Right now, Putin's bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to "global disorder" and "escalation"; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi.
Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.
Although Zaluzhny has also described, in detail, the technology he needs to move his army forward and break that stalemate, his statement has renewed talk in the West of a truce or a cease-fire. Some are calling for a cease-fire in bad faith. In fact, they want a Russian victory, or at least a defeat for Biden.
Others, however, advocate a truce with the best of intentions. They believe that because Putin will never give up, the damage to Ukraine must be limited. Lately, I've heard several well-meaning people, all supporters of Ukraine, argue that this conflict could end the way the Korean War once ended, with the borders frozen on the current front line and the rest of Ukraine, like South Korea, protected by an American security guarantee and even U.S. bases.
All of these suggestions, well-meaning or otherwise, have the same flaw: A cease-fire, temporary or otherwise, means that both sides have to stop fighting. Right now, even if Zelensky agrees to negotiate, there is no evidence that Putin wants to negotiate, that he wants to stop fighting, or that he has ever wanted to stop fighting.
Nor is there any evidence that Putin wants to partition Ukraine, keeping only the territories he currently occupies and allowing the rest to prosper like South Korea. His goal remains the destruction of Ukraine—all of Ukraine—and his allies and propagandists are still talking about how, once they achieve this goal, they will expand their empire further. Just last week, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president, published an 8,000-word article calling Poland Russia's "historical enemy" and threatening Poles with the loss of their state too.
In this sense, the challenge that Putin presents to Europe and the rest of the world is unchanged from February 2022. If we abandon what we have achieved so far and we give up support for Ukraine, the result could still be the military or political conquest of Ukraine.
It could still lead to a new kind of Europe, one in which Poland, the Baltic states, and even Germany are under constant physical threat, with all of the attendant consequences for trade and prosperity. A Europe permanently at war, an idea that seems impossible to most people in the West, still seems eminently plausible to the Russian president. Putin spent a memorable part of his life as a KGB officer, representing the interests of the Soviet empire in Dresden. He remembers when eastern Germany was ruled by Moscow. If it could be so once, then why not again?
The stark truth is that this war will only end for good when Russia's neo-imperial dream finally dies.
To reach that endgame, we need to adjust our thinking. First, we need to understand, more deeply than we have done so far, that we have entered a new era of great-power conflict. The Russians already know this and have already made the transition to a full-scale war economy. Forty percent of the Russian state budget—another conservative estimate—is now spent annually on military production, about 10 percent of GDP, a level not seen for decades. Neither the U.S. nor its European allies have made anything like this shift, and we started from a low base. Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute told me that, at the beginning of the war, the ammunition that the United Kingdom produced in a year was enough to supply the Ukrainian army for 20 hours.
Putin Wants the West to Give Up on Ukraine - The Atlantic
There have been three identifiable attempts to float the idea of a pause in hostilities. The first came in September–October 2022, when Russia executed a partial mobilization, intensified missile attacks against Ukrainian cities, and worked to raise the Ukrainian army's combat costs for its liberation of the Kharkiv and Kherson districts. The campaign was spiced, as always, with threats of far worse to come — on this occasion through evidence-free accusations that Ukraine planned a "dirty bomb" and associated nuclear saber-rattling.
The second attempt took place in February–March 2023 when Russia froze the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, completed the seizure of Bakhmut, and conducted unsuccessful offensive operations against Vuhledar.
Also, in March 2023, Xi Jinping visited Moscow. The Kremlin sought to present this as heralding a new era of Russia–China partnership or even alliance. The purpose was the same: to win local but symbolic successes on the battlefield together with a strengthened diplomatic position against the West to initiate a ceasefire negotiation process, to prevent the extension of Western military assistance to Ukraine, and so disrupt its impending counter-offensive.
The third attempt came at the beginning of October, when Russia declared its revocation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and then launched a massive attack on Avdiivka. There were also acts of sabotage on the Balticconnector gas pipeline and undersea optical cable between Finland and Estonia and Sweden and Estonia, respectively. The three countries say the attacks were deliberate and are further investigating.
While the Kremlin needs a ceasefire to regroup and rearm, it is determined to achieve this on favorable terms. These include Russia's control over the whole of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions (parts of which are still held by the Ukrainian armed forces) and maintaining the ground corridor to Crimea, so permanently ending Ukrainian access to the Sea of Azov.
This would allow Russia to hold onto large swaths of Ukrainian territory, while keeping major industrial cities like Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, and Kharkiv under artillery fire control. This would freeze any significant investment in these regions, and consequently prevent Ukraine from restoration and modernization.
As during the initial phase of Russia's war of aggression from 2014-2022, there is no doubt that Russia would continue to strike Ukraine even after a ceasefire while employing the familiar propaganda language of necessary retaliation and the prevention of "dangerous military activity."
It has been suggested that a "Korean scenario" is possible in case of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. North Korea has never shelled Seoul since 1953 despite the short distance between South Korea's capital and the border.
But the reason is that North Korea was completely dependent on the Soviet Union then, and is completely dependent on China now. The Soviet Union did not want to continue the war on the Korean peninsula in 1953, and China has not wanted the new war there, as yet. Nor does North Korea itself want a real war, for now.
In contrast, Russia's strategic purposes are still the same: eliminating the Ukrainian state and the national culture, undermining the existing rules of the global order and US global leadership (and this point also means the undermining of NATO), and establishing Russia's dominance over its neighborhood and over continental Europe, something it has been developing since 1993–1995.
Together with the Kremlin's bet on growing instability in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, Russia could afford to await a better moment to fight again.
There are multiple additional benefits. Perhaps most important to Putin and his people is the lesson to democratic Europe that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield despite its economic and technological weaknesses. This would cause significant demoralization among the European elites and make at least some of them more compliant in relations with Russia.
Give Putin His Ceasefire, Get Another War - CEPA
