeans are mostly going to be in six months' or a year's time, then Macron looks like more of a leader. And then furthermore, it is Macron individually trying to put himself in a leadership role that Scholz has a coalition. The Italian Prime Minister Draghi is gone in short order. And when that happens, it's going to be a very weak government, and probably a procession of very weak governments, Boris Johnson, of course, facing a no confidence vote, literally in several hours of shambolic number of scandals that he's been facing and been driving apart his own Conservative Party.
So if you're in Europe, Macron says, "I get to be the leader. And if I'm the leader and moving us in a role that is in between the United States and Russia, in between long term, the United States and China, that's a stronger position for me to be. And I don't want to be second fiddle in a weaker Europe to the United States." There is absolutely some of that going on as well.
But the problem here is that if I'm Putin, and I recognize that I've made big mistakes in the first couple of months, I recognize that trying to take Kyiv was a horrible idea. My economy is getting crippled as a consequence of that. My military has been devastated by Ukrainians in support of NATO. I wasn't able to make the military gains I wanted. I had to retreat very quickly, including around Kharkiv. And so now I'm stuck basically taking a piece of Donbas. But if I see what the French are saying publicly, the Germans are saying privately, I see the willingness of the Hungarians and some of the east Europeans to push back harder against the tougher level sanctions that are going to hurt their own economies, and I'm starting to see Americans saying, "Why are we spending $40 billion on all this?" I'm thinking, I can hold on. I see Kissinger saying, "Let's negotiate the Russians." If I'm Putin, I'm saying, "If I just am able to take all the Donbas, I've got the land bridge, I declare victory, they can't push me off of that. They probably will have less willingness over time and they're going to start wanting to negotiate. And then I've got the Chinese on my side. And a whole bunch of developing countries are really irritated about how much price of food is costing, and that would get fixed if only we could open up the Black Sea, and that means you need to end the war and the fighting." So Putin, I think, increasingly sees that the time is operating in his favor on Ukraine, specifically on Ukraine.
Now, in terms of where the Russian economy is going, I wouldn't make that argument. 10% contraction of GDP this year. Half of their assets frozen. I don't see that changing anytime soon. And if I look at the level of sanctions against Russia, compare them to sanctions against Iran, sanctions against Venezuela, which frankly were less in total impact on their economy than what we're seeing on Russia right now, over five, over 10 years, that led to a contraction of some 50% in the case of the Venezuelan economy, more like 60% in the case of Iran. So I do think this is really going to cause much more significant, longer-term damage on Russia over time.
And of course, NATO is expanded and there's much more military spend, and all of these other things that the Russians are deeply unhappy about. But for now they're fighting in Ukraine and in focusing on Ukraine first, I think Putin sees that winning the Donbas, if he can take it and then announcing the annexation is increasingly looks like a narrow win for him. And I think that Macron's public statement makes that easier. So that's where we are. I think that I give the West and I give the Biden administration a lot of credit for their ability to create a strong, consolidated policy in the first three months of this war, especially on the back of Afghanistan's withdrawal, which of course was anything but was shambolic. But their ability to continue to do that over the coming three months, six months, I think is actually a serious uphill struggle. And we'll watch it very closely as a consequence.
Anyway, that's a little bit from me. Hope everyone's doing well, and I'll talk to you real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.comA man holds a bicycle while standing near a building destroyed in Rubizhne, a town in Ukraine's Luhansk region.
What’s Ukraine’s “strongest position” 100 days into the war?
On Friday, Russia’s war in Ukraine — or at least the latest, most egregious phase of it — will be 100 days old. If Vladimir Putin thought that the invasion would be, as the old Russian saying goes, “a short, victorious war,” he was spectacularly wrong.
But as the war enters its fourth month, debates are stirring again in Europe and the US about what the proper extent and aims of support for Ukraine really should be. The New York Times editorial board last week urged the White House to be more specific. A few days later, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger kicked up a hornet’s nest of criticism by calling at Davos for immediate negotiations on returning to the “status quo ante.” Meanwhile, European leaders have been working the phones — without success — to try to open a way for Ukraine-Russia talks as well.
One reason these debates are so frothy is this: deciding how to help Ukraine achieve victory will require defining what that even looks like.
In an op-ed published in the New York Times this week, US President Joe Biden hinted at Washington’s view. The aim of American support for Kyiv, he wrote, isn’t to confront or topple Putin directly, but rather to create conditions for a diplomatic solution that puts a democratic and sovereign Ukraine in “the strongest position at the negotiating table.”
But what, precisely and realistically, is that “strongest position”?
Before we get there, let’s look at where the war stands now. After an initial two months in which Ukraine heroically beat back a much larger Russian army, defending the capital Kyiv and the second city Kharkiv from Putin’s assault, things have moved into a new, more inconclusive period of fighting.
Moscow is looking to consolidate gains in the South and seems to be making incremental progress toward taking greater control of the Donbas. Ukraine, meanwhile, is trying to hold Russia back and exploring counter-offensives in Kherson province, which borders Crimea and represents Russia’s westernmost advance in the war.
Against that backdrop, what might Ukraine’s “strongest position” look like? There are at least three answers floating around.
The first is a return to the borders of February 2022. This would require Ukrainian forces to push Russia back from positions in Kherson, the strategic port of Mariupol, and the swaths of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces that Russia has taken in recent days.
Some military experts think this is possible. Russia’s army lacks the manpower, materiel, and morale, they say, to hold its overextended positions in both the East and the South. Ukraine, writes the Institute for the Study of War, “still has a good chance to stop and then reverse the gains Russia is currently making.” The latest shipment of high-tech US weapons to Ukraine will increase that chance.
The second is a return to the borders of February 2014, which would require going substantially further: not only to dislodge Russia from the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of the Donbas, but to take back the Crimean peninsula, which is functionally — if illegally — part of Russia now. This is a substantially taller order, particularly when it comes to Crimea, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Washington’s decision to refuse Ukraine weapons that can strike deep into Russian territory seems to make this goal unlikely.
The third is a more vaguely defined goal of humiliating Russia to the point that it is unable to attack Ukraine or other neighbors for the foreseeable future. At the extreme end of this, we have calls to bring about the overthrow of Putin’s regime. By making this an existential threat to Putin himself, this would risk expanding the conflict into a war between NATO and Russia, something that Washington — to say nothing of the Europeans — seem keen to avoid.
What do the Ukrainians want? To keep fighting. Eight years since Russia first swiped a chunk of Ukraine, and three months since the Kremlin’s more recent invasion, 80% of Ukrainians reject the idea of territorial compromises altogether, including the territories lost since 2014. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does not seem to be in the mood to negotiate just yet. He compared Kissinger’s call for talks with the appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938.
Is the Ukrainian view the only one that matters? From a moral perspective, it’s tempting to say yes. After all, Ukraine is defending itself against an unprovoked and spectacularly brutal attack. But there are at least two other key perspectives that matter: Washington’s and Moscow’s.
US military and financial support has enabled Ukraine’s defense and will be critical for any post-war reconstruction. Popular support for Ukraine is high in principle, but concerns about inflation and the economy are more pressing. Ahead of contentious midterms, the Biden administration may have to work harder to justify support for Ukrainians while Americans pay higher bills. Donald Trump is already rounding on that message himself.
As for Russia, it has shown little willingness to talk on a serious basis at all, of course. Putin wants to be in his own “strongest position” as well. Evaluating what that is and working towards it is — depending on who you ask — either unconscionable appeasement or an important practical consideration for any negotiations.
What if none of the above three options is real in the next several months? It’s possible that this is all moot. If Russia can hold its current advances or potentially make more gains, Ukraine and the West will have to reevaluate entirely what Ukraine’s strongest feasible position really is.
For now, Ukraine continues to fight, with strong if carefully delineated Western support. But by the war’s 200th day, will we be any closer to a clear picture of how it all begins to end?