After three years of bloody destruction almost all are tired of the terrible war started by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A common misconception in the West is that “all wars end with negotiations,” but recent history shows this is not true and is more likely to end in the collapse of one side – which can and must be Russia.
Ukraine’s former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk has just written an important article on how Ukraine can win through the strategic neutralization of Russia. Yet, there might be a shortcut to enable a Ukrainian victory.
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World War I end for the Russian and German Empires because of revolution. World War II ended with the defeat of Mussolini and the capitulations of Germany and Japan. The Korean War ended in stalemate. The US was defeated in Vietnam and the French in Algeria. The Russians withdrew from Afghanistan and so, eventually, did the West.
While negotiated peace may have been a feature of 18th and 19th century conflict, modern wars have usually ended with some semblance of victory for one side and defeat for the other and not in negotiations.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is imperialist or colonialist in nature. Since World War II, no major war has been won by a colonial power. All over the world, colonial powers have been chased out. Russia is the last paper tiger standing.
The late Columbia University Professor Charles Tilly coined the idea that states are born out of war. Vladimir Putin’s war has cemented the Ukrainian nation. Ukrainians have witnessed the terror that Moscow has inflicted on the occupied territories, much as the Soviet Union did in Western Ukraine and the Baltics after their occupation in 1945. They imprison, torture, execute and deport has resulted in a Ukrainian commitment to victory in spite of all it is costing them since they realize that they have to fight to victory or flee.
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The size of the Russian population is often invoked making a Russian victory more likely. However, size has proven pretty irrelevant in other colonial wars. After his partial mobilization in September 2022 scared about one million young Russian men out of the country, Putin has abstained from mobilization. Ukraine has about 900,000 men and women under arms, while Russia futilely currently commits a mere 650,000 soldiers.
The same is true of the size of the economy. Russia’s GDP is ten times larger than Ukraine’s, but that is not very important. Just compare the US with Afghanistan! A more relevant measure is military expenditure. The combined Ukrainian and Western spending on the war amounts to about $100 billion – equivalent to 50% of Ukraine’s GDP. Russia’s 2025 military expenditures are officially $170 billion or 8% of GDP.
Even so while Russians complain about the impact of the cost of the Kremlin’s war, Ukrainians don’t – because they know they are fighting an existential war – while Russia’s war is existential only in Putin’s mind. In addition, much of Russian military expenditure is stolen by politicians, generals and others among the regime’s cabal. Ukraine benefits more from innovation, because its economy and society are so much freer with hundreds of startups thriving from drone production. Russia has no obvious material advantage.
Putin insists that “the root causes of the conflict must be eliminated,” which unusually is actually true. The root cause is Putin, and he must be eliminated. Not only Ukraine but the whole of Europe will not have peace until Putin is gone. Russia cannot be a normal society as long it is governed by a cruel and greedy kleptocrat. For Putin, a bad war is better than a good peace, because he needs war to justify his corruption and repression.
In Northern and Eastern Europe this is obvious, while in Washington both parties fear instability in Russia as much as George HW Bush dreaded the demise of Gorbachev, the CPSU, and the USSR, sadly documented in his “Chicken Kiev” speech of Aug. 1, 1991.
Incomprehensibly, Washington believes that instability in Russia will lead to a nuclear war. In reality any nutcase who uses nuclear war in a domestic conflict is bound to lose his life. The big mistake of the Biden administration was to fear a nuclear war or World War III, and Putin played them as a fiddle with regular threats of nuclear war, which few but the Biden administration believed.
The natural end to this war would be the collapse of Putin’s autocracy. With his aborted march on Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin showed how fragile this regime is. Nobody stands up for Putin unless he or she receives a direct order from above and if Putin is incapacitated no command will be issued. Yet, the risk remains that Ukraine may be overrun, especially if Trump sabotages Ukraine’s defense and cooperates directly with Putin.
In the 1980s, the USSR was exhausted by its decade-long war in Afghanistan and the USSR withdrew although its losses stood at only 15,000 killed. The current Russian situation is far worse with probably 200,000 soldiers killed and 600,000-800,000 injured. The folly of this war should come to be understood faster, in spite of today’s Russia being far more repressive than 1980s USSR, because its population is better informed. The revolution in 1917 was preceded by returning soldiers shooting their officers, which could happen once again. The Prigozhin rebellion might be a premonition of a similar future.
Putin is scared. He maintains truly extreme personal security, apparently living in bunkers under his three primary residences in Sochi, Novoe Ogarevo and Valdai, while allegedly using doubles for most public meetings. Therefore, a successful attempt on Putin does not appear likely, even though his isolation might lead to poor information and substandard judgment.
Rather than fearing destabilization in Russia, the West should finance and arm Ukraine for victory. The West – essentially Europe – needs to double Ukraine’s military budget from $100 billion a year to $200 billion. It can do so without cost by finally legally seizing the $200 billion of immobilized Russian Central Bank reserves held by the Euroclear Bank in Belgium. Then, Ukraine would spend more than Russia, which plans to reduce its military expenditure next year since it is set to run out of liquid reserves in its National Wealth Fund this year and the oil prices are low.
After three years of war with very small changes in the front since November 2022, stalemate cannot be far away. The issue is rather what happens behind the front lines. The open Ukrainian society will not falter, while the Russian home front may. Whenever that happens it is likely to determine the outcome of this war.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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