By Daniel DePetris
On 9 May, Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Moscow’s Red Square justifying the invasion of Ukraine as a preemptive move to subvert a fictitious NATO operation against Russia’s “historical lands”. Whether Putin actually believed this is less important than what was occurring 550 miles south, where Russian forces were conducting a weeks-long offensive operation in the Donbas. All indications from the battlefield are that the war in Ukraine could be a long, ugly, violent affair whose ending may be unsatisfactory to all involved. Indeed, Eurasia may be looking at yet another frozen conflict.
Since the 24 February invasion, the United States and its NATO allies have relied on a two-track strategy: buttress Ukraine’s defensive capabilities with a growing assortment of Western-manufactured weaponry in the tens of billions of dollars, and tighten the screws on Russia’s oil and gas-dependent economy to complicate Moscow’s financing of the war. Over time, the thinking goes, Putin will become so exasperated that he either agrees to negotiate a face-saving solution under duress or ends the operation entirely.
But there’s another scenario that is more plausible: Putin, desperate to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat, successfully pushes Ukrainian forces out of the Donbas despite the high casualties, consolidates Russian control over the area, and ceases operations until such a time when the Russian army is able to reconstitute itself.
This piece was originally published in The Critic on May 21, 2022. Read more HERE.