High Stakes Diplomacy and Putin's Folly
How the Russo-Ukrainian War turned into the 2022 Winter War Part 1
Ukraine Defense Ministry via AP
Fighting continues in Ukraine. Russian and Ukrainian losses keep rising as Russian troops make their way into the urban centers of Ukraine. Earlier, poorly executed lighting attacks by Russian forces are gone, replaced by more systematic assaults led by rolling barrages. Ukrainian forces harass Russian logistics trains and destroy tanks and aircraft with sophisticated infantry weapons. Currently, Russian troops continue to take land and threaten to encircle Ukrainian forces in the East. However, Russia appears to make diplomatic overtures through Twitter proxies and occasional press releases.
These diplomatic overtures reportedly include cessation of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia in exchange for Ukrainian recognizing Russian ownership of Eastern portions of Ukraine and Crimea. Russia launched a war of aggression to seize these territories. However, the diplomatic rhetoric is hollow, putting that moral and legal dynamic behind us.
The biggest question is, what is Russia’s actual offer? There are more parties than just the combatants involved – namely, the principal powers of NATO, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Upfront, the United States and the United Kingdom have obligations to other powers in NATO and prefer a conclusion to the conflict that minimizes future Russian threats. Secondly, Russia must suffer the consequences of launching the invasion. There’s no situation where the Western powers join a negotiation that allows Russia to obtain a decisive or minor military victory absent substantial concessions or severe pain. To our knowledge, the only compromise is a cessation of fighting in Ukraine, which is not enforceable and to Russia’s advantage now. Vladimir Putin needs to end the conflict as soon as possible.
Can Russia offer anything in exchange for a negotiated Russian victory? Given how resistant to negotiations Putin’s government was before the war, I'm not sure. Western leaders, including Joe Biden, mistook Putin for a Russian patriot. This conflict shows that Vladimir Putin will continue to cut Faustian bargain with China to backstop against the new sanctions and the international community's ire. Thus, Putin guarantees Russia will succumb to China’s political control absent a dramatic reversal.
What does the United States want out of Russia? For starters, the cessation of hostilities. However, it is far more complicated than ending the conflict. America cannot allow Russia to have a decisive victory through a negotiated settlement. Russia laid out its military goals early to the world, the seizure of some potion of Eastern Ukraine. The amount of territory that Russia wants to take is open-ended, depending on their military successes. In practice, there’s a lot of room to claim victory. However, the United States and the United Kingdom want to deny a decisive win. The Russian invasion was unacceptable, and the Western allies cannot be a party to the formalization of ill-gotten gains.
Ukraine is in a similar position. It knows that Russia will remain a threat if it acquiesces to Russian demands. Ukraine is unlikely to join the European Union or NATO even after the conflict, given the institutional corruption that remains in that country. Western aid dollars will come with stipulations for anti-corruption, but this will be a slow process. Remember that Russia has been waging a low-intensity conflict since 2014. The pulling back of regular Russian forces does not guarantee real peace. Ukraine must continue to fight until one of the sides is exhausted.
Russia would have to provide substantial, meaningful de-escalation of hostilities against NATO and Ukraine. This de-escalation is challenging to quantify and qualify. Russia has a land border with Ukraine and is quite militarily powerful. Each nation has a right to station its troops within its borders so that the large Russian army can park itself outside of Ukraine for a build-up once more. Russia would also need to give reparations, which it’s not interested in doing right now.
For the United States and the United Kingdom, Putin would need to make substantial moves away from Chinese influence. In exchange for some lifted sanctions, Russia would need to increase its economic ties with the rest of Europe, assist in dealing with Syria and Iran, and stop selling raw materials at what effectively is a discount to China. This problem is probably unresolvable in the short term with Vladimir Putin, who we’ve seen is more interested in saving face.
Vladimir Putin has a sunk-cost problem with his invasion of Ukraine. By all accounts and Russian opening moves, the Russian military expected a quick and decisive victory over Ukraine by shattering its leadership. However, problems plagued the early offensive by inadequately supported maneuvers and never knocked out Ukrainian ability to defend its airspace early on. Now that Russia is in a protracted fight, it must grapple with its long-standing historical inability to manage supply chains and build large military trucks. Compounding this are NATO and locally made Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) and anti-aircraft missiles.
Further, Ukraine has effectively used its limited drone fleets as spotters and reconnaissance to significant effect. Vladimir Putin is stuck; he must achieve victory before a system-wide Russian military logistics chain breakdown. So, he pushes and pushes hard, losing men needlessly at increasing rates. Previously, Russia was content in trading small numbers of men but losing military equipment because of their absolute advantage in the number of tanks. Now that supply lines are stretched into Ukraine, the softer underbelly of the Russian military is exposed.
So, what we see here now is a Finlandization of the conflict. In a not too dissimilar war, the Winter War of 1939-40, the Soviet Union invaded Finland to take land. The war was a military victory for the Soviets on paper – the Soviets seized territory from Finland. However, the Finnish Army bled the Russians for each yard of soil. This situation is happening again in Ukraine, although it is far easier for armored vehicles to traverse Ukraine in 2022 than an infantry-heavy force in Finland in 1939.
Like the Winter War and the following Continuation War, Russia has shown a general interest in opening early diplomatic talks and achieving their military objectives by compelling talks. Unconditional surrender is atypical in Russian history, with World War II being the most obvious example.
In the end, will Ukraine face partition? I think so, but the extent of which is in question. Ukraine and Russia don’t actually have the manpower reserves of talented persons to sustain it if the conflict rages a long time. I think Russia understands they need to push through and capture the Ukrainian government and force a settlement. Both countries are commodity-export dependent economies – they both need to have a protracted peace for economic health and normalization of relations.
This war might turn into an absolute disaster for Russia in a way the Winter War wasn’t for the Soviet Union. The war is already a disaster for Ukrainians. Putin did do, though, to wake up America’s NATO and non-NATO allies from petty squabbling and diplomatic gamesmanship to take the collective security umbrella seriously. Our alliances are stronger because of this war. The other side of the coin is the embarrassment of some European countries which failed to provide appropriate military aid to Ukraine. Nations like Germany will have a diplomatic reckoning over their overreliance on China and Russia and inability to act like a country that takes the European projects seriously. The Russo-Ukrainian War has changed everything.