In contrast to Germany, there is intense debate in the United States over the outcome of the Ukraine war. in one Detailed analysis for think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft The historian now has mark episkopos A realistic outlook for the further course of the war has been outlined. In doing so, he identifies the interests of Russia, Ukraine and the West and derives options for action from them.
Episkopos criticizes the fact that the United States and Europeans lack a coherent strategy. So far they have stuck to the guiding principle: Russia must not win in Ukraine. Otherwise, Moscow will expand its attacks on NATO members in Europe. The discussion focused on “dangerous predictions that obscure more than they reveal about Russian intentions and capabilities,” writes Episkopos.
Russia can easily win the Ukraine war militarily
However, a closer look at possible scenarios in Ukraine shows that a complete Russian victory is not in Moscow’s interests. “According to Western officials, Moscow can win this war only by defeating Ukrainian forces on the battlefield,” the analyst writes. At first glance, this appears to be a reasonable interpretation of the goals of a belligerent state, but upon closer inspection this simplistic portrayal of the conflict quickly falls apart.
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The author asks what would happen if the Ukrainian defense lines collapsed, and what if Russian forces were able to overrun Ukraine?
Even if Ukrainian forces at the front were ultimately annihilated, Episkopos writes, the siege of Ukrainian strongholds like Kharkiv and Zaporizhia, not to mention Kiev and Odessa, would be a major challenge for the Russian army. The author said, “The months-long fighting over the much less important cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut offers a small but still tragic forecast of the consequences of such a siege.” “Occupying all of Ukraine would be unaffordable for Russia in the short term, let alone the long or indefinite term.”
He says that in this situation, the West could try to increase the costs by financing and coordinating partisan activities throughout Ukraine, especially in the western part of the country. After all, there is a historical precedent for such activities with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which resisted Soviet authorities for five years after the end of World War II.
This nationalist unit, also known as the Bandera Faction, was founded in 1942, entered into a pact with Hitler’s Germany and fought for the Ukrainian Soviet Republic until 1956. In Poland the group is now described as a “criminal organization” because it is guilty of “genocide of the Polish population”. The Ukrainian Parliament has honored the group’s fighters as “freedom fighters”.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western commentators were pushing for the conflict to turn into “Putin’s Afghanistan,” writes Episkopos. Ukrainian partisans were supposed to play the role of mujahideen fighters of the 1980s. These proposals were rejected because the Ukrainian government did not fall in the first weeks after the Russian invasion. The analysis says a Russian attempt to take over all of Ukraine is likely to trigger a prolonged insurgency.
Russia wants to create demilitarized buffer zone in Ukraine
The collapse of Ukraine also increases the risk of direct conflict between Russia and the West. Establishing a de facto border between eastern Poland and Russian-occupied western Ukraine would create a dangerous confrontation. Since there is no means to reduce tensions between the West and Russia, a hot war could soon break out on NATO’s eastern flank.
Moscow has no intention of waging a war of conquest against Poland, the Baltic states, or other NATO states, the authors write. But he is certainly looking to extract a number of strategic concessions from the United States and its allies. This is likely to include a partial reversal of NATO’s eastern expansion and limiting troop deployments on NATO’s eastern flank.
From Russia’s point of view the Ukraine war is a proxy war. The direction of the war will decide what concessions the US and the EU will make to Moscow. However, the author is skeptical about whether Western leaders will meet Moscow’s security conditions. It’s also likely that Ukraine’s collapse would make Western leaders even less willing to engage in substantive talks with Moscow.
This can be summed up as: “Russia has much to gain and much to lose by conquering Ukraine” – if by “victory” you mean annexation of all of Ukraine. The article states that the core of Russia’s strategy is to “use its growing advantages as leverage for negotiations with the West”. Given these conditions, the Kremlin has already indicated that it will establish demilitarized buffer zones in Ukraine that are not under Russian control.
“No matter what happens on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, Moscow has started something it cannot end unilaterally,” Episkopos writes. “This gives the US enormous influence in shaping the end of the war – something Washington and its allies must use now to end this war on the best possible terms for the West and Ukraine.”