Chris

Ok … first of all, the question isn’t irrelevant, and by your earlier post you proved it - the question, from Russia’s perspective, is very much how much Putin can plausibly present to the Russian elites as ‘worth it’. He isn’t invulnerable and he has driven the economy over a cliff, as well as engineering a demographic time-bomb that will explode in slow motion over the next decade, thanks to around a million fighting (and breeding) age men being either dead or permanently incapacitated. He needs to keep the elites on-side or else it will be him drinking polonium tea or falling out of a 3rd floor window. So his demands are maximalist and, from Ukraine and Europe’s perspective, un-serious.

The Alaska summit gives the game away. Putin wants the entire Donbas, which he has always wanted, plus whatever he already holds. He may have thought it was worth a punt at getting Trump to strong-arm Ukraine and Europe into accepting that, or, perhaps more likely, he wanted Trump so pi55ed off with it all that he withdraw support and makes it somewhat easier for Putin to fight on until he takes it anyway. The switch in Trump’s rhetoric away from ceasefire talk and onto so-called direct peace treaty negotiations was fed to him by Putin in order to make peace talks less likely, not more so. Putin will not talk to Zelensky under any circumstances because he thinks Zelensky is an illegitimate leader of an illegitimate country.

Putin doesn’t intend to quit forever with Donbas-plus, but he needs to stop and regroup. Russia does not have limitless resources and its way of waging war is extremely inefficient. He needs a breather. If he can get the rest of the Donbas he will have secured an important symbolic win and he will also be the right side of the defensible territory to make another run at Kyiv in 5 or 10 years. Without it, Ukraine, with European help, will make the remainder of its territory a fortress Russia will be no more able to overrun in, say, 2032 than it was in 2022.

Ukraine on the other hand does not want to stop fighting because, first of all, it wants its territory back and knows its citizens in the occupied lands are subject to a kleptocratic regime that uses rape and torture as means of control. There’s nothing desperate or dishonourable in wanting to liberate your citizens from that.

But secondly, the reasons that don’t get broad press coverage: so far Ukraine’s deep strike strategy has destroyed about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber force, neutralised the Black Sea Fleet and has also destroyed more than 13% of Russia’s oil refining capacity, and that figure is increasing weekly. There is now petrol rationing across Russia. Ukraine has developed its own cruise missile with a 1,000km range that it will have hundreds of by year’s end. Unlike Russia, which is trying to bomb Ukrainian morale into dust by terror-bombing cities but is not destroying anything of military use, Ukraine is steadily degrading Russia’s ability to function as an industrial economy. At the moment it is this strategic campaign rather than any serious belief it can get the Donbas back any time soon, that is keeping Ukraine fighting.

For all of the above, and especially because Ukraine is increasingly able to take Russia on even in the face of US obstructionism, the war isn’t going to end this year, and when it does end, it won’t be on the basis of Russia keeping what it holds. If Ukraine can degrade Russia far enough, it will hope to be able to destabilise Russian society and government to the point where it comes to the table with concessions in mind.

We ought not to forget that the USSR could not sustain operations in Afghanistan more than 10 years, and the entire soviet government collapsed less than 2 years after its retreat, leaving Russia an impotent mafia state. It is to ignore the lesson of history to think similar can’t happen again.