By Andrei P. Tsygankov, Canadian Dimension, 2/26/23

In Neville Chamberlain’s expression, in war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. The brutal war in Ukraine is now in its second year with no serious prospect of ending. All the main parties—Russia, Ukraine, and the West—remain committed to victory rather than a mutually acceptable settlement based on negotiations without preconditions. What follows is a preliminary assessment of the main parties’ relative gains and losses per their stated objectives. These gains and losses incorporate political, military, and economic dimensions.

Ukraine and its people—those living in the territories controlled by Kyiv and those claimed by Russia in the eastern and southern parts—are the war’s most significant victims. Millions of refugees, thousands of killed civilians, and well over a hundred thousand soldiers killed or wounded on a battlefield is a gruesome but incomplete list of human suffering in the country. The Ukrainian economy survives only on foreign assistance. Nearly one-third of the potential labour force is unemployed.

While the Ukrainian state has survived, it has already lost about 20 percent of its territory with bleak prospects of regaining it. Ukrainians are united and committed to fighting, but the costs are extremely high and growing.

Ukrainian leaders, encouraged by the West, have refused to negotiate with Russia and continue to believe in achieving full victory before the end of 2023 or even earlier. However, judging by the past year’s record, Ukrainian officials have been unsuccessful in securing their country’s peace, prosperity, and territorial integrity.

Western nations set the high bar in what has become a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. According to their goals, Russian military power should be degraded, while the Russian economy should be severely undermined, making it exceedingly difficult to continue with the war. As a result, Ukraine should be able to insist on its peace terms.

Not only have these goals not been achieved, but there are growing signs they cannot be reached in principle. Indeed, the West’s own military and energy resources are dwindling. There are also increasing signs that Western populations are tiring of the war and its costs.

Americans and Europeans are not roused by the brave rhetoric of the existential fight for the “rules-based international order” or securing freedom from autocracies. The increasing costs and the low capacity for ideological mobilization will make it difficult to sustain the West’s course of defeating Russia on the battlefield.

Additional military supplies—air defence, tanks, long-range rockets, and fighter planes—will take time to produce, deliver, and train Ukrainians to use. In the meantime, Russia is also adapting to the realities of military escalation by increasing its military production and remaining prepared to engage in more intense warfare. Even without resorting to nuclear weapons, Russia has the capacity to attack critical transportation and logistical centres, mobilize additional troops, and target the Ukrainian leadership.

What’s more, the conflict is being gradually internationalized, with Iran, China, and other powers increasingly backing Russia. From the beginning, the war has been conducted in the nuclear shadow, and the potential for a nuclear escalation should not be taken lightly. Those who think that Vladimir Putin is bluffing have been unpleasantly surprised in the past and may be surprised again.

The West cannot win the Ukraine war by defeating Russia and it is losing the ability to end the conflict. The deterrence strategy without dialogue was flawed from the beginning and now has eliminated the prospect of negotiating a peaceful settlement. By not encouraging negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 and placing bets on coercing Moscow to accepting peace on Western terms, the United States and NATO countries have strengthened anti-Western attitudes among Russians.

Although most Russians are unwilling to fight the Ukrainian army, Russians are increasingly convinced that the West is their real enemy. Most of them now share the Kremlin’s narrative of fighting a long war for national survival in the manner of past conflicts against Napoleon and Nazi Germany.

Because the West has set such ambitious goals, it now painfully realizes the impossibility of meeting them. The Western nations are, therefore, losing the war per their stated objectives and their position in the first half of the year. Instead of developing a face-saving strategy, the US today, as earlier in Vietnam and Afghanistan, is becoming a hostage of its own uncompromising, values-driven stance.

Russia is no longer losing the war and has improved its strategic and tactical position following the withdrawal from Kherson in August 2022 and the partial mobilization in September-October 2022. The Russian military continues to make incremental gains in Donbas. Meanwhile, the Russian economy has survived the pressure of Western sanctions, losing 2.1 percent of its GDP in 2022, against expectations of about 12 percent.

The Russian leadership is preparing for a protracted war and estimates that it has resources sufficient for several years of fighting without major social and economic disruptions in the country

In addition, Russia’s reputation with non-Western countries remains significant. According to a recent poll, most Chinese, Indians, and Turks view Russia as an ally or necessary partner. They also think Russia remains strong or has become stronger since intervening in Ukraine. Russia’s great power status has been preserved at least in the eyes of non-Western nations.

However, on balance and by its standards, Russia is not set to win and is not winning the war. Although Moscow has improved its position since the early months of the invasion, it has not moved closer to its stated goals of “demilitarization” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. Just as the West cannot demilitarize Russia, Russia cannot accomplish this fully in Ukraine. In addition, because of the war’s brutality, Moscow lost the support of many Ukrainians who favoured strong ties with Russia.

Ukrainian political and military resolve remains strong, as is the West’s commitment to military aid, intelligence resources, and financial assistance. Russia’s military advancement is based on heavy Russian losses and remains slow. For example, as acknowledged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, it would take the Russian army one and a half years to secure control of Donbas and three years to capture broader territories east of the Dnieper River.

Russia’s military escalation will have to come with high political costs at home and abroad and may not be undertaken except in response to a significant escalation by Kyiv or NATO.

Overall, none of the parties has met its political and military objectives. The paradox is that neither is rational enough to indicate an openness to robust negotiations and a political compromise. Russia’s signalled preferences include preserved control over newly gained territories. These preferences are opposed to Ukrainian and Western demands, as summarized in Zelensky’s peace plan.

A recent Chinese proposal to stop the fighting in Ukraine and begin negotiations without Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory is also not acceptable to Ukraine and the West

Therefore, moving toward a compromise will take more human suffering and military escalation. As difficult as it is to accept, things will have to get worse before they get better.

Andrei P. Tsygankov is Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Russian Realism (Routledge, 2022) and The “Russian Idea” in International Relations (Routledge, 2023).

By Steven Myers, Newsweek, 2/24/23

Since Russia began its invasion, the U.S. has contributed to an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, rallying popular opinion at home and throughout the West with the narrative that Russia’s motives and intentions are groundless, evil, and even genocidal.

This has made honest conversation about the history, motives, and inevitable geopolitical and economic consequences of the conflict impossible. Rather than directly intervene as the U.S. has historically done, the U.S. chose to pour fuel on the fire in the form of more funding, weapons, equipment, and technical support, without which Ukraine would have been forced to negotiate, perhaps even averting the war. Many brilliant, well-informed diplomats and scholars rang alarm bells about the U.S. diplomatic hubris, but to no avail.

Today, after a year of war, the consequences predicted by so many experts are now coming home to roost. The strategic, industrial, economic, political, and military situation in Ukraine—and in Europe—is deteriorating significantly. Even without Nord Stream, Russia remains the third-largest supplier of gas for the European continent. Germany, like the rest of Europe, had to pay 10 times the market price to bolster their reserves. But it’s not nearly enough.

Europeans have chosen to remove natural gas from their industries, leading to a huge number of industrial closures, including in Germany. Those manufacturing closures have occurred with all the attendant layoffs. Auto manufacturing alone is down by more than 25 percent. The German electorate is becoming increasingly skeptical about the West’s approach to the war. And that was before recent reporting of what many of us had been saying since September; that the Biden administration was responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage.

If he knew about it, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, may be guilty of colluding with President Joe Biden in committing what even the U.S. defines as a major act of terrorism. A major German national strategic asset owned in joint venture with Russia was destroyed, seriously damaging both Germany’s economy and that of the EU, impacting tens of millions of jobs, putting many lives at risk, and on and on. A deep recession appears inevitable. The revelation should bring dire consequences for the German government at the very least. Only those who believe the ends justify the means and are willing put all moral considerations aside can defend this shocking action.

In Ukraine, the situation is desperate. Ukrainian tactical victories over the last year, however laudable, came at a terrible price. An estimated 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the war began. Ukraine is experiencing ongoing destruction of its infrastructure as winter progresses. A third of the Ukrainian population has been displaced already.

After the attack on the Kerch Bridge and their subsequent withdrawal from Kherson, Russia began launching missile and drone strikes against high-value Ukrainian infrastructure targets, including thermal power plants, electrical transmission lines, and large transformers. A third of the electric power grid is down. Much of the damage will be impossible to repair anytime soon. Unable to maintain their cities, the Ukrainians are running out of fuel, particularly diesel, as well as water and food.

Zelensky may have grand plans for a spring offensive, but it will likely come too late. Ukraine’s U.S.- and U.K.-supplied artillery shells, for example, are running low, while Russia is in full-throttle shell production mode, with an artillery advantage of three to one. Endless swarms of rockets and Iranian drones are continuing to systematically take down everything the country needs for people to live there. Satellite imagery tells the true story of the cost of this war. At night, Ukraine is as dark as the Black Sea.

In December, Biden finally seemed to encourage Zelensky to think about negotiations. Zelensky instead demanded preconditions for negotiations which he knew Putin would never accept. What we’ve seen over the last couple of months is faux escalation with deals for Challenger tanks from the British, along with negotiations to send Patriot batteries, M1 Abrams tanks, and F16s from the U.S. These are unlikely to ever arrive. The U.S. is not going to put weapon systems into Ukraine that can only be operated by U.S. personnel, would be immediately attacked upon delivery, or might fall into the hands of the Russians.

The coming year of conflict promises to be vastly more devastating to Ukraine than what we’ve seen so far. Russia is not going to listen to dubious offers to negotiate based on demands that ignore the issues that caused the war in the first place. The only way out is a mediated settlement. Mediation offers a very different approach to achieving a long-term durable resolution than is possible with negotiations. It provides a more structured, comprehensive path to resolving the conflict because the process is led by an objective, neutral third party.

The only country capable of mediating this conflict that would be potentially acceptable to all the belligerents is Israel. Israel understands protracted conflict better than any other nation in the world and they are tough negotiators. They won’t give up and walk away. They’ll keep at it. With the newly elected Netanyahu coalition in power, the timing couldn’t be better for Israel to take this on. Most importantly, they’ll want to do it.

Some outcomes of the mediation may be obvious. But there are many complicated issues on the table that must be articulated, legitimized, and resolved. Mediation can do that. The process will take many months. But, perhaps its most important outcome will be the start of a healing process so essential for the many, many people on both sides of the conflict victimized by this cruel and needless war. Morality is at the core of what makes peace possible. Ukraine and Russia are neighbors and will always be, and they share a great deal. It is time to put an end to this tragedy.

Link here.

It’s good to see someone explain to an English speaking audience (in this case the readers of The Guardian) how Putin’s views about the west evolved from wanting to be a part of it – and when that wasn’t possible, wanting to simply do business and have its most basic interests respected – and when that wasn’t possible, having to acknowledge that the hardliners were right that the west wasn’t interested in reasonable relations with Russia. Emphasis in the article is mine. – Natylie

By Anatol Lieven, The Guardian, 2/24/23

Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and try to capture Kyiv in February 2022, and not years earlier? Moscow has always wanted to dominate Ukraine, and Putin has given the reasons for this in his speeches and writings. Why then did he not try to take all or most of the country after the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, rather than only annexing Crimea, and giving limited, semi-covert help to separatists in the Donbas?

On Friday’s one-year anniversary of Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine, it is worth thinking about precisely how we got to this point – and where things might be going.

Indeed, Russian hardliners spent years criticising their leader for not invading sooner. In 2014, the Ukrainian army was hopelessly weak; in Viktor Yanukovych, the Russians had a pro-Russian, democratically elected Ukrainian president; and incidents like the killing of pro-Russian demonstrators in Odesa provided a good pretext for action.

The reason for Putin’s past restraint lies in what was a core part of Russian strategy dating back to the 1990s: trying to wedge more distance between Europe and the United States, and ultimately to create a new security order in Europe with Russia as a full partner and respected power. It was always clear that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy any hope of rapprochement with the western Europeans, driving them for the foreseeable future into the arms of the US. Simultaneously, such a move would leave Russia diplomatically isolated and dangerously dependent on China.

This Russian strategy was correctly seen as an attempt to split the west, and cement a Russian sphere of influence in the states of the former Soviet Union. However, having a European security order with Russia at the table would also have removed the risk of a Russian attack on Nato, the EU, and most likely, Ukraine; and allowed Moscow to exert a looser influence over its neighbours – closer perhaps to the present approach of the US to Central America – rather than gripping them tightly. It was an approach that had roots in Mikhail Gorbachev’s idea – welcomed in the west at the time – of a “common European home”.

At one time, Putin subscribed to this idea. He wrote in 2012 that: “Russia is an inseparable, organic part of Greater Europe, of the wider European civilisation. Our citizens feel themselves to be Europeans.” This vision has now been abandoned in favour of the concept of Russia as a separate “Eurasian civilisation”.

Between 1999, when Putin came to power, and 2020, when Biden was elected president of the US, this Russian strategy experienced severe disappointments, but also enough encouraging signs from Paris and Berlin to keep it alive.

The most systematic Russian attempt to negotiate a new European security order came with the interim presidency of Dmitry Medvedev from 2008 to 2012. With Putin’s approval, he proposed a European security treaty that would have frozen Nato enlargement, effectively ensured the neutrality of Ukraine and other states, and institutionalised consultation on equal terms between Russia and leading western countries. But western states barely even pretended to take these proposals seriously.

In 2014, it appears to have been Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warnings of “massive damage” to Russia and German-Russian relations that persuaded Putin to call a halt to the advance of the Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas. In return, Germany refused to arm Ukraine, and with France, brokered the Minsk 2 agreement, whereby the Donbas would return to Ukraine as an autonomous territory.

In 2016, Russian hopes of a split between western Europe and the United States were revived by the election of Donald Trump – not because of any specific policy, rather because of the strong hostility that he provoked in Europe. But Biden’s election brought the US administration and west European establishments back together again. These years also saw Ukraine refuse to guarantee autonomy for the Donbas, and western failure to put any pressure on Kyiv to do so.

This was accompanied by other developments that made Putin decide to bring matters concerning Ukraine to a head. These included the US-Ukrainian Strategic Partnership of November 2021, which held out the prospect of Ukraine becoming a heavily armed US ally in all but name, while continuing to threaten to retake the Donbas by force.

In recent months, the German and French leaders in 2015, Merkel and François Hollande, have declared that the Minsk 2 agreement on Donbas autonomy was only a manoeuvre on their part to allow the Ukrainians the time to build up their armed forces. This is what Russian hardliners always believed, and by 2022, Putin himself seems to have come to the same conclusion.

Nonetheless, almost until the eve of invasion, Putin continued unsuccessfully to press the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in particular to support a treaty of neutrality for Ukraine and negotiate directly with the separatist leaders in the Donbas. We cannot, of course, say for sure if this would have led Putin to call off the invasion; but since it would have opened up a deep split between Paris and Washington, such a move by Macron might well have revived in Putin’s mind the old and deeply held Russian strategy of trying to divide the west and forge agreement with France and Germany.

Putin now seems to agree fully with Russian hardline nationalists that no western government can be trusted, and that the west as a whole is implacably hostile to Russia. He remains, however, vulnerable to attack from those same hardliners, both because of the deep incompetence with which the invasion was conducted, and because their charge that he was previously naive about the hopes of rapprochement with Europe appears to have been completely vindicated.

It is from this side, not the Russian liberals, that the greatest threat to his rule now comes; and of course this makes it even more difficult for Putin to seek any peace that does not have some appearance, at least, of Russian victory.

Meanwhile, the Russian invasion and its accompanying atrocities have destroyed whatever genuine sympathy for Russia existed in the French and German establishments. A peaceful and consensual security order in Europe looks very far away. But while Putin and his criminal invasion of Ukraine are chiefly responsible for this, we should also recognise that western and central Europeans also did far too little to try to keep Gorbachev’s dream of a common European home alive.

Link here.