Analysis: Convincing Putin of Defeat in Ukraine Is the West’s Toughest Task

Ending the war in Ukraine on terms acceptable to its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will require the West to convince Russian leader Vladimir Putin that it is losing.

Good luck with that.

Ahead of next week’s anniversary of the Russian invasion, American and Western leaders are gearing up for a show of unity and strength designed to establish once and for all that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been in the thick of it for too long. and until the defeat of Moscow.

“Russia lost – they lost strategically, operationally and tactically,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley on Tuesday.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Wednesday that “Putin must realize he cannot win” as he explained the rationale for sending arms and ammunition to Ukrainian forces.

And Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, told Becky Anderson of CNN that Washington was doing everything possible to “continue to apply pressure on Moscow to affect (Putin’s) strategic calculus.”

And in an opinion piece by Peter Bergen of CNN retired US General and former CIA chief David Petraeus said the conflict would end in a “negotiated resolution” when Putin realizes that war is unsustainable on the battlefield and home front.

The Western rhetorical and diplomatic offensive will escalate further when Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the Munich Security Conference this week.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden will visit Poland and a frontline NATO and former Warsaw Pact state next week, reinforcing his legacy of providing the most effective Western alliance leadership since the end of the Cold War.

The war through Putin’s eyes

By the most objective standards, Putin already appears to be losing. His war aims of crushing Ukrainian sovereignty, capturing Kiev, overthrowing an elected government, proving Russian might, and severing Ukraine’s relationship with the West backfired terribly.

Russia is a pariah state and its economy is in ruins because of international sanctions. Putin is being branded a “war criminal”.

And far from being isolated from the West, Ukraine is now in the extraordinary position of effectively being a US- and European-backed NATO client state whose survival, even if there is an eventual ceasefire agreement, will likely require decades of Western support. .

However, Western logic about what is going on in the war can only disguise Putin’s perceived mindset. The Russian leader has long viewed the world through a different strategic and historical lens.

Many foreign observers, albeit outside the US government, were eventually convinced that it was not in Russia’s best interest to invade Ukraine – but Putin went ahead anyway.

He shows no signs of being deterred by a year of defeats and an impressive flow of sophisticated NATO weapons and munitions into Ukraine.

He is sending Russian conscripts condemned to death in futile World War I-style advances, even though Russian forces have already suffered massive losses.

Nor is this war a mere territorial dispute that he is likely to give up lightly. It is born from his belief that Ukraine is not a country and must be folded into Russia.

Its survival in power may also depend on not being seen as lost. And while the West says it’s for the long term, Putin has already been at war in Ukraine since 2014, following the annexation of Crimea.

A frozen conflict that lasts for many more years and prevents Ukraine from becoming whole may be a tenable position for him. He has already shown that he is indifferent to great human losses.

And, judging by his rhetoric, he believes he is engaged in a titanic geopolitical battle with NATO, vital to Russia’s prestige. The question is whether the West has a similar appetite for the long term.

A crucial phase of the war

All of which explains why Western strategists view the next phase of the war as critical, as Russian forces prepare for an apparent spring offensive and Ukraine awaits the arrival of recently promised Western tanks that it hopes will turn the tide.

NATO’s unity and staying power baffled skeptics, in large part due to Biden’s leadership. But political conditions in Washington and allied nations are not static and can shape Putin’s thinking.

In the US House, for example, some members of the new Republican majority are nervous. Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz last week called for an end to aid to Ukraine and for the US to demand that all combatants “reach a peace deal immediately”.

A bipartisan majority to save Ukraine still exists in the House and Senate. But it’s not certain that Biden can secure huge, multibillion-dollar aid packages for Ukraine in perpetuity. And US aid could be in serious doubt if former President Donald Trump or another Republican wins the 2024 election.

So, while Ukraine fans wait for breakthroughs on the battlefield, months of bloody fighting seem likely.

Jim Sciutto, da CNN reported this week that the US and its allies believed Russia’s offensive was unlikely to result in major battlefield gains.

“It’s probably more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official. There are also questions about whether Ukrainian forces have the capacity to break through entrenched Russian defenses in the eastern and southern areas in a way that could threaten Putin’s land bridges to Crimea.

And Stoltenberg told a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday that the conflict was becoming a “war of attrition” as he urged allies to send ammunition to Ukraine.

Putin doesn’t think he’s losing

The outside world knows that Putin is not contemplating defeat or an exit from the war because of the complete lack of any diplomatic framework for ceasefire negotiations.

Stoltenberg said on Wednesday there was no prospect of that situation changing any time soon.

“President Putin shows no signs that he is preparing for peace. On the contrary, he is launching new offensives and targeting civilians, cities and critical infrastructure,” Stoltenberg said in Brussels.

Fiona Hill, a leading expert on Russia and Putin who has worked in the Trump White House, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday that there was little sign that Putin’s resolve was waning.

“I think this is a pretty bleak picture, in part because Putin wasn’t deterred in the first place,” Hill said.

“The other thing is that Putin also feels that he has a lot of support from the rest of the world, including China, it may well take countries like China, putting pressure on Russia, for there to be some break in Putin’s resolve.”

The prospect of China leaning on Putin to end the war was remote even before the shift in US-China relations caused by the US flight of a Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.

And even if Beijing is embarrassed by Putin’s performance in Ukraine after the two sides declared a “no-holds-barred” partnership last year, it may see an advantage in seeing the US preoccupied with a proxy war against Russia as heightens its challenge to American power in Asia.

However, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman warned Beijing on Wednesday that a long-term bet on Putin would only result in disappointment.

“You’re going to end up with an albatross around your neck,” Sherman told an event at the Brookings Institution, although he admitted that the United States was concerned about strengthening ties between China and Russia at a time when it is locked in simultaneous clashes. with each power.

“The Ukrainians will deliver a strategic failure to Putin. And this is going to create a lot of problems for those who are supporting this unholy invasion going forward,” she said.

The problem, however, is that there are still no signs that Putin agrees.