Russia's hit-and-run attack on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was a failure. The slow artillery war to seize the eastern Donbas region has reached a bloody stalemate. Russia has also lost a chunk of seized territory south of the city of Kharkiv, and this past week withdrew from Kherson, the only provincial capital it had captured at the start of its invasion in February. With each setback, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought new ways to inflict suffering on Ukraine. The last one is an incessant bombardment that intends to destroy the Ukrainian infrastructures. Residents of the capital have already been told they may have to evacuate the city if the power grid collapses and water and sewage services are interrupted.
The power outages have not sapped Ukraine's will to fight. Yet they serve as a reminder that, eight months after his unprovoked invasion, Putin is still looking for ways to raise the stakes. Some fear that he could blow up a dam on the Dnieper River, as Stalin did in 1941, to slow the advance of his adversaries.
The constant evolution of Russian aggression also raises an uncomfortable question: how long will the United States and Europe continue to provide Ukraine with the billions of dollars of military and economic aid it needs every month to defend itself against Russia? "As long as it takes," Western leaders respond. Still, many of its citizens reject the idea of funding an indefinite conflict with Russia. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Rome on November 5 to call for an end to the fighting. "We do not want war. No weapons, no sanctions. Where is the diplomacy?" read one banner.
In the United States, too, questions arise. Democrats furthest to the left recently issued a call, which was promptly retracted, for negotiations. The gains of America First Republicans in the November 8 midterm elections, while smaller than expected, are a reminder that American politics could change dramatically in two years after the next presidential election, and with it policy in relation to Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, flew unannounced to Kyiv on November 4 to pledge "unwavering" support. However, he also urged Ukraine to think about the future terms of peace. Since then it has been known that he has been in contact with his Russian counterparts to warn them against using nuclear weapons. On November 9, Biden said that Russia and Ukraine would "lick each other's wounds" after the battle for Kherson and might then be ready to compromise. He insisted that he would not tell Ukraine what to do.
In private, Western and Ukrainian officials are beginning to ponder what form a stable outcome might take. Will Ukraine become a new Finland, forced to cede land to invaders and remain neutral for decades? Or in another West Germany, with a national territory divided by war and its democratic half incorporated into NATO? A hotly debated model is that of Israel, a country under constant threat that has been able to defend itself without formal alliances but with extensive military aid from the United States.
The exact terms of any negotiated agreement depend on what happens on the battlefield. There is likely to be much more fighting before either side shows a willingness to end the war. By one estimate, Russia and Ukraine have lost about 100,000 soldiers each killed and wounded, though both are hoping to come out on top.
The withdrawal from Kherson is a humiliation for Putin. However, he provides the Russian forces with an easier line to defend along the Dnieper River. Putin shows no sign of throwing in the towel. He has mobilized hundreds of thousands of new recruits. Some have been sent into battle with little training or equipment to hold their positions; the rest can be used to apply renewed pressure next year.
Ukraine, for its part, hopes to maintain the momentum. Her army receives reinforcements in the form of thousands of recruits trained by Britain and other Western countries. Western weaponry keeps coming. On November 4, the Pentagon announced another $400 million weapons package, including 45 refurbished T-72B tanks and 1,100 drones. In early November the first NASAMS anti-aircraft batteries were deployed.
The West's arms reserves are not unlimited. European armies have consumed theirs; even the mighty United States worries about the erosion of its own ability to fight future wars. Still, it is Russia that appears to be facing the most immediate shortage. She has used up most of her precision bombs and missiles, and is having difficulty replacing them due to sanctions. She's getting new weapons from countries like Iran and maybe North Korea. (So far, China has heeded American warnings to stay out of the fray.)
Putin hopes his campaign to destroy Ukraine's power grid will freeze the country into submission, or at least turn it into a weak and decaying state. However, experience from past conflicts shows that, in the absence of an effective ground campaign, aerial bombardments of civilians rarely ensure victory. Almost 90% of Ukrainians want the country to continue fighting.
In Russia, according to the Levada Center demoscopic organization, only 36% want to continue with the war, while 57% are in favor of peace talks. At the same time, support for Putin remains at 79%. It seems that the Russians would like the war to end, but in the absence of impartial news, they do not hold Putin responsible. Still, the more Putin tries to pressure them to fight, the more he risks losing popular support.
The most enthusiastic Western supporters of Ukraine think that Ukraine will grow stronger and Russia weaker over time. However, Putin hopes that "General Winter" will somehow turn his luck around; if not weakening Ukraine's will to fight, he is at least eroding the West's willingness to support it as heating bills soar in Europe.
Putin claims that he is willing to negotiate (on the basis of a Western acknowledgment of his theft of Ukrainian territory), but that Ukraine's Western "masters" have prevented Ukraine from speaking out. The two sides held lengthy talks in 2014, after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and part of Donbas. They did it again in the spring, as Russia besieged Kyiv. However, Ukraine was completely opposed to further negotiations after the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv in April revealed widespread atrocities committed against civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled two weeks ago that talks could resume, but only if Russia was willing to return Ukrainian land, pay reparations and accept responsibility for war crimes.
The West is imprecise about its own goals. Biden has at times toyed with the idea of seeing Putin ousted from power; in others, he has spoken of finding "ways out" for the Russian leader. The clearest definition of his goals came in an invited article in The New York Times in May: "A democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend against further aggression." Noticeably, he brushed aside the question of Ukraine's borders. Western leaders say that is for Ukraine to decide, that their goal is to strengthen the country's bargaining position.
However, more recently, supporters of Ukraine have been more specific. In a statement on October 11, the leaders of the G-7 group of industrialized countries offered their "full support for Ukraine's independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty on its internationally recognized borders." They demanded from Russia a “complete and unconditional withdrawal” from all captured land. Among other things, they pledged to find ways to use seized Russian assets to help finance the reconstruction of Ukraine.
"The G-7 declaration is basically a demand for Russia's full surrender, which is not a credible diplomatic outcome. Diplomacy is, by definition, give and take. The expectation should not be another Versailles treaty," he says. Samuel Charap of the Rand Corporation, an American think tank, referring to the punitive terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I. The West, Ukraine and Russia, he argues, must start talking, if only to lay the groundwork for more substantive negotiations in the future: "Fighting and talking at the same time should be the norm."
Many disagree. "You have to keep up the pressure. You don't have to run to draw lines on a map. It would be bureaucratic suicide. Someone will compare it on Twitter with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact," replied Dan Fried of the Atlantic Council, another US think tank, in allusion to the partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
Few Western leaders question Ukraine's aspiration to regain territory lost since the start of the Russian invasion in February. Many will support efforts to recapture the parts of Donbas seized in 2014. Opinion, however, is more divided when it comes to recapturing Crimea. Many worry that the prospect of losing that peninsula could spark a dangerous escalation by Putin.
Within the Biden administration, there are those who believe that war is a matter of principle: Territory should never be taken by force, so all Russian gains have to be reversed. Others, who doubt Ukraine's ability to reconquer much more ground, believe that the time for diplomacy will come soon. In any case, the United States is in no rush to make explicit diplomatic positions that could cause divisions on the pro-Ukrainian side.
Another pressing concern is the nature of future Western security guarantees given to Ukraine. They will have to be strong, as Russia is likely to remain a threat to the country as long as Putin is in power, and maybe even after. Several Central and Eastern European countries advocate Ukraine's swift admission to NATO on the grounds that the alliance's commitment to mutual defense will provide a strong deterrent to Russia. Despite all its nuclear threats, that country has so far refrained from openly attacking NATO territory.
However, the Biden government is reluctant to extend its nuclear umbrella to a country in a state of latent or actual conflict with Russia. Biden has at all times strived to minimize the risk of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia for fear of unleashing "world war 3". Several NATO members in Western Europe display similar skepticism.
So attention has turned to interim or alternative arrangements. In September, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary general, and Andrii Yermak, Zelensky's chief of staff, proposed the Kyiv Security Pact, which would offer security assistance without amounting to a mutual defense pact. Such a proposal was considered by some in Ukraine as a betrayal. Modeled on Western support for Israel, which Zelensky has spoken of, the pact would bolster the Ukrainian military and, in effect, turn current circumstantial support into a long-term, systematic commitment.
Ukraine's partners would promise "multi-decade" investments in the country's defense industry, massive arms transfers, training, joint exercises and intelligence support. The pact would require neither Russian consent nor Ukrainian neutrality. Nor would it exclude membership in NATO. There could be, in some circumstances, a military intervention in aid of Ukraine. If the country is attacked, the signatories "would use all elements of their national and collective power and take appropriate measures, which could include diplomatic, economic and military means." A broader group of countries, including Asian allies, would bolster that military aid with sanctions on Russia, including some provisions to "reactivate" any current sanctions that could be lifted as part of a deal.
Although that, too, may be too ambitious for Team Biden. Some wonder what commitments Ukraine would make in the form of reforms to strengthen democracy, for example, or to fight corruption. The parallel with Israel is imperfect. Among other things, Israel is a nuclear power and occupies Arab land. For Mikola Bielieskov, of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Kyiv think tank, the Israeli model "is not only about mobilizing our partners abroad, but also about explaining to the whole world what it means to live next door to a crazy neighbor of existential threats".
Whatever the diplomatic template, the Russian blitz has made it clear that the West will need to help Ukraine create a properly integrated and layered air defense system that combines fighter jets, surface-to-air batteries and shoulder-launched weapons. At the moment, the weaponry arrives gradually and often does not allow the exchange of data. There are also concerns that Ukraine will run out of certain types of air defense munitions. If that happens, Russia could deploy much more air power in support of ground troops.
The Ukrainian arsenal (which some call Mr. Potato) causes trouble everywhere. For example, it has no less than 14 different types of artillery pieces, and a medium brigade handles four different types. "For them, it's a logistical nightmare, especially when it comes to ammunition," says Nick Reynolds of the UK think tank RUSI. Some weapons wear out a lot, and the European defense industry, weakened by decades of underinvestment, is ill-placed to produce spare parts. "Red lights are flashing regarding the availability of that support," Reynolds adds.
The duration of the war depends above all on Putin. The Russian leader finds himself in a bind, both in the Ukraine and in Russia itself. Moderate technocrats are worried about strains in the economy; "national patriots" like Yevgeni Prigozhin, who heads the Wagner mercenary group, have called for the purging of the allegedly traitorous generals.
A break to pursue diplomacy may suit Putin for a while; especially if he allows you to consolidate some territorial gains. That may explain the recent toning down of his nuclear rhetoric and the sudden portrayal of Ukrainians as victims of Western aggression. "The West is throwing Ukrainians into a furnace"; Russia, on the other hand, "has always treated the Ukrainian people with respect," Putin declared on November 4. (Anyway, his propagandists and officials keep talking about "dematizing" Ukraine.) The change fits another of Putin's disguises, as a champion of a global movement to shake off Western domination.
With all this, Putin intends to court the undecided, especially in the global South. He also wants to reassure friends like China and India, which have expressed disapproval of his nuclear recklessness. But Putin is interested in reaching, above all, a rich-world listener: Donald Trump, whose allies in Congress question US aid to Ukraine and who may soon announce his run for president again.
Despite all the setbacks, Putin has not run out of options to harass Ukraine and try to divide the West. From a military point of view, he could further commit his air force and mobilize a larger number of troops. Harnessing the shadows of the "grey zone," he could sabotage undersea gas pipelines and Internet connections with the West, carry out further cyberattacks, interfere with communications satellites and intensify disinformation campaigns. He could also sink ships carrying grain from the Ukraine. Lastly, he could use tactical nukes. All of this, however, would come at a high cost: it would make Russia even more of a pariah, it would weaken the Russian president inside the country, and it could provoke harsh reprisals.
The stakes are higher for Putin than for the West. However, it is even more important to the Ukrainians, many of whom are wary of the very idea of talks with Russia and see military victory as the only option, even if it takes years to achieve. Ukraine believes that the more ground it can regain, the better chance it will have of getting rid of Putin. Yet that very prospect alarms many in the West: a defeat for the Russian army could push Putin to resort to nuclear weapons. That's one of the reasons Team Biden stopped talking about helping Ukraine "win" a long time ago.
As it has often done with Israel, the US may at some point try to limit Ukraine's ambitions. You don't have to do it openly; it can limit itself to retaining the weapons Ukraine needs, as it already does to some extent. It refuses to provide Western aircraft, Patriot air defense missiles and longer-range ATACMS attack missiles for fear of a nuclear reaction from Russia.
All this explains why some Ukrainians have circulated the bittersweet message addressed to the Finnish troops by their commander-in-chief Carl Gustaf Mannerheim in 1940, at the end of the Winter War with the Soviet Union. The vastly outnumbered Finns had inflicted heavy losses on the Soviet forces; however, they had to cede territory because the help of their allies had dried up, wrote Mannerheim, who concluded with the following words: "We are proudly aware of the historic duty that we will continue to fulfill: the defense of that Western civilization that has been our heritage for centuries, but we also know that we have paid down to the last penny any debt we might owe to the West.
The fate of Ukraine depends not only on the courage of its soldiers or the resistance of its people, but also on external factors that the country cannot control: the inscrutable calculations of the despotic Russian ruler and the strength of his friends. The benefits of war for the West are already evident. Russia has been greatly weakened, making Europe's flank much easier to defend. For Ukraine, which has suffered terrible losses, the outcome looks much less certain.
