The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now been slogging along for a year, with little real headway being made by Russia in what they clearly thought was going to be a 2 month “roll in, topple the government, install a puppet regime” action.
On its own, the Ukraine war makes very little sense. Putin’s attack on Ukraine reeks of a combination of ego-driven desires on Putin’s part to cement his image in Russian history books as the man who restored the Russian Empire (and I’m not talking about the Soviet era sphere of influence, either - look up the Tsarist era).
However, it goes further than that. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 didn’t really garner much of a response from Western powers beyond a handful of economic sanctions. At a guess, Putin interpreted that as a sign of “weakness” on the part of “The West” (largely NATO, based on current Russian propaganda). That lack of response may have been interpreted by Putin as a sign that NATO wasn’t willing to engage directly, and emboldened him to start thinking more about re-asserting Russia’s territorial ambitions.
Putin appears to be massing his armies for another spring offensive, possibly with the goal of overwhelming Ukraine all at once, or at the very least with a more robust set of supply lines than he used initially.
However, I’m not here to talk about the tactical situation on the ground - this is about the geopolitics of this invasion, and what the preconditions to ending it really look like.
Russia’s own propaganda both within Russia, and what it has posted on places like RT have clearly shown that Putin sees this as a proxy war with NATO. This is important, because it tells us a bit about Putin’s thinking. If this is a “proxy war” then like a lot of Middle East conflict during the Cold War, we can expect certain things out of Russia’s behaviour - which we are seeing. This includes a degree of intransigence, self-serving propaganda, and efforts to stir up opposition to any effective response from the perceived adversary (NATO, and in particular the US).
In some ways, this is a proxy war. On a sheer numbers basis, Ukraine would have had a lot more difficulty defending itself if it wasn’t for NATO supplying vast amounts of military aid to Ukraine (and aided by a Russian invasion that relied on poorly maintained equipment that broke down en-route).
However, it has been some 70+ years since the world faced a dictator with territorial ambitions of the nature that Russia is exhibiting. We’ve watched Putin slowly consolidate his grip on power since the early 2000s. His territorial ambitions didn’t really come to the fore until the annexation of Crimea.
He has carefully fostered alliances with sympathetic leaders, mostly China, but also in an arc that reaches through the Middle East and into Africa. Closer to home, he’s also carefully cultivated his relationships with several European/NATO leaders who are in some respects acting as spoilers (Especially Turkey’s president Erdoğan) within NATO and appear to be hanging the organization up so its ability to respond is delayed.
If I were to speculate wildly, I would hazard a guess that part of the working strategy with China is to leverage the Taiwan conflict to force the US into a two front war. It makes some sense, because most nations really don’t have the military resources to maintain open conflict in two separate theatres of war.
What does this tell us about Ukraine? First, let’s work with the idea that Putin has come to see himself as “being the man who restores the greatness of the Russian Empire”. It makes reasonable sense, and does help explain the weak state of military preparedness. Chances are very good that the generals in the Russian military know that it’s their necks if they don’t have things moving on Putin’s timeline, not whether he would listen to their advice as to readiness.
We'll see what happens in reality as spring starts to unfold, but I do expect Russia to ramp up its invasion, and I fully expect Belarus to actively engage as well (I have no direct evidence to back this up - it's purely speculation on my part).
If Putin has become ego-invested in this project (which seems likely), then we have a much bigger problem than we might have if he were merely a politician advancing what he perceives to be his nation’s greater interests.
It’s unclear whether his inner circle of oligarchs is truly that loyal to him, or are merely loyal out of a desire to survive. Both are possible, but we also have to acknowledge that they also may have ego investment in this war, and could decide to “pick up where Putin left off” out of a sense of either national pride, or simple brute opportunism of increasing their fortunes as part of the payoff for the war.
To me, this means that a major escalation of conflict in Ukraine will ultimately require direct intervention by other countries to safeguard the people of Ukraine. My guess is that this will ultimately have to occur on several levels:
1) A definitive effort push the Russian army out of Ukraine altogether.
2) Likely some covert work in Russia itself to remove Putin and his inner circle from power
This is likely to be a much messier year in the conflict than the last 12 months have been, but I do expect it will end up drawing in a much more direct engagement on the part of NATO and the rest of Europe.
* To be clear here: I have never been supportive of various US-led invasions of other countries either - whether that has been Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya (to name a few). I’m not condemning Russia while ignoring US actions.
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