Tag Archive for: Russia–Ukraine war

Defining success in Ukraine

Three months ago, I wrote a column titled ‘Will Ukraine Survive?’ The answer (thankfully) for the next year is ‘yes,’ owing to Ukraine’s willingness to fight and sacrifice and the resumption of substantial US military aid.

At the same time, Russia has launched a new offensive in the northeast that threatens Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second-largest city), is girding for a protracted war, and has largely reconstituted its forces. This raises an important question: with the new tranche of aid in hand, what should Ukraine and its backers in the West seek to achieve? What should constitute success?

Some answer that success should be defined as Ukraine recovering all its lost territory, to re-establish its 1991 borders. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has expressed the view that 2025 could be the time for Ukraine to once again mount a counter-offensive against Russian troops.

This would be a serious mistake. Don’t get me wrong: re-establishing rightful, legal borders would be highly desirable, demonstrating that aggression is not acceptable. But foreign policy must be doable as well as desirable, and Ukraine simply is not in a position to liberate Crimea and its eastern regions through military force.

The maths is unavoidable. Russia has too many soldiers and a wartime economy capable of producing large amounts of arms and ammunition. Despite sanctions, Russia has been able to ramp up its military-industrial base and has access to weaponry and ammunition produced in Iran and North Korea and to Chinese manufactured goods and technologies that contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort.

Another factor militating against a Ukraine effort to recapture its lands by force is that offensive operations tend to require much more in the way of manpower, equipment, and ammunition than do defensive efforts. This is especially so when defences have had the chance to build fortifications, as Russia has in much of the Ukrainian territory it occupies.

The likely result of Ukraine returning to the offensive would be a massive loss of soldiers, something the already short-handed Ukrainian military can ill afford. The limited military equipment and ammunition Ukraine has access to would be quickly depleted, in the process making it more difficult to defend areas currently under Ukraine’s control. A failed Ukrainian offensive would also give new talking points to those in Western capitals sceptical of providing any assistance to Ukraine, viewing such aid as wasteful.

What strategy, then, should Ukraine and its supporters pursue? First, Ukraine should emphasise the defensive, an approach that would allow it to husband its limited resources and frustrate Russia.

Second, Ukraine should be given the means (long-range strike capabilities) and the freedom to attack Russian forces anywhere in Ukraine, as well as Russian warships in the Black Sea and economic targets within Russia itself. Russia must come to feel the cost of a war it initiated and prolongs.

Third, Ukraine’s backers must commit to providing long-term military aid. The goal of all of the above is to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that time is not on Russia’s side and that he cannot hope to outlast Ukraine.

Ukraine and its supporters should do one more thing: propose an interim cease-fire agreement along existing lines.

Putin will likely reject such a proposal, but his doing so should make it less difficult to win debates in the United States over providing assistance to Ukraine, as it will expose Russia as the party responsible for the continuation of the war. It might even provide a context in which US military aid to Ukraine would continue should Donald Trump retake the presidency in November.

This combination of a shift to defence, deep strikes, continued Western military assistance, and a diplomatic effort that exposes Russia for the aggressor that it is might over time persuade Putin to accept an interim ceasefire. Under such an agreement, neither country would be asked to give up its long-term claims.

Ukraine could continue to seek the return of all its territory; Russia could continue to claim Ukraine has no right to exist as a sovereign state. Both sides could continue to rearm. Sanctions could remain in place. Ukraine could explore closer connections to both the European Union and NATO.

Ukraine would no doubt resist elements of this approach. But the US and Ukraine’s other supporters should insist on it. Ukraine cannot demand unconditional support any more than any other strategic partner. A renewed counter-offensive would fail while undermining Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. What Ukraine would gain from an interim ceasefire is an opportunity to begin rebuilding the country, as money and investment will not become available so long as the country remains an active war zone.

An interim ceasefire almost certainly would not lead to anything resembling peace, which will likely have to wait for the arrival of a Russian leadership that chooses to end the country’s pariah status. That might not happen for years or decades. In the meantime, though, Ukraine would be much better off than it would be if the war continued.

Such arrangements—non-permanent, less than formal peace—have worked well in other contexts, including on the Korean peninsula and in Cyprus. They do not represent solutions, but they are preferable to the alternatives. And even if Russia rejects any ceasefire, as could well prove to be the case, Ukraine would be better off with a military and diplomatic strategy that protects the country’s core, preserves its independence, and maintains external support. Ukraine’s friends ought to keep this in mind before they define success in a manner that sets the country up to fail.

The anniversary of war in Ukraine—10 years, not two years

 

In the coming weeks, a flood of analysis can be expected marking the end of the second year of war in Ukraine. In fact, the war began 10 years ago when Russia seized Crimea in February 2014.

This error in analysis demonstrates the cultural challenges Australia, and Western nations more broadly, face in the way they approach defence issues and national security writ large. Our error is that we culturally conflate conventional warfare with war. This is a counter-productive mindset when we are confronted by autocratic leaders who engage in ‘struggle’, perhaps over a decade or longer, using all elements of power.

As the 2024 national security strategy is being written, the lessons of 10 years of war involving political warfare, proxy warfare, grey zone coercion, cyber mobilisation, economic warfare, the development of resistance strategies, the employment of new unmanned systems and conventional warfighting, must be assimilated. In short, we must expand our thinking if we are to holistically understand contemporary war.

Eminent strategist Colin Gray has previously called attention to the erroneous Western conflation of conventional warfare with war. His warning has not been embraced. A manifestation of this Western conflation can be observed in Frank Hoffman’s need to introduce the term, ‘hybrid warfare’, to force a shift in mindset commensurate with the blending of terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and conventional warfare, as displayed by Hezbollah in 2006. This term, ‘hybrid’, became normalised by describing the sophisticated Russian tactics of ‘liminal warfare’ employed during the seizure of Crimea in 2014.

The first lesson we might discern from this past decade is that today’s evolved character of war has already adapted to Putin’s escalation in 2022. It punishes the overt employment of conventional warfighting methods thus rewarding political and irregular warfare methods that operate below the threshold of conventional responses through relevant populations, using a mixture of violence and non-violence.

A second lesson of the Russia-Ukraine war is that conventional warfare is risky; almost too risky to be a useful tool of statecraft. Putin sought a decisive end to tensions with Ukraine through a coup de main on 24 February 2022 and he got a decisive effect. As Kori Shake states: ‘Russia has been taken off the board as a major adversary of the United States’.  It is important to note that Putin hoped to avoid further conventional warfighting, as had plagued the Donbas for the past eight years, by seeking to end the confrontation with Ukraine. It must be recognised that, thus far, the tool of conventional warfighting has failed to deliver Putin any of his strategic objectives. Ironically, the Russian experience looks poised to repeat the Soviet experience of conventional escalation in Afghanistan in 1979. The lesson is that autocratic nations might be expected to continue to pursue grey zone activities and to avoid conventional warfare.

A third lesson is derived by asking why Putin has thus far been denied victory. Ukraine has developed an impressive maritime strike capability using unmanned surveillance and surface vessels that has been under-recognised in Australian strategic discourse. The sinking of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, Moskva, in April 2022 and the destruction of a Kilo submarine in drydock in September 2023 were, as the UK First Sea Lord stated, signs that a ‘dreadnought’ moment in the evolution of naval warfare has arrived. Oddly, the asymmetry inherent in Ukraine’s approach has received little commentary in Australia. The use of low-cost missile and unmanned systems to hold at risk naval platforms in the Black Sea is a model for disrupting naval forces in an archipelagic region like South-East Asia (and is presently being demonstrated off Yemen’s coastline). Ukraine’s unmanned strike and surveillance systems are also continuing to impose significant cost against land platforms and formations at extended range. Such tactical innovations underpin countries being dissuaded from escalation to conventional warfighting.

Fourth, these Ukrainian innovations began alongside societal responses to Russia’s grey zone activities in the context of a ‘frozen conflict’ in the Donbass. These innovations and adaptions have proven themselves in the ‘hybrid’ nature of conflict from February 2022 to today. Ukraine decided to develop a capacity for resistance following Russia’s attempts to mobilise subversive elements of Ukraine’s population in April-May 2014 under a ‘Novorossiya’ narrative. The emergent behaviour shown by physical and virtual resistance efforts in 2022-2023 have proven effective as an asymmetric counter to land power and been adopted broadly across Eastern Europe. Russian political warfare evidently also continues in conflict, demonstrated by efforts to subvert Moldova continuing after February 2022.

The information dimension of the ongoing conflict is global in scale with election interference in this year’s US, UK, and Australian elections almost certainly expected.

The conventional warfighting bias inherent to Western national security system hinders adaptation to these lessons due to the blinkered view of the contemporary character of war.

The conflation of conventional warfare with war is dangerous as it oversimplifies our challenges and erodes our strategic acumen. Many commentators note that the CCP hasn’t fought a war since the 1979 border incursion against Vietnam, which it arguably lost. What these commentators mean is that the CCP hasn’t fought a conventional war since 1979. It might be argued that it hasn’t needed to. Following the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border conflict, the Chinese frustrated Vietnamese influence over Kampuchea in the 1980s by supporting a proxy war waged by the Khmer Rouge from border camps in Thailand. Following the collapse of the Burmese Communist Party in 1989, Chinese support pivoted to the United Wa State Army (UWSA). With such support, the UWSA have built up control in the Shan state of Myanmar, roughly the size of Belgium. Over the past decade Chinese maritime militia activities in the South China Sea have arguably secured its island-building fait accompli. Over the past five years, Beijing’s dominance over Hong Kong (and the end of a one state, two systems narrative) was successfully asserted. To contextualise these events, remember that a century ago, the CCP was a clandestine network predominantly based in Shanghai. It is now the most powerful global competitor to the United States. A patient CCP that has consistently struggled, via a long-term strategy of growing power, is thus under-estimated by a bellicose conventional warfare narrative.

An erroneous understanding of the Russo-Ukraine war betrays a simplistic appreciation of war, clouded by a bias toward conventional warfare. There are, however, important lessons to be drawn from war in Eastern Europe that inform the breadth of future security threats that we are likely to face.

Putin’s dead end

In his annual press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear that he will be ready for a peace settlement with Ukraine only after he has achieved his goals, which haven’t changed since he launched his full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. He wants Ukraine to be demilitarised, meaning subjected to Russian military and security control of its territory; and he wants ‘denazification’, meaning Ukraine would be put under Russian political control. In other words, Russia would absorb Ukraine so that the latter ceases to exist as an independent nation-state.

Time and again, Putin has declared that there’s no historical justification for Ukraine, since it comprises territories that were long held by the Russian Empire. But something similar can be said of countries across Europe today. Many previously fell under the yoke of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Wilhelmine or Russian empires. And globally, the vast majority of the 193 countries that make up the United Nations became independent only in the aftermath of World War II. In the historical period that preoccupies Putin, many of today’s countries didn’t exist even in people’s imaginations.

The problem, for Putin, is that the age of empires is long gone. He stubbornly refuses to accept that we now live in the age of nation-states, with an international order organised around the UN charter’s principle of territorial integrity, which prohibits any redrawing of national borders by force. Instead, he fantasises about recreating the Russian Empire by swallowing up Ukraine and Belarus (followed, perhaps, by many other neighbouring countries).

When Putin launched his war of conquest, he obviously expected Ukraine to fold quickly. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was to be dispensed with, and a Russian puppet government was to be installed within the space of a few weeks.

But that plan failed spectacularly. Ukraine’s population—especially its armed forces—refused to bow down to the wannabe tzar. Instead, Ukrainians united in fierce resistance, preserving control of their capital and then gradually taking back around half of the territory that Russia’s forces had initially occupied. Relying on missiles and drones, Ukraine has effectively put Russia’s Black Sea Fleet out of action, and its air defences have succeeded in creating a virtual no-fly zone over the country.

While Western financial support and military supplies have undoubtedly been critical to Ukraine’s defence, what matters most are the Ukrainian people’s high morale and determination to defend their country. With Russia holding a presidential election in March, Putin needs to make a credible argument that victory in his war isn’t a pipedream. He has put Russia’s economy on a war footing, mobilised 400,000 troops, cranked up the Kremlin’s propaganda machine and taken repression of dissent to new post-Soviet heights.

But none of that will win him the war. His heavily battered army seems incapable of making any meaningful advances against Ukrainian defensive lines. His only hope is that the Ukrainian people’s determination to resist will waver, and that ‘war fatigue’ will continue to build in Europe and the United States. Once the Western financial and military support has dried up, Ukrainian morale will evaporate, and his forces will be able to advance, imprisoning, deporting or simply executing anyone who still resists.

Yet if Putin thinks this scenario would bring peace, he’s gravely mistaken. His advancing armies already committed mass atrocities in the initial invasion, and they would do so again. But these horrors would galvanise political will in the rest of Europe, as would the flood of millions more Ukrainian refugees westwards. Though European governments’ responses are difficult to predict, they most certainly wouldn’t be aimed at securing peace with Russia. Far more likely is an even wider and more prolonged conflict, where the outcome would ultimately be decided by Europe’s economic and industrial strength, irrespective of changing US attitudes.

In short, there’s simply no way for Putin to win the war that he started. Peace will come only when he is defeated—only when the Ukrainians (with Western help) have succeeded in defending themselves, and when Russians see that Putin’s insane war has jeopardised their own futures.

It is impossible to predict when that will happen. For now, Putin seems satisfied that he hasn’t been militarily defeated yet. He is trying to exude confidence in his war effort, even though it is nowhere close to achieving any of his stated goals. But this performance can last only so long. Sooner or later, the grim reality of what he has done to Russia will become impossible to hide.

One day, when Russia finally abandons Putin’s neo-imperial illusion, it will start to focus on its own future as an independent nation-state among independent nation-states, including Ukraine and Belarus. Only then will it be possible to talk about peace.

Ukraine’s diplomatic offensive gathers pace

Temperatures soared in Kyiv last weekend. Stuffy apartments were swapped for leafy dachas and crowds flocked to the Dnipro River’s sand beaches. Yet despite the heat, Ukrainians are keeping a careful eye on the calendar—as the end of summer approaches so does an important milestone for the ‘summer counteroffensive’. But while the front lines haven’t moved much in recent months, Ukraine’s diplomatic offensive is gathering pace as it tries to get ahead of pressure to compromise.

In early August, representatives from 42 countries and the United Nations gathered in Saudi Arabia at the urging of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It was the second round of talks meant to rally support for the country’s peace formula, before a global summit planned for autumn. Among its 10 points, it calls for the restoration of Ukraine’s borders recognised in 1991.

To Ukrainians, this is not just a policy. It is a necessity because, they argue, trading victory for peace would be symptomatic of misreading Russia. After enduring centuries of Russian imperialism, Ukrainians have learned that concessions will only be used as staging grounds for future coercion. That’s why ‘Zelensky’s peace plan’, as it’s often called, is also the people’s peace plan. Even under routine air raids and with the promise of another gruelling winter ahead, Ukrainians overwhelmingly oppose giving up territory.

For their part, Ukraine’s Western partners have pledged their wholesale support. In Saudi Arabia, Germany’s representative reportedly commented that Ukraine cannot allow ‘even the thought of a frozen conflict’ or that Russian troops would not be withdrawn. Heavyweights from the global south were also present. Some participants that have so far been unwilling to condemn Russia’s illegal invasion signalled in-principle backing for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

This is something of a renewed diplomatic offensive. Until recently Ukraine seemed to view peace talks as a distraction from the war effort. As well as Russia’s bad-faith tactics, its monopoly on the peace process was part of the problem. It had convinced the international community that it couldn’t talk about Ukraine’s security without also talking to Russia. Although they were like the earlier discussions in Copenhagen, the Saudi Arabian talks differed because Russia wasn’t invited. This gave Ukraine space to push its own terms for ending the war while increasing Russia’s isolation.

But despite apparently positive results, Kyiv isn’t expecting consensus on all of its peace formula. Some officials from Ukraine’s military donors are convinced that the war will end with talks, not tanks. For non-believers, Ukraine’s counteroffensive is only to improve its negotiating position. Others, disappointed with results from the big push, would prefer Ukraine to open discussions while it still has the initiative. To both parties, the full restoration of Ukraine’s borders will likely be a sticking point.

However, for Ukrainians, a premature peace will remain an unacceptable peace. Even if Ukraine’s government did eventually go to the negotiating table, it likely couldn’t end the war without popular support. As well as being a democracy, Ukraine is relying on an armed force made up of experienced, well-equipped and highly motivated volunteers, with a de facto veto power over any peace deal.

More importantly, though, Ukraine doesn’t need to negotiate. With the right tools, it can win. The question is whether its partners are doing enough to help. Since last February, massive military aid has flowed from west to east. Yet denials and delays meant Ukraine launched its counteroffensive without modern air cover and long-range strike capabilities. True, more help is on the way, but Ukrainians see no sense in negotiating in the meantime.

Another talking point is the promise of NATO membership given to Ukraine in Vilnius last month.

As well as benefiting NATO, this is crucial to Ukraine’s lasting security because of the protection provided by Article 5, which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. Yet Ukrainians fear it could be used to question the logic of reunification or to pressure Ukraine into a land-for-membership deal.

But this too is a straw man. First, it’s not clear that Article 5 will be extended to Ukraine automatically. And even if it were, NATO is not a cure for all ills. A premature peace would still mortgage Ukraine’s sovereignty and leave millions of its citizens under brutal occupation. It would also reward Russian aggression. Like Russia’s invasion of Georgia 15 years ago and the annexation of Crimea that followed, such ambivalence would surely encourage other land grabs, if not only in Ukraine.

So where does Ukraine go from here? Until Russia withdraws from its territory, a negotiated peace is rightly not part of the plan. Nor is it inevitable. At a special meeting of the heads of Ukraine’s diplomatic missions earlier this month, Zelensky set his ambassadors a task to ‘ensure that the world always stands with Ukraine’. Their work won’t end with summer, just as the ‘summer counteroffensive’ will go on after the leaves turn and the harvest begins. Ukrainians will fight on because this war can’t be ended. This war must be won.

Why Ukraine needs cluster munitions

US President Joe Biden’s decision to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions has drawn criticism from a strange collection of folk—some members of Congress, groups such as Human Rights Watch, a number of countries including fellow NATO ally Spain, and of course Russia.

There is no doubt that the legacy effect of cluster munitions in conflict, particularly for the civilian populations who face years of threat from the bomblets that fail to explode, is real. One needs only to look at the use by Israel of such munitions in South Lebanon during its month-long conflict with Hezbollah in 2006 to see just how long-lasting the impact can be. Indeed, their use in Lebanon was one of the reasons why a Cluster Munitions Convention was enacted in late 2008 prohibiting the use, transfer, production or stockpiling of such munitions. It has been signed by more than 100 countries (but not by the US, Russia or Ukraine).

Legally, then, there’s nothing to stop Washington from providing such munitions to Ukraine or to stop Ukraine from using them. And it seems perverse that Ukraine should be criticised for wanting to use such munitions against Russian invasion forces when those very invasion forces have been using them for more than a year against Ukraine. Until now, Kyiv’s partners have been reluctant to provide such munitions given their sensitivity. But Biden explained that stocks of conventional 155-millimetre artillery ammunition can’t keep up with Ukrainian demand, a fact acknowledged by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in June.

The Ukraine counteroffensive against well-prepared Russian defences has been slow. That was to be expected—without air cover Ukrainian ground forces can only rely on ground-based fires to support their assault. And if there’s insufficient 155-millimetre high-explosive ammunition to provide covering fire for the assault force, then cluster munitions are necessary to reduce Ukrainian casualties. Faced with this reality, it’s little wonder that Ukrainian ground forces are firmly of the belief that the tactical advantage that such munitions convey is worth the long-term cost of cleaning up the unexploded ordnance after. In a battle for a nation’s survival, you do what you must to win.

The use of cluster munitions with their relatively high failure rate will undoubtedly leave Ukraine with a generational threat to the civilian population of unexploded ordnance. However, that threat will be there regardless of whether the weapons are fired or not. A year and a half of at times intense conventional warfare has meant that all types of unexploded ordnance litter the battlefield. And months of Russian preparation of defensive positions with extensive use of anti-personnel and anti-armour mines means that that pernicious subsurface threat will likely have a greater effect on the population than failed cluster bomblets for years to come. You can be sure that the Russians, even if they did record their minefields, won’t be in any hurry to hand that information over to the Ukrainians after hostilities cease.

Biden has gained written assurances from Ukraine that the munitions won’t be used in civilian or built-up areas or against Russian territory. And Kyiv would be alert to the negative consequences to it from both Washington and the broader international community if it were to transgress this guarantee. It is all well and good for the Spanish defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, to tell the press, ‘No to cluster bombs and yes to the legitimate defence of Ukraine, which we understand should not be carried out with cluster bombs’, but she might have a difficult time convincing a Ukrainian company commander about to assault a Russian defensive position established in Bakhmut exactly why she thinks he shouldn’t use them in his own country to cover that assault.

A very Russian revolution

As the world was distracted by an episode of Russian drama complete with the betrayal of a once-loyal servant, armed mutiny and panic at the court of a tsar, Ukraine was being shelled. On the night of 23 June, at least 20 missiles were fired on the Kyiv region alone, and at least five people were killed in the capital. But we’re used to that sort of news coming out of Ukraine. It’s no longer dramatic. Nor does the Ukrainian counteroffensive, conducted without much fanfare, fulfil our craving for drama. Instead, Yevgeny Prigozhin obliged.

On 23 June, the night when fragments of a Russian missile hit a residential building in Kyiv killing people in their homes, the leader of the notorious Wagner Group announced that he and his mercenaries were staging a ‘march for justice’. This type of declaration coming from a war criminal makes a mockery of the word. The justice he meant, of course, was not for Ukrainians whom his private army has been slaughtering over the past 16 months, nor was it for the victims of the massacres conducted by his mercenaries on the African continent or in the Middle East. The ‘justice’ he sought was for himself.

Earlier in the month, Prigozhin’s boss in the Kremlin upset him by endorsing an order for those fighting for ‘volunteer detachments’, including Wagner, to sign a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry. That would have limited Prigozhin’s powers and he was having none of it. To show off his might, he marched his troops on Rostov-on-Don, occupying the city that is home to the headquarters of Russia’s southern military district and serves as a crucial command centre in the war against Ukraine. The mercenaries then progressed towards Moscow, threatening to reach the capital by the end of the day.

As the army comprising war criminals and convicts was making its rapid progress through Russian territory, expert after expert appeared in the media analysing the situation. Among them were commentators who in 2014 accepted Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a done deal, and analysts who in February 2022 wondered if Kyiv would fall in 72 hours or in a week. Now they were dishing out evaluations of the potential for Moscow to fall within 24 hours.

The enthusiasm with which the media got drawn to the Wagner Group’s mutiny matched the speed of its advance on Moscow. Maps of rebellious troops mushroomed on news feeds, eager commentators watching their every step. They are in Rostov, in Voronezh, in the Moscow region!

I don’t recall such rapt news coverage of the destroyed Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine a few weeks ago. Many observers engaged in the whodunit discussions, but few focused on how to mitigate the environmental damage resulting from this latest crime perpetrated by Russia, and how to prevent the next one. The areas affected by this ecocide were a territory unfamiliar to most observers around the world. They couldn’t compete with Moscow for our attention. The people of the Kherson region whose homes were drowned in the flooding were not as newsworthy as the infighting in the court of the tsar.

As the expert community was predicting Russia’s future in light of the mutiny, the president of the Russian Federation preferred to focus on the past. It is a trick that’s tried and tested: when in doubt about his future, he threatens the world with history. In his televised address to the nation, Vladimir Putin, a man who fancies himself as a bit of a tsar, condemned the disloyalty of the rebels and drew parallels with the period that haunts him in his worst nightmares: the revolution of 1917, or, to be more precise, the coup that brought the downfall of the last Russian tsar.

In 1917, the Russian monarchy might have ceased to exist, but the empire had not. The Bolsheviks kept it going. Nor did the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 mean that Russia entirely lost its empire. In its neo-imperial guise, Russia went on to fight neocolonial wars. A revolution is unlikely to bring this variant of the empire down. A decisive defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine has a better chance.

Unlike Putin, the West is enchanted by the Russian Revolution. Back in 2017, living in London, I was bombarded by the celebrations of its centenary: from exhibitions revelling in the revolutionary art to underground trains plastered in Russian colours. Perhaps the West’s obsession with the potential of Russian revolution comes from the desire to see the people of Russia revolt, if not against their country waging a war in Ukraine, then at least against being forced into poverty by their own leaders. But the Russia we like to imagine is not the Russia that exists in reality.

During their brief occupation of Russian cities, the Wagner soldiers were met by residents who cheered them, brought them food and looked upset to see them leave. It appeared that the Russians were not as detached from political reality and fooled by the Kremlin propaganda as some would have us believe. At least some of them looked ready to ditch their weakening dictator and replace him with a new strong hand. One thing is clear: none were taking to the streets to demand an end to the war in Ukraine. Those who welcomed the mercenaries were showing support for the men who have demonstrated themselves as most effective at killing Ukrainians.

This chapter of a very Russian revolution might be over, but Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is not. Before we settle in to watch the next episode, whenever it is released, we might want to put our popcorn away and stop treating Russia’s war as something that happens on our TV screens. Let’s not forget that an army known for its ability to blow up strategic targets whatever the cost to the population and environment continues to occupy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Although damage to the largest nuclear power station in Europe would have grave consequences, it hasn’t been the focus of the media. Yet, if we allow it, it won’t just happen on our TV screens; it will plunge the whole world into the very centre of the Russian drama.

Russian war crimes investigations must drive a stronger commitment to justice in all conflicts

The international community’s efforts to enforce accountability for Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine are vital to achieve justice for Ukrainians suffering through war crimes and crimes against humanity. But they also present an opportunity to strengthen the international justice system, which has suffered from a perception and reality of impotence over decades. However, to do so, revived commitments to international justice in Ukraine must be complemented by an equal appetite for justice in other such cases, particularly in places where the world has largely come to accept impunity as the norm.

International justice mechanisms, backed by exceptional state support, have played an active role in Ukraine. These efforts include the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. That means Putin could be arrested in the territories of the 123 ICC member states.

But the question is whether this institutional recognition is only a moral gesture, as important as that is. Is there any legitimate enforcement mechanism that will actually see Putin and his cronies face any justice other than the embarrassment of not defeating a smaller neighbour? Because Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and in a ‘no limits’ partnership with China, holding Putin to account for his illegal actions will be an important test not just for individual states but for international mechanisms. Holding Russian leaders to account for their war on Ukraine could strengthen international justice, particularly its oft-debated ability to deter future atrocities.

Moral and strategic imperatives create an impetus for the kind of international justice effort we have seen in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion launched the first interstate war in Europe for 78 years and has unleashed the kind of devastation that the European Union and NATO were created to prevent. It has shaken the foundations of the international order and has thus warranted responses that are proportionate to the magnitude of the shock and fear it has created among Western states that are the principal architects of that order. This war of aggression launched by one European state against another mirrors the circumstances in which international legal norms and institutions were forged in the wake of World War II.

But the invasion has fed into the international community’s tendency to be spurred to action by ‘crises’, while accepting longstanding atrocities. Ironically, this worked against accountability for Russian crimes in Ukraine prior to the full-scale invasion last year. Ukraine requested an ICC investigation in 2014 following Russia’s actions in Crimea and Donbas, but the court’s independent Office of the Prosecutor only opened its investigation eight years later, after the 2022 invasion had begun. Atrocities committed in other parts of the world have quickly faded out of the collective conscience. It’s noteworthy, for instance, that there appears to be no prospect of concrete action being taken in response to war crimes committed by Russia in Syria.

The strong international support for holding Russia to account over Ukraine should prompt a wider rethink of the approach to international justice. It should not entrench what one author has called an ‘asymmetry of empathy, attention and funding’. International justice needs to be able to bring perpetrators to account across the full breadth of scenarios in which atrocities are committed.

The arrest warrant for Putin was a watershed moment for the ICC. He’s the first European state leader that it has sought to arrest since it was formally established in July 2002. Previously, the court had issued arrest warrants only for African heads of states—and overwhelmingly for Africans generally—fuelling allegations that it harboured an anti-African bias, though judicial bodies that predated the court prosecuted European leaders as far back as the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Should a powerful ICC response with state backing successfully hold Russia to account, it has the potential to revitalise the court, which has suffered from a paucity of funding and staffing, and hence delays in concluding cases. Dwindling resources, including money and staff, have been flagged as key challenges to the Office of the Prosecutor’s work. As a result, investigations such as those in Burundi and Cote d’Ivoire have been accorded lower priority. Even matters referred to the court by the UN Security Council, such as the situation in Libya, have languished in the absence of state support.

The ICC’s investigation in Afghanistan has had several inexplicable delays. Initially paused at the Ashraf Ghani government’s request, it was then watered down in the face of US pressure, and only resumed over a year after the Taliban takeover.

Several states have launched independent inquiries into Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The Office of the Prosecutor is, for the first time, taking part in a combined investigative team by joining the European Union’s EuroJust. The US Justice Department has established an ‘accountability team’ to investigate war crimes in Ukraine. In addition, the US passed the Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act, altering its domestic laws to enable war criminals to be prosecuted in the US even if the perpetrators or victims are not Americans. That brings American law into line with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a change the US has long avoided.

Independent, state-led inquiries and prosecutions for atrocities committed in other parts of the world remain few and far between, despite years of allegations and documentation. A German court’s conviction of two former officials of Syria’s security forces for war crimes last year was the first time Syrian regime officials were held accountable for their crimes. German and Dutch courts have also heard cases on behalf of Afghan victims of atrocities. Recently, a former member of the Australian Defence Force was charged with the war crime of murder for allegedly shooting an Afghan civilian while deployed in Afghanistan. Barring Australia’s investigation, there are no ongoing independent investigations into war crimes committed by international forces in Afghanistan, including into the use of US ‘black sites’ where torture allegedly took place, according to former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

There have also been calls to create a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression. These calls were prompted by restrictions on the ICC’s jurisdiction over this crime, primarily owing to pressure from the US and allies to amend the court’s rules. Creating an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute Russia rather than removing limitations on the court’s jurisdiction—which would also enable it to investigate other acts of aggression—would ‘consecrate selective justice‘, according to former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo.

In some cases, countries oppose international investigations of war crimes in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq to preclude prosecution of their own personnel. This was illustrated in the Donald Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions on ICC personnel following the court’s decision to investigate war crimes by international forces in Afghanistan.

The absence of international troops in Ukraine lessens the risk that international investigations might implicate other countries’ personnel, making it easier to lend support. It’s evident that Western states expect these responses to remain exceptional and not to have spillover effects that strengthen calls for justice elsewhere, particularly in conflicts where their own personnel could be implicated.

Justice is not evenly or equally applied, and it is not driven by the severity of the atrocities or the strength of the victims’ claims. To be a vehicle for all victims of atrocity crimes, international justice efforts need to thrive not just in situations where it’s easy to seek justice but also in difficult situations, including when powerful states are indifferent or even opposed to accountability.

Achieving justice in Ukraine is vital for the effectiveness and longevity of international rules and the institutions that are meant to uphold them. Holding Russia to account and bringing this appetite for justice to bear in conflicts across the world are the dual existential challenges not just for international justice bodies but for the international community at large. Failure to succeed in either will do further damage to the international system, likely resulting in the ICC reverting to inaction and cementing a two-tiered system that further alienates the global south, subverts and weakens the norm of international justice, and exposes the limits of the rules-based international order.

Putin may lose it all by going all-in for Ukraine

Russia’s continued isolation from the G7, and the expansion of sanctions against Moscow, have made the severe consequences of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine clearer than ever. During the G7 summit last week, Russia’s state media was quick to trumpet the announced capture of Bakhmut, criticise Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s G7 speech, and ultimately attempt to hide Russia’s lack of influence on the global stage.

Russia’s protracted invasion of Ukraine has been a complete blunder, leaving Putin’s regime exposed and increasingly isolated.

Russia invaded a stalwart Ukraine while underestimating its defensive capabilities, commitment and political resiliency. While Kyiv and its allies must proceed carefully and victory is far from certain, as it stands the invasion is an overextension that presents an opportunity for Ukraine to win not only the war, but also the following peace.

Since the invasion Putin, and the Kremlin, have learned that the Russian military is far less capable than they believed. The stalled invasion revealed their willingness to apply direct military force to achieve political aims in Europe, but at the same time exposed Russia’s inability to wield its military force capably, even close to home.

Pinned to a costly conflict in Ukraine, Russia now faces a devolving security environment as its neighbours adapt to Russia’s diminished influence. European states are capitalising on Russia’s weakness and are collectively uniting against it. Putin’s allies, for their part, have shown their limited utility.

Since he came to power more than 20 years ago, Putin and his autocratic regime have promoted a view of Russia as a resurgent nuclear power, regional hegemon and successor to the Soviet Union. Paralleling Cold War behaviours, under Putin Russia has also returned its attention to the Middle East and Africa, demonstrating a resumption of global ambition.

Before the invasion, military power was thought to be Russia’s greatest asset and the guarantor of its continued geopolitical relevance. The Russian military decimated Chechnya in 2000, invaded Georgia in 2008 and created the de facto Russian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and militarily supported Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war.

Across these conflicts, Russian military strategy consistently resulted in high civilian casualties and earned Putin a reputation for ruthless effectiveness. This, combined with sustained high military spending during this period and a push to modernise its nuclear arsenal, enabled Russia to project strength domestically and abroad with its military.

But then it went too far.

The annexation of Ukraine is fundamentally important to any Russian concept of regional hegemony and ‘empire’, bringing it closer to those goals than it has been since the fall of the USSR. Putin’s foreign policy had long prioritised destabilising Ukraine and bringing it under Russian suzerainty. Instead, the invasion has diminished Russian influence across post-Soviet territories—undermining the narrative the Kremlin spent so many years carefully building.

The war has imposed significant costs and damaged Russia’s economy, and the Kremlin has resoundingly failed to achieve its military objectives and maintain Russia’s military image. Circumventing sanctions through trade with China, India, Turkey and several Central Asian nations has muffled the impact of the economic downturn and sheltered Russian metropolitan areas, but it is not a permanent solution.

Since the invasion, Russia’s energy revenues and market position have crashed and its trade has become increasingly reliant on China. Domestic consumption has collapsed, and the central government is running a historic deficit.

European nations are already manoeuvring to capitalise on Putin’s military and economic exposure. Sweden and Finland maintained official positions of neutrality before the conflict, but in late March, Finland officially joined NATO, and Sweden’s bid to join is widely expected to succeed. Finland is capitalising on a moment of opportunity, now patently aware that the Kremlin is a threat to norms of sovereignty and is militarily overextended.

In 2021, Putin penned an essay that accused NATO of trying to use Ukraine as a ‘springboard against Russia’. Yet it is thanks to his invasion that the Kremlin must now respond to its professed worst-case scenario of an additional NATO member on its border in Finland, with the knowledge that Sweden, and even Ukraine itself, could follow.

As Russia faces NATO’s expansion, its own international network is straining. Authoritarian coalitions are fraught at the best of times, and Russia’s weakened position has widened the cracks in the Kremlin’s friendships.

Belarus, for instance, is a unique ally that remained culturally, politically and economically centred around Russia in the post-Soviet era. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has been a belligerent Putin supporter on the international stage. Yet, prior to a Moscow visit in March 2023, he publicly announced that Belarussian troops would not join the war unless directly attacked. It was an embarrassment for Putin.

Putin’s influence over Hungary and its authoritarian-leaning leader, Viktor Orban, has also diminished. Hungary left the Russian-led International Investment Bank in mid-April to comply with sanctions on Russia. It had been the bank’s second-largest shareholder. The Kremlin had been successful in recent years in cultivating pro-Russia sentiment and supporting the Hungarian far-right. Hungary’s rejection of the International Investment Bank as a viable institution signals that it too has noticed a decline in Russian influence.

Asian partners, too, are capitalising on Russia’s overextended position. With the Kremlin dependent on energy revenue and unable to access the European market, it has been forced to sell vast amounts at below-market rates to China and India, which now account for roughly 80% of Russia’s energy exports.

Russia is constructing new pipelines to China to re-route supplies from Europe in another sign of its increasing economic dependence on China. On the surface, Chinese President Xi Jinping stresses greater friendship with Russia, but the two countries’ terms of trade are increasingly unbalanced, lending China huge leverage in price negotiations.

The war in Ukraine has only further strained Russia’s ‘calcified’ economy, and China’s actions reflect that power games between autocratic states usually end up meaning more than principled support.

Speaking in April at ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue, Ukrainian representatives expressed the national intent to achieve victory in 2023. They should be supported as much as possible and for a long as necessary.

Still, policymakers should note the scale of Putin’s miscalculation in invading Ukraine. The war has left Russia internationally maligned and in an increasingly desperate position. In the eventual peace, leaders must take the opportunity to develop sustainable security structures in Europe. Significant institutional reform was not attempted at the end of the Cold War, and the burdens stemming from that have been severe. With Russia’s foreign policy in disarray, peace will provide the opportunity to make a fresh attempt.

Russian troops’ cruelty goes far beyond the laws of war

The extent of the cruelty displayed by Russia’s invaders has shocked the people of Ukraine and deepened their determination to fight for their nation’s survival.

Galyna Mykhailiuk, a member of Ukraine’s parliament and a highly qualified lawyer, tells The Strategist the Russians have used rape of civilians and prisoners, and other forms of unlawful violence, as weapons in a process of dehumanisation.

While war is always terrible, the Russian crimes are beyond belief, she says.

Mykhailiuk is heading a delegation of MPs who have come to Canberra to deliver a message of thanks to the government and people of Australia for the help they’ve provided to the Ukrainian forces fighting a much more powerful adversary. ‘Our Ukrainian armed forces do count on Australian support. For us, it’s very important to express our gratitude to Australia citizens, to the parliament, the government of Australia personally, face to face, for all the support that was provided to Ukraine, military, financial and humanitarian.

‘We survived, thanks to not only the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, but also the support provided by our international allies. Australia proved to be a very reliable ally in a dark period of Ukrainian history. You helped us to preserve our freedom, independence and democracy. Hopefully this year will be victorious for Ukraine.’

Mykhailiuk says her country’s forces will soon take the offensive against the Russians. Her delegation wants Australia to send some of its Abrams tanks to Ukraine. ‘If Australia can join the tank coalition, it will be highly important for us.’

She says that despite civilian and military casualties, morale remains high. ‘We realise that we don’t have any other choice except to win this war.’

Mykhailiuk says Ukrainians have been appalled by the Russian military’s tactics. ‘It’s beyond belief that they can be so cruel,’ she says. ‘We did not expect that they could do such things. They use everything as a weapon—rape as a weapon, energy as a weapon, cold as a weapon.’ It’s impossible, she says to understand how this can be done by a country in 21st-century Europe.

In one of many episodes Mykhailiuk recounts, a four-year-old girl and her mother were raped in front of the father.

‘They’ve raped men, and even women aged over 80. They want Ukrainian women to feel such fear that they’ll never again give birth to a child, that they’d rather commit suicide than carry this burden.’ Many women in the Ukrainian army would rather be killed in battle than surrender to the Russians because they know they’re likely to be tortured, Mykhailiuk says.

Areas liberated from Russian forces have been heavily mined and hundreds of Ukrainian civilians have been killed by exploding mines, Mykhailiuk says. ‘They put mines everywhere, even into kids’ toys. When people go back to their apartments and open the door there might be explosion, or they open the door of their fridge, there might be an explosion, or when they start their car.’ The same applies to farmers’ fields, she says. Everything must be screened.

It’s estimated that about 1,000 children have been killed in the war, many hit by Russian missile strikes and gunfire. A further 16,000 Ukrainian children are believed to have been kidnapped and taken to Russia. Mykhailiuk says the Russian Federation has enacted a law allowing Russians to adopt such children even if they have parents alive in Ukraine. ‘We don’t know how they are being treated,’ she says.

Ukraine is pleading with the European Parliament and the governments of European and other nations for help to set up a specialised international organisation to help it get the children back.

‘For an occupier and invader to kidnap children is against any international law.’

If Russia wins and occupies Ukraine, it will quickly round up members of the government, she says. ‘As an MP, my home addresses and the addresses of my parents and my family are out there. They know where to find us. If Russia occupies my homeland, they will come for my parents, for my family and they will torture, rape and blackmail. That’s why we don’t have any other option than to have a free Ukraine. It’s win or die. That’s it.’

Some of the language emerging in this war has morphed from Ukraine’s past. Mykhailiuk talks of the front lines as ‘point zero’. That’s where hell is happening, she says. People ask their loved ones in the forces, ‘How many kilometres are you from point zero?’

The Bayraktar TB2 is a Turkish-manufactured armed drone used to great effect by Ukrainian forces to destroy Russian tanks and vehicles. Bayraktar, says Mykhailiuk, has become a common name for boys born in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

The American-made Javelin shoulder-launched anti-tank missile has been dubbed by many of those fighting the Russians ‘Saint Javelin, protector of Ukraine’. Since the Russian invasion, many girls have been christened Javelina.

She says Russia has failed in its threats to carry out a major military offensive to capture Ukraine. Its troops targeted the small city of Bakhmut in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk but had not been able to take it. ‘There’s a myth,’ says Mykhailiuk, ‘that Russia has the world’s second most powerful army. But we’ve cracked this myth.’

At the same time, Iranian drones provided to Russia have done a lot of damage, and it’s of concern that some Chinese spare parts have been found in Russian weapons, she says.

The cost on Ukraine has been high. In one terrible week in January, Mykhailiuk lost seven of her friends to the conflict. She says some of Ukraine’s bravest soldiers ‘are already in heaven’, but the nation will fight until the Russians are driven out of all of the country including Crimea. There will be no peace in Ukraine as long as Russia holds the strategically positioned peninsula.

If Ukraine surrenders, then Russia will invade Poland and the Baltic countries, Mykhailiuk says. ‘We don’t have any choice: we have to win.’

How will the war in Ukraine end?

On the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s timely to consider how this brutal war might be resolved. The chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said at a meeting with NATO defence ministers last week, ‘Russia has lost; they’ve lost strategically, operationally and tactically.’ This raises the question of what such a decisive Russian defeat would mean for Europe’s future security order and Russia’s position in it. We also need to examine how negotiations between Russia and Ukraine might result in a truce or even some sort of internationally agreed settlement.

So, what are the potential military scenarios and negotiated outcomes for:

  • a military conflict in which Ukraine wins by expelling the Russians from all Ukrainian territory
  • a military outcome that involves a decisive Russian victory, resulting in Ukraine becoming an integral part of the Russian Federation
  • some form of durable settlement with international safeguards?

Needless to say, there is violent disagreement among the so-called experts (including this one) about how, and if, this war will be resolved along any of the outcomes set out above. As I said in my September ASPI report, The geopolitical implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there are even more extreme potential outcomes—for example, the war expanding into a conflict between Russia and NATO, which then raises the prospect of the use of nuclear weapons.

Short of nuclear war, Russia will continue to exist as a geopolitical entity. Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said last year, ‘At [the war’s] end, a place has to be found for Ukraine and a place has to be found for Russia.’ He also recognises that Russia could alienate itself completely from Europe. As unpalatable as these views are, it will not be possible in any foreseeable circumstances to freeze Russia entirely out of the future European balance of power.

Another issue I raised in my ASPI report is whether Russia is now going to cease to exist as a major power. US academic Walter Russell Mead observes that the consequences of such an eventuality would be far-reaching, plunging Russia into an identity crisis with unpredictable political consequences. He concludes that Putin isn’t fighting only for adjustment to its frontiers; he is fighting for Russia’s unique concept of its world (the Russian world or Russki mir).

What we are witnessing in Ukraine today may be the prolonged death throes of the Russian Empire. Some respected Russian commentators, such as Andrei Kolesnikov, are talking about ‘the complete collapse of everything’ in Russia because under Putin Russia’s future ‘has been amputated’. In my view, a severely weakened, isolated and smaller Russia might then become more—not less—dangerous for the world. I shall return to that possibility at the end of this article.

These extremely different scenarios show why there is no consensus in the West about the direction of this war. One of the problems is that we have no contemporary war on which to base our judgements. There has been no conventional war on this scale since the Korean War more than 70 years ago.

Now, we have a greatly weakened Russia that is determined not to be defeated in this struggle for territory that it argues is Russia’s historically. But the Western democracies—so far at least—have been surprisingly unified in their strong military support for Ukraine. The central question is whether, if this war drags on, and perhaps escalates, the West will continue its supply of highly accurate weapons, enabling Ukraine to reach deeper into Russian territory.

Let’s now examine my three credible scenarios. In the first scenario, we envisage a series of crucial battles this year in which Ukraine’s military forces impose a succession of decisive defeats on the Russians, forcing them to retreat back over the pre-2014 Ukrainian border into Russian territory. The problem with this scenario is that Moscow, in my view, will simply not give up its possession of Crimea (nash Krim in Russian, or ‘our Crimea’) at any cost. Even so, it may be a practical proposition to envisage Ukraine evicting Russian troops at least from Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

But there would have to be some sort of international agreement imposed to prevent Moscow from rebuilding its military forces and having another go at occupying Ukraine. The other problem is that a defeated Putin might decide to pull down the house of nuclear cards in revenge. And even if he were to be overthrown, there remains the prospect of an even more extreme nationalistic leader from Russia’s elite taking over.

The second scenario is much worse because it involves a decisive military defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by Moscow. That would result in the complete crushing of the Ukrainian language, people, religion and culture. A victorious Russia might then be encouraged to chance its luck elsewhere and threaten the Baltic countries, Poland and other states on its periphery—such as Moldova and Kazakhstan—with forced incorporation into the Russian motherland.

The aim of the Russian leadership would be to establish a cordon sanitaire of buffer states like the one it enjoyed in the Warsaw Pact, which effectively created defence in depth for Russia and put 1,000 kilometres between it and the nearest NATO borders. The challenge for Washington would be to demonstrate that any such Russian attack on Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or any other NATO country would automatically provoke prompt US global strikes on Russia, including Moscow. That could well take us all to Armageddon.

The final scenario involves negotiations on both sides resulting in a durable truce and international safeguards against any repetition of military attacks across agreed international borders. Former senior Australian diplomat John McCarthy has suggested to me the possibility of an agreed territorial division along the lines of the Simla Agreement of 1972 over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. That is an interesting proposition, recognising, however, the continuing military dispute along the Line of Control between these South Asian enemies.

Milley has recently indicated that from a military standpoint this war ‘is likely to end in a negotiation’. Such an outcome would effectively reduce Russia to no longer being able to regard itself as a great power (velikaya derzhava). Putin’s own long-held view is that without dominance over Ukraine, Russia cannot be regarded as a great power. He believes Ukraine’s membership of NATO would be a mortal national security threat to Moscow or, as the prominent Moscow commentator Sergei Karaganov puts it, ‘a spearhead at the heart of Russia’. A settlement that continued to acknowledge Ukraine as a separate nation-state would effectively destroy Putin’s assertion that a country called Ukraine simply does not exist.

In my view, no negotiated outcome is likely in the immediate future. We are more likely to witness a continuing intensive war with no resolution in sight. This would be a prolonged war of attrition or protracted military stalemate whose outcome would depend on which side has the most durable military industrial base (in the case of Russia) or guaranteed external military resupplies (in the case of Ukraine).

Finally, let me return to my earlier speculation about Russia’s demonstrable loss of great-power status. As Russia’s Andrei Kolesnikov—whom Moscow labelled as a ‘foreign agent’ on 24 December—has observed: ‘The Soviet Union in its later years had a lot more global respect than Russia does now.’ Russia in my view is in danger of becoming just another regional power—but one that is able to threaten global nuclear devastation. And for Europe—no matter what the outcome of this war—the geopolitical presence of a greatly diminished Russia will still have to be acknowledged as part of the European order. But for Russia to decline to a second-class regional power would be a major catastrophe—perhaps challenging its very existence.

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