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As the battle of wills and might betwixt Russia and the w over the fate of Ukraine unfolds, there is i primal fact to acquit in mind: Vladimir Putin has never lost a war. During past conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Crimea over his 2 decades in power, Putin succeeded by giving his military machine clear, doable military machine objectives that would allow him to declare victory, credibly, in the optics of the Russian people and a wary, watching globe. His latest initiative in Ukraine is unlikely to be whatever different.
Despite months of military build-up along Ukraine's borders and repeated warnings from the Biden administration that an incursion could happen at any time, the February 24 pre-dawn bombing campaign that kicked off Europe's first land state of war in decades seemed to come up as a surprise to many Ukrainians. In major cities across a country the size of the country of Texas, stunned citizens, lulled into self-approbation past their president'south repeated reassurances that Russia would non invade, watched and listened to the sound of thunderous explosions targeting Ukrainian military machine bases, airports and control and control centers. Within 24 hours, the conflict spread rapidly, with Russian tanks and troops moving swiftly toward Kyiv, the capital; fierce battles in Kharkiv, the 2d largest urban center; and fighting around Chernobyl, the site of the disastrous 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown. Shock and awe, Russian style.
In an instant, Russian President Putin's invasion of Ukraine destroyed the post Cold War security order in Europe—one centered, to Russia'south fury, past an often-expanding NATO brotherhood. Analysts expect that, once Kyiv falls, the armed services assailment will give style to a political settlement that puts a Russia-friendly government in place. Past Feb 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was considering an invitation from Moscow to concord "neutrality" talks in neighboring Belarus. If those talks happen, Putin volition so exist able to pull back troops and finish the disharmonize—while having dealt the West a humiliating blow.
And that, military machine and Russia experts agree, may be the real point.
Ukraine, of grade, is non a NATO member; the possibility that information technology might join the Alliance some twenty-four hours, as other countries that were once part of the erstwhile Soviet bloc have done, is a key issue in the current disharmonize. Putin'south actions, a brazen disobedience in the face of repeated warnings and threats of sanctions from U.Southward. President Joe Biden and western allies, now make information technology a certainty, if it wasn't before, that membership will never happen. Putin'due south aggression will as well serve every bit a stark warning to countries formerly part of the Soviet Union of the possible repercussions of getting also cozy with the Due west.
The mail service Soviet status quo in Eastern Europe was i "that [Putin] never accepted," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in main of Russian federation in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based strange policy journal. "Information technology ate at him. He believes Russian federation was treated [by the West] every bit a second form denizen after the Soviet Union savage."
Now, western diplomats and intelligence officials believe, Putin seeks to decapitate the western-leaning leadership in Kyiv headed by Zelensky and replace it with a government that will be loyal to "the new Tsar," as former Estonian President Toomas Ilves calls Putin. That could happen, U.S. intelligence officials tell Newsweek, within days. Putin does not want, nor does he need, to occupy the entire country to accomplish his greater goals, intelligence analysts and officials say. As Ilves puts information technology, "He wants a puppet state similar Belarus," another former Soviet province just due north of Ukraine, and from which troops poured into Ukraine every bit the Russian bombing ramped upwardly. With a new reality on the ground in Eastern Europe, Ilves continues, "Putin then wants to rewrite the security rules of the route betwixt him and NATO."
Ukraine itself appears to share at least part of that view. A statement from Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine's presidential chief of staff, and shared with Newsweek by Ukraine's embassy in Washington, outlined what Kyiv suspected were Moscow'south goals. "The Role of the President of Ukraine believes the Russia has ii tactical goals—to seize territories and assault the legitimate political leadership of Ukraine in order to spread chaos and [to] install a marionette government that would sign a peace deal on bilateral relations with Russia," Podolyak said.
A United States that thought it was pivoting to Asia, and focusing on China—a country that is its preeminent rival going frontwards—has at present been dragged back to Eastern Europe, where for centuries so much blood has been spilled. Putin at present has the globe'due south full, undivided attention, in the same fashion that every Secretarial assistant General in the Soviet era did. In chilling televised remarks after the invasion had begun, Putin said, "whoever tries to interfere [in Ukraine] should know that Russian federation's response will be firsthand, and will lead to such consequences that y'all have never experienced in your history." Putin's subsequent declaration that he was putting Russian federation's nuclear forces on alerts, underscored the threat.
Russian federation is at present back in the limelight, a nation that is demonstrating, with a brandish of military might, that it remains a Cracking Power. Which is precisely where Putin wants his nation to be. He believes Russian federation should at all times command respect from the rest of the globe, "and when it doesn't control respect, information technology should control fear," as Lukyanov of Russia in Global Affairs puts it.
Mission accomplished. As Rose Gottemoeller, old deputy secretary general of NATO and a long time Russian federation watcher characterized information technology recently on the CBS podcast Intelligence Matters, "This is [Putin's] 'await at me' moment."
The West Responds
Within hours of the invasion, the United States and its allies responded past sharply ratcheting upwardly economical sanctions but information technology'south unclear whether the moves will deter the Russian leader. In a spoken language announcing the response, Biden said more than than half of the West's high tech exports to Russia would be slashed, "degrading their industrial capacity," and hurting industries like aerospace and shipbuilding. He's besides freezing the U.S. assets of four additional Russian banks, including VTB, the country'due south second largest fiscal institution, whose CEO is very close to Putin. "This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time," Biden said.
The following day, the White House announced information technology would join the European Union in implementing sanctions against Putin personally. The Russian President is widely idea to exist one of the world's richest men, allegedly hiding much of his wealth in beat out companies in various revenue enhancement havens throughout the globe.
How effective the sanctions will be is unclear. Putin, for his part, believes he has finer made his land sanctions-proof. Russia has over $630 billion in difficult currency reserves, and rakes in $14 billion per calendar month in oil and gas exports. As Russian federation's administrator to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet days before the invasion began, when the West ramped up threats of financial penalties in a futile endeavor to preclude military action, "Excuse my language, but we don't requite a shit virtually your sanctions."
Biden, in his remarks the day the invasion began, said he believes Putin may accept brought himself a world of trouble by invading Ukraine. "History has shown fourth dimension and again how swift gains in territory give mode to grinding occupation, acts of mass ceremonious disobedience and strategic dead ends," he said. And in fact, thousands of Ukrainian civilians take been training as role of newly formed "territorial defense organizations" prepare in order to resist the Russians.
Just U.S. intelligence officials privately exercise not share Biden's optimism about "mass disobedience." I official who spoke to Newsweek on groundwork considering he is not authorized to speak on the record said, "Later the government in Kyiv is dismantled, there will be no opposition within Ukraine for us to support militarily."
His pessimism is rooted in Putin'south past beliefs, most notably when he presided over a scorched world campaign to brutally put down an insurgency in Chechnya more than than twenty years agone. He says, "Information technology's not realistic to mount an opposition campaign. [Putin] does non value human life the same way that the complimentary globe does, hence [Russian troops] will eradicate whatsoever opposition en masse."
Indeed, Putin'southward history as a commander in chief of Russia's armed services shows that there may exist reason to doubt Biden's optimism that Ukraine will turn into a quagmire for Moscow. Beyond the ruthless campaign to put down Muslim rebels in Chechnya, he hived off the two sections of the former Soviet state of Georgia that he wanted to command in 2008. Then in 2014 he took back Crimea in Ukraine, and set upwardly separatist movements in two heavily Russian provinces in the due east, Donetsk and Luhansk. (Two days before the February 24th invasion, Putin alleged those 2 provinces were now "independent republics." )
And on the complex battlefield in Syria, where the U.Southward. and Russians risked disharmonize, former President Barack Obama funded opposition rebel groups, including some tied to Al Qaeda, and then failed to enforce his ain cherry-red line after President Basar Al Assad used poisonous substance gas on his enemies. Putin sent Russian troops in with i goal: that Assad maintain his grip on power. He remains in role to this twenty-four hours.
The Ultimate Goal
What is Putin's endgame now? The Russian leader is fueled by rage and seeks revenge against the Westward for his homeland'southward perceived mistreatment, says Peter Rough, a senior swain at the Hudson Constitute, a conservative retrieve tank based in Washington. The country Putin grew up in, and the one he served as a KGB officer, dissolved in 1991. In its stead came anarchy at home, and, in Putin's view, betrayal from away.
The demise of the Soviet Spousal relationship, he has famously said, "was the well-nigh catastrophic geopolitical effect of the 20th century" (worse, even, than Globe War II, in which 20 million Soviet citizens were killed). His resentment over what happened to his state, particularly in the immediate backwash of the Soviet collapse, is more than widely shared by Russians than many in the West capeesh.
Equally the Moscow bureau chief for this mag in the early 2000s, I saw organized crime take over businesses large and pocket-sized; the country's finances were in butchery. The government was unable to pay the salaries of a one time proud military. I interviewed an Army colonel stationed on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia'southward far east, who wept as he confessed he wasn't able to buy his wife a altogether present a few weeks earlier because he had not been paid his wages in months.
Boris Yeltsin, once the democratic hero who helped bring down the Soviet Matrimony, had turned into a drunken mess as the commencement freely elected president of Russia; his inner circle was corrupt, enriching themselves as ordinary citizens struggled amidst the mail service Soviet chaos. On New year's Twenty-four hour period, at the dawn of the new millennium, Yeltsin stepped down. He was replaced past the man he had named Prime Minister months earlier, Vladimir Putin.
Twenty-two years later, in an extraordinary 55-minute speech to his country on Monday February 21, Putin aired many of his grievances in a manner he rarely had publicly earlier, equally a prelude to state of war. In it, he said, "Ukraine is non a carve up country," and that "Ukrainians and Russians were brethren, ane and the same." Kyiv, in his view, had been ripped unceremoniously from Female parent Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved. He then recounted the West's early promise not to expand NATO.
He recalled how coldly then President Bill Clinton responded to his query, not long afterwards he became President of Russian federation in 2000, virtually whether Moscow could ever be a member of NATO. He recalled, bitterly, how he was assured that NATO's expansion eastward—to include countries that had been members of the Warsaw Pact, Moscow'southward former client states—would "just improve their relations with the states, even create a belt of states friendly to Russian federation.
Everything," Putin said, "turned out exactly the opposite. They were only words."
How does Putin seek revenge for this expose? To the extent he can, he wants to piece together a new Russian Empire. Non necessarily every province of the sometime Soviet Wedlock, simply those parts of the pre-Soviet empire, established by the Tsars, who were largely Russian speaking, orthodox Christian and who looked first to Kyiv, and then afterwards to Moscow, as the political, cultural and spiritual center of the world.
Putin is a nationalist first and foremost. Ukraine, plainly, is central to this vision. Simply it likewise includes the countries—erstwhile Soviet provinces—that are now effectively Russian customer states (Belarus), also every bit those Moscow wishes to control nonetheless again: the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (the latter 3 are now members of NATO, for whom the alliance is obligated to fight in the event ane of them is attacked.) Putin in his pre-invasion spoken communication said it was "madness" that the Baltics were always immune to leave the USSR. He has demanded—preposterously—that the Alliance pull back to its 1997 stance, when in that location were simply xvi members, equally opposed to xxx today.
Point, Counterpoint
It is for that reason that Biden is moving more NATO troops and materiel into the Baltics. On February 25, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the Alliance would for the first time acceleration troops from the Spearhead Unit of its then-chosen Response Force—formed in 2014—to member states along the eastern front. NATO describes the Response Force every bit ''highly prepare and technologically advanced." It consists of twoscore,000 troops from a variety of NATO countries. Stoltenberg declined to say precisely how many troops would exist deployed now.
More deployments are probable in the months alee. President Biden vowed in no uncertain terms that an assail on a NATO member would trigger Article 5, the provision that maintains any armed attack confronting one country in the Alliance is considered an attack against all. If Putin moves on the Baltics, or on any NATO members that formerly were part of the Warsaw Pact—like Poland and Romania, which edge Ukraine, or Bulgaria—and so Moscow will be at state of war with NATO.
With the invasion of Ukraine, analysts believe, Putin hoped to shake NATO. He wanted, says Douglas Wise, a old CIA officer and deputy director at the Defense Intelligence Bureau, "to farther divide our allies, and cement existing fissures and disunity within [the Alliance] and the EU. He also believes he tin benefit by humiliating the Western leaders and institutions when they fail to develop apparent and practical options to counter his aggression."
Whether Putin benefits at home for his audacious assault on Ukraine is non yet clear. (There were small protests in major Russian cities in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.) Just if creating more stress on NATO was one of his goals, that failed.
The Germans were widely viewed every bit the weakest link when it came to Russian federation, because of the two countries' meaning trade ties. And at the outset of the crisis, that skepticism seemed justified. Early on, for instance, Estonia wanted to send a batch of old howitizers in its possession to Kyiv. Merely NATO regulations say that any weaponry given or sold to a non-NATO member must be approved by the country of origin. In this case, that country did non exist: The howitzers had been in possession of the old E Deutschland. Upon unification, Frg took control of them and ultimately passed them on to Finland, who somewhen gave them to Estonia. When Tallinn wanted to send them on to Ukraine, to exercise its fleck to help shore up Kyiv'southward defenses, Germany—astonishingly—declined to approve the transfer.
That was followed by Berlin'southward deep reluctance to stop the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline linking Germany and Russia, despite pressure to exercise and then from its own ambassador to the U.Due south., Emily Haber. Following the refusal, Haber wrote a widely publicized cablevision to new Chancellor Olaf Scholz, maxim that the country was gaining a reputation as a bad ally.
To Putin, this must take indicated that his gas-politik was paying huge dividends. Merely information technology didn't last long. Scholz visited Washington in early February and, in a post meeting printing conference with Biden, stood by meekly as the president asserted that Nord Stream ii was dead if Moscow took military action against Ukraine. On cue, hours subsequently the invasion began last calendar month, Germany halted certification of the $xi billion projection. Days subsequently, Berlin announced it would transport anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine, a stunning reversal of its long-held refusal to export weapons to disharmonize zones.
Over the weekend, the East.U. and Washington went even further. They announced that several large Russian banks would be expelled from SWIFT, finer kicking them out of the international financial system. The allies also sanctioned Russia's central bank. The intent: to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Russia to tap the $630 billion in hard currency reserves information technology has accumulated. The potency of the move was immediately apparent, as the Russian ruble dropped sharply against the U.S. dollar, forcing Moscow to raise interest rates from 9.5 percentage to 20 percent to shore up its currency.
The bear witness was clear: Far from deepening fissures inside the alliance, Putin's Ukraine gambit has had the opposite event. Erstwhile CIA Managing director and Army General David Petraeus, upon returning from the Munich Security Conference before long earlier the invasion, said he had never seen the Brotherhood so unified since the days when he served at NATO headquarters during the Cold War.
The evident unity among the members of what Biden accurately chosen the near powerful military alliance in history, has only made the plight of Ukraine more poignant. Every bit the invasion unfolded, a member of the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv, Alexey Goncharenko, begged NATO to impose a no-fly zone, to permit his countrymen to have a fairer fight on the footing. There was zippo gamble of that happening, because Kyiv wasn't in the club.
Soon now, its desire to be role of the West will be moot, as Putin's Russia takes control—lilliputian more than 24 hours after the invasion began, Russian forces were already inbound the the upper-case letter and Kyiv was hit with Russian "cruise or ballistic missiles." Success is inevitable because Biden and the allies have made it clear that Moscow will not encounter military resistance from the Due west. Over and over Biden has told the American people the U.Southward. will non fight on the ground in Ukraine. He knows the public has no stomach for it.
If events play out every bit military analysts now wait, the conflict will end relatively quickly with a negotiated settlement that may cede some territory to Russia, the installation of a new Russian federation-friendly regime in Kyiv and a partial withdrawal of troops that allows Putin to avoid the quagmire the West so badly wants him sucked into. In doing then, Putin volition be able to claim that he dealt a devastating setback to NATO, the main goal of his aggression.
For Putin, the sack of Ukraine will probable marking the endgame in his desire to restore the empire. If it doesn't, information technology will mean at some betoken the world's two largest nuclear powers will be in a shooting war, with all the risk that entails. With his words and more importantly his deportment, Biden is frantically signaling to Putin: this far, but no further. An anxious world hopes the Russian leader, satisfied with victory in Ukraine, will get the message.
This story was updated on February 28, 2022.
Correction 2/27/22, x:52 a.m. ET: This story was updated to right a reference to Bulgaria bordering Ukraine. It does not.
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Source: https://www.newsweek.com/2022/03/11/putin-has-never-lost-war-here-how-hell-win-ukraine-1682878.html
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