Page 79 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

bne June 2024
Opinion 79
the then British prime minister, Boris Johnson, as the person most responsible for the failure of the talks.
There was another window of opportunity again, famously announced by the top US military commander General Mark Milley, when Ukraine liberated swathes of its territory in the autumn of 2022 and had an opportunity to talk with Russia from the position of relative strength. But instead, President Zelenskiy banned himself from talking to Putin by his own decree.
Putin’s strategy is based on punishing Ukraine for its perceived intransigence by claiming more territory and devastating
the economy. The pattern is that every time Ukraine declines settlements, it finds itself losing more territory and left with fewer options.
So what is the likelihood of Ukraine getting a better deal than it could conceivably get now if it keeps fighting for another year or two?
A winning strategy for Ukraine might be being developed secretly in some Nato bunker as we speak, but it is hard to imagine what it could entail, especially given the fiasco of the 2023 counter-offensive. Russia has proved capable of adapting to every piece of military technology the West has supplied so far and every type of Western sanctions that have been levied on its economy.
The calculations at the time when the previous talks were derailed by the Ukrainian side in May 2022, were all based on the assumption that both the Russian economy and
its military machine would soon collapse because of their
“The West has crossed many red lines and is willing to try even more, but it is impossible to predict how the close-knit group of criminally inclined individuals which rules Russia will act if their country begins losing.”
inefficiency and technological backwardness. Today, it is the high-tech side of war in which Russia is making the longest strides. That prominently includes drone technology and electronic warfare.
The Western cheerleaders of Ukraine’s war effort seem to suffer from an acute deficit of ideas as to how to defeat Russia. Anne Applebaum suggested in her recent piece for the Atlantic that the West should exhaust the Russians while
simultaneously arming military units composed of Russian nationals which fight on the Ukrainian side. But how lifeless will the Ukrainians have become when the Russians get sufficiently exhausted?
As for the units in question, one of them, known as Russian Volunteer Corps, is comprised of neo-Nazis who draw inspiration from Russian collaborators that fought on Hitler’s side in WWII. The other unit, Free Russia Legion, is the brainchild of the above-mentioned Ilya Ponomaryov, a former associate of Putin’s spin-doctor-in-chief Vladislav Surkov.
Ponomaryov is a sworn enemy of Russia’s only genuinely popular opposition force, Navalny’s movement, whose key figures typically describe him as a fraudster. Just like the fake separatists, these units achieve much more in discrediting anti-Putin resistance in the eyes of ordinary Russians than
in gaining anything tangible for Ukraine or for the Russian opposition.
The truth, though, is that there has never been a viable winning strategy, except those putting the world at risk of nuclear war. Much is being said about the West acting in Ukraine with one hand behind its back, but the very nature of a proxy war against a nuclear superpower presumes a great deal of self-deterrence.
The West has crossed many red lines and is willing to try even more, but it is impossible to predict how the close-knit group of criminally inclined individuals which rules Russia will
act if their country begins losing. It has always been a tough proposition to play chess with a guy who is holding a hand grenade. And it makes no sense, as Biden’s predecessors knew well at the time of the Cold War.
Russia is clear about its demands. It has spelled them out on multiple occasions in recent months: It wants to return to the framework of a peace deal nearly agreed upon two years ago, but it wants to keep the territories it formally annexed in the autumn of 2022. The exact shape of this territory might be up for bargain, since Russia is still very far from occupying the four annexed regions in their entirety. Russia’s endorsement of China’s recent peace initiative suggests its readiness to freeze the frontline situation as it is now.
But accepting that kind of arrangement is a political suicide for a political class which convinced everyone, especially the Ukrainian public, that Ukraine could get a better deal than envisaged in previous talks by fighting a battle with a far stronger rival.
More broadly, it would be the ultimate fiasco of the three- decade policy of dismissing Russia as a “declining power” that has no real say even when it comes to its own security. But since that fiasco will be impossible to admit, retired hawks will probably keep looking for magic solutions to their Russia problem. Maybe a separatist movement in Putin’s hometown will help, who knows.
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