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Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Latest Developments in Russia – Ukraine Conflict

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine . Know more about this in the link given. This page gives a background of the issue with an analysis of the developments before the invasion.

The tensions on Ukraine’s border with Russia are at their highest in years. Fearing a potential invasion by Russia, the US and NATO are stepping up support for Ukraine. In this article, we explain the reason for tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the latest developments, the stand of various stakeholders in the region, and the way forward for the UPSC exam IR segment.

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union , Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it disintegrated, and Russia has tried to maintain the country in its orbit since then.
In 2014, a separatist insurgency started in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donetsk Basin, also known as,
Russia further gained a maritime advantage in the region due to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
As a result, both the US and the EU have pledged to safeguard the integrity of Ukraine’s borders.

Image Source: Al Jazeera

Importance of Ukraine to Russia

Ukraine and Russia have shared cultural and linguistic ties for hundreds of years.
Ukraine was the most powerful country in the Soviet Union after Russia.
Ukraine has been a hub for commercial industries, factories and defence manufacturing.
Ukraine also provides Russia with access to the Black Sea and crucial connectivity to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reasons for Russian Aggression

The chief reasons for Russian aggression are discussed below.

Russia, considering the economic significance of Ukraine, sought Ukraine’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), which is a free trade agreement that came into being in 2015.
With its huge market and advanced agriculture and industrial output, Ukraine was supposed to play an important role. But Ukraine refused to join the agreement.
Russia claims that the eastward expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which they call “ enlargement ”, has threatened Russia’s interests and has asked for written security guarantees from NATO.
NATO, led by the U.S., has planned to install missile defence systems in eastern Europe in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to counter Russia’s intercontinental-range missiles.

, and that share borders with Russia. , , and , all of them were a part of the former Soviet-led .

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia has been indulging in military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an aspiring NATO member. Russia has stated that its troop deployment is in response to NATO’s steady eastward expansion. Russia argues that its moves are aimed at protecting its own security considerations.

Russia has mobilised around 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
Russia seeks assurance from the US that Ukraine shall not be inducted into NATO.
This has resulted in tensions between Russia and the West which have been supportive of Ukraine. The U.S. has assured Ukraine that it will “respond decisively” in case of an invasion by Russia.

Image Source: The Hindu

Russia’s demands

Russia has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO that includes countries like Ukraine and Georgia that share Russia’s borders.
Russia asked NATO to pull back its military deployments to the 1990s level and prohibit the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the bordering areas.
Further, Russia asked NATO to curb its military cooperation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

The response from the West

The U.S. has ruled out changing NATO’s “open-door policy” which means, NATO would continue to induct more members.
The U.S. also says it would continue to offer training and weapons to Ukraine.
The U.S. is said to be open to a discussion regarding missile deployment and a mutual reduction in military exercises in Eastern Europe.
Germany has also warned Russia that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be stopped if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
The U.S. threatens Russia by imposing new economic sanctions in case of attempts of invasion against Ukraine.

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

What implications does the Russia – Ukraine crisis have on India? This is discussed in this section.

Maintaining strong relations with Russia serves India’s national interests. India has to retain a strong strategic alliance with Russia as a result, India cannot join any Western strategy aimed at isolating Russia.
There is a possibility of CAATSA sanctions on India by the U.S. as a result of the S-400
A pact between the US and Russia might affect Russia’s relations with China. This might allow India to expand on its efforts to re-establish ties with Russia.
The issue with Ukraine is that the world is becoming increasingly economically and geopolitically interconnected. Any improvement in Russia-China ties has ramifications for India.
There is also an impact on the strong Indian diaspora present in the region, threatening the lives of thousands of Indian students.

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

What is the relation between russia and ukraine.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until its disintegration in 1991. Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and Russia has tried to maintain its influence on the country in its orbit since then.

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

Although Ukraine has no membership offer from NATO, it has been closer to the alliance since its establishment in 1997. Plans for NATO membership were dropped by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned.

Is Crimea a part of Russia?

The majority of the world considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea that has been battled over for ages due to its strategic importance. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea which was a part of Ukraine due to its declining influence over the region and emerging insecurities.

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Russia, One Year After the Invasion of Ukraine

Illustration of calendar with military footsteps stomping across it.

A year ago, in January, I went to Moscow to learn what I could about the coming war—chiefly, whether it would happen. I spoke with journalists and think tankers and people who seemed to know what the authorities were up to. I walked around Moscow and did some shopping. I stayed with my aunt near the botanical garden. Fresh white snow lay on the ground, and little kids walked with their moms to go sledding. Everyone was certain that there would be no war.

I had immigrated to the U.S. as a child, in the early eighties. Since the mid-nineties, I’d been coming back to Moscow about once a year. During that time, the city kept getting nicer, and the political situation kept getting worse. It was as if, in Russia, more prosperity meant less freedom. In the nineteen-nineties, Moscow was chaotic, crowded, dirty, and poor, but you could buy half a dozen newspapers on every corner that would denounce the war in Chechnya and call on Boris Yeltsin to resign. Nothing was holy, and everything was permitted. Twenty-five years later, Moscow was clean, tidy, and rich; you could get fresh pastries on every corner. You could also get prosecuted for something you said on Facebook. One of my friends had recently spent ten days in jail for protesting new construction in his neighborhood. He said that he met a lot of interesting people.

The material prosperity seemed to point away from war; the political repression, toward it. Outside of Moscow, things were less comfortable, and outside of Russia the Kremlin had in recent years become more aggressive. It had annexed Crimea , supported an insurgency in eastern Ukraine , propped up the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, interfered in the U.S. Presidential election. But internally the situation was stagnant: the same people in charge, the same rhetoric about the West, the same ideological mishmash of Soviet nostalgia , Russian Orthodoxy , and conspicuous consumption. In 2021, Vladimir Putin had changed the constitution so that he could stay in power, if he wanted, until 2036. The comparison people made most often was to the Brezhnev years—what Leonid Brezhnev himself had called the era of “developed socialism.” This was the era of developed Putinism. Most people did not expect any sudden moves.

My friends in Moscow were doing their best to wrap their minds around the contradictions. Alexander Baunov, a journalist and political analyst, was then at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. We met in his cozy apartment, overlooking a typical Moscow courtyard—a small copse of trees and parked cars, all covered lovingly in a fresh layer of snow. Baunov thought that a war was possible. There was a growing sense among the Russian élite that the results of the Cold War needed to be revisited. The West continued to treat Russia as if it had lost—expanding NATO to its borders and dealing with Russia, in the context of things like E.U. expansion, as being no more important or powerful than the Baltic states or Ukraine—but it was the Soviet Union that had lost, not Russia. Putin, in particular, felt unfairly treated. “Gorbachev lost the Cold War,” Baunov said. “Maybe Yeltsin lost the Cold War. But not Putin. Putin has only ever won. He won in Chechnya, he won in Georgia, he won in Syria. So why does he continue to be treated like a loser?” Barack Obama referred to his country as a mere “regional power”; despite hosting a fabulous Olympics, Russia was sanctioned in 2014 for invading Ukraine, and sanctioned again, a few years later, for interfering in the U.S. Presidential elections. It was the sort of thing that the United States got away with all the time. But Russia got punished. It was insulting.

At the same time, Baunov thought that an actual war seemed unlikely. Ukraine was not only supposedly an organic part of Russia, it was also a key element of the Russian state’s mythology around the Second World War. The regime had invested so much energy into commemorating the victory over fascism; to turn around and then bomb Kyiv and Kharkiv, just as the fascists had once done, would stretch the borders of irony too far. And Putin, for all his bluster, was actually pretty cautious. He never started a fight he wasn’t sure he could win. Initiating a war with a NATO -backed Ukraine could be dangerous; it could lead to unpredictable consequences. It could lead to instability, and stability was the one thing that Putin had delivered to Russians over the past twenty years.

For liberals, it was increasingly a period of accommodation and consolidation. Another friend, whom I’ll call Kolya, had left his job writing life-style pieces for an independent Web site a few years earlier, as the Kremlin’s media policy grew increasingly meddlesome. Kolya accepted an offer to write pieces on social themes for a government outlet. This was far better, and clearer: he knew what topics to stay away from, and the pay was good.

I visited Kolya at his place near Patriarch’s Ponds. He had married into a family that had once been part of the Soviet nomenklatura, and he and his wife had inherited an apartment in a handsome nineteen-sixties Party building in the city center. From Kolya’s balcony you could see Brezhnev’s old apartment. You could tell it was Brezhnev’s because the windows were bigger than the surrounding ones. As for Kolya’s apartment, it was smaller than other apartments in his building. The reason was that the apartment next to his had once belonged to a Soviet war hero, and the war hero, of course, needed the building’s largest apartment, so his had been expanded, long ago, at the expense of Kolya’s. Still, it was a very nice apartment, with enormously high ceilings and lots of light.

Kolya was closely following the situation around Alexey Navalny , who had returned to Russia and been imprisoned a year before. Navalny was slowly being tortured to death in prison, and yet his team of investigators and activists continued to publish exposés of Russian officials’ corruption. There was still some real journalistic work being done in Russia, though a number of outlets, such as the news site Meduza, were primarily operating from abroad. Kolya said that he worried about outright censorship, but also about self-censorship. He told me about journalists who had left the field. One had gone to work in communications for a large bank. Another was now working on elections—“and not in a good way.” The noose was tightening, and yet no one thought there’d be a war.

What is one to make, in retrospect, of what happened to Russia between December, 1991, when its President, Boris Yeltsin, signed an agreement with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to disband the U.S.S.R., and February 24, 2022, when Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, ordered his troops, some of whom were stationed in Belarus, to invade Ukraine from the east, the south, and the north? There are many competing explanations. Some say that the economic and political reforms which were promised in the nineteen-nineties never actually happened; others that they happened too quickly. Some say that Russia was not prepared for democracy; others that the West was not prepared for a democratic Russia. Some say that it was all Putin’s fault, for destroying independent political life; others that it was Yeltsin’s, for failing to take advantage of Russia’s brief period of freedom; still others say that it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s, for so carelessly and naïvely destroying the U.S.S.R.

When Gorbachev began dismantling the empire, one of his most resonant phrases had been “We can’t go on living like this.” By “this” he meant poverty, and violence, and lies. Gorbachev also spoke of trying to build a “normal, modern country”—a country that did not invade its neighbors (as the U.S.S.R. had done to Afghanistan), or spend massive amounts of its budget on the military, but instead engaged in trade and tried to let people lead their lives. A few years later, Yeltsin used the same language of normality and meant, roughly, the same thing.

The question of whether Russia ever became a “normal” country has been hotly debated in political science. A famous 2004 article in Foreign Affairs , by the economist Andrei Shleifer and the political scientist Daniel Treisman, was called, simply, “A Normal Country.” Writing during an ebb in American interest in Russia, as Putin was consolidating his control of the country but before he started acting more aggressively toward his neighbors, Shleifer and Treisman argued that what looked like Russia’s poor performance as a democracy was just about average for a country with its level of income and development. For some time after 2004, there was reason to think that rising living standards, travel, and iPhones would do the work that lectures from Western politicians had failed to do—that modernity itself would make Russia a place where people went about their business and raised their families, and the government did not send them to die for no good reason on foreign soil.

That is not what happened. The oil and gas boom of the last two decades created for many Russians a level of prosperity that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. Despite this, the violence and the lies persisted.

Alexander Baunov calls what happened in February of last year a putsch—the capture of the state by a clique bent on its own imperial projects and survival. “Just because the people carrying it out are the ones in power, does not make it less of a putsch,” Baunov told me recently. “There was no demand for this in Russian society.” Many Russians have, perhaps, accepted the war; they have sent their sons and husbands to die in it; but it was not anything that people were clamoring for. The capture of Crimea had been celebrated, but no one except the most marginal nationalists was calling for something similar to happen to Kherson or Zaporizhzhia, or even really the Donbas. As Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address to the Russian people on the eve of the war, Donetsk and Luhansk to most Russians were just words. Whereas for Ukrainians, he added, “this is our land. This is our history.” It was their home.

About half of the people I met with in Moscow last January are no longer there —one is in France, another in Latvia, my aunt is in Tel Aviv. My friend Kolya, whose apartment is across from Brezhnev’s, has remained in Moscow. He does not know English, he and his wife have a little kid and two elderly parents between them, and it’s just not clear what they would do abroad. Kolya says that, insofar as he’s able, he has stopped talking to people at work: “They are decent people on the whole but it’s not a situation anymore where it’s possible to talk in half-tones.” No one has asked him to write about or in support of the war, and his superiors have even said that if he gets mobilized they will try to get him out of it.

When we met last January, Alexander Baunov did not think that he would leave Russia, even if things got worse. “Social capital does not cross borders,” Baunov said. “And that’s the only capital we have.” But, just a few days after the war began, Baunov and his partner packed some bags and some books and flew to Dubai, then Belgrade, then Vienna, where Baunov had a fellowship. They have been flitting around the world, in a precarious visa situation, ever since. (A book that Baunov has been working on for several years, about twentieth-century dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, and Greece, came out last month; it is called “The End of the Regime.”)

I asked him why it was possible for him to live in Russia before the invasion, and why it was impossible to do so after it. He admitted that from afar it could look like a distinction without a difference. “If you’re in the Western information space and have been reading for twenty years about how Putin is a dictator, maybe it makes no sense,” Baunov said. “But from inside the difference was very clear.” Putin had been running a particular kind of dictatorship—a relatively restrained one. There were certain topics that you needed to stay away from and names you couldn’t mention, and, if you really threw down the gauntlet, the regime might well try to kill you. But for most people life was tolerable. You could color inside the lines, urge reforms and wiser governance, and hope for better days. After the invasion, that was no longer possible. The government passed laws threatening up to fifteen years’ imprisonment for speech that was deemed defamatory to the armed forces; the use of the word “war” instead of “special military operation” fell under this category. The remaining independent outlets—most notably the radio station Ekho Moskvy and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta —were forced to suspend operations. That happened quickly, in the first weeks of the war, and since then the restrictions have only increased; Carnegie Moscow Center, which had been operating in Russia since 1994, was forced to close in April.

I asked Baunov how long he thought it would be before he returned to Russia. He said that he didn’t know, but it was possible that he would never return. There was no going back to February 23rd—not for him, not for Russia, and especially not for the Putin regime. “The country has undergone a moral catastrophe,” Baunov said. “Going back, in the future, would mean living with people who supported this catastrophe; who think they had taken part in a great project; who are proud of their participation in it.”

If once, in the Kremlin, there had been an ongoing argument between mildly pro-Western liberals and resolutely anti-Western conservatives, that argument is over. The liberals have lost. According to Baunov, there remains a small group of technocrats who would prefer something short of all-out war. “It’s not a party of peace, but you could call it the Party of peaceful life,” he said. “It’s people who want to ride in electric buses and dress well.” But it is on its heels. And though it was hard for Baunov to imagine Russia going back to the Soviet era, and even the Stalinist era, the country was already some way there. There was the search for internal enemies, the drawing up of lists, the public calls for ever harsher measures. On the day that we spoke, in late January, the news site Meduza was branded an “undesirable organization.” This meant that anyone publicly sharing their work could, in theory, be subject to criminal prosecution.

Baunov fears that there is room for things to get much worse. He recalled how, on January 22, 1905—Bloody Sunday—the tsar’s forces fired on peaceful demonstrators in St. Petersburg, precipitating a revolutionary crisis. “A few tens of people were shot and it was a major event,” he said. “A few years later, thousands of people were being shot and it wasn’t even notable.” The intervening years had seen Russia engaged in a major European war, and society’s tolerance for violence had drastically increased. “The room for experimentation on a population is almost limitless,” Baunov went on. “China went through the Cultural Revolution, and survived. Russia went through the Gulags and survived. Repressions decrease society’s willingness to resist.” That’s why governments use them.

For years after the Soviet collapse, it had seemed, to some, as if the Soviet era had been a bad dream, a deviation. Economists wrote studies tracing the likely development of the Russian economy after 1913 if war and revolution had not intervened. Part of the post-Soviet project, including Putin’s, was to restore some of the cultural ties that had been severed by the Soviets—to resurrect churches that the Bolsheviks had turned into bus stations, to repair old buildings that the Soviets had neglected, to give respect to various political figures from the past (Tsar Alexander III, for example).

But what if it was the post-Soviet period that was the exception? “It’s been a long time since the Kingdom of Novgorod,” in the words of the historian Stephen Kotkin . Before the Revolution, the Russian Empire, too, had been one of the most repressive regimes in Europe. Jews were kept in the Pale of Settlement. You needed the tsar’s permission to travel abroad. Much of the population, just a couple of generations away from serfdom, lived in abject poverty. The Soviets cancelled some of these laws, but added others. Aside from short bursts of freedom here and there, the story of Russia was the story of unceasing government destruction of people’s lives.

So which was the illusion: the peaceful Russia or the violent one, the Russia that trades and slowly prospers, or the one that brings only lies and threats and death?

Russia has given us Putin, but it has also given us all the people who stood up to Putin. The Party of peaceful life, as Baunov called it, was not winning, but at least, so far, it has not lost; all the time, people continue to get imprisoned for speaking out against the war. I was reminded of my friend Kolya—in the weeks after the war began, as Western sanctions were announced and prices began rising, he was one of the thousands of Russians who rushed out to make last-minute purchases. It was a way of taking some control of his destiny at a moment when things seemed dangerously out of control. As the Russian Army attempted and failed to take Kyiv , Kolya and his wife bought some chairs. ♦

More on the War in Ukraine

How Ukrainians saved their capital .

A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West .

How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war .

The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv .

The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war .

PUBLICATIONS

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Publications

Russia's war in ukraine: identity, history, and conflict.

By Jeffrey Mankoff CSIS

Protesters demonstrate against Russian invasion of Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constitutes the biggest threat to peace and security in Europe since the end of the Cold War. On February 21, 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a bizarre and at times unhinged speech laying out a long list of grievances as justification for the “special military operation” announced the following day. While these grievances included the long-simmering dispute over the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the shape of the post–Cold War security architecture in Europe, the speech centered on a much more fundamental issue: the legitimacy of Ukrainian identity and statehood themselves. It reflected a worldview Putin had long expressed, emphasizing the deep-seated unity among the Eastern Slavs—Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, who all trace their origins to the medieval Kyivan Rus commonwealth—and suggesting that the modern states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus should share a political destiny both today and in the future. The corollary to that view is the claim that distinct Ukrainian and Belarusian identities are the product of foreign manipulation and that, today, the West is following in the footsteps of Russia’s imperial rivals in using Ukraine (and Belarus) as part of an “ anti-Russia project .”

Throughout Putin’s time in office, Moscow has pursued a policy toward Ukraine and Belarus predicated on the assumption that their respective national identities are artificial—and therefore fragile. Putin’s arguments about foreign enemies promoting Ukrainian (and, in a more diffuse way, Belarusian) identity as part of a geopolitical struggle against Russia echo the way many of his predecessors refused to accept the agency of ordinary people seeking autonomy from tsarist or Soviet domination. The historically minded Putin often invokes the ideas of thinkers emphasizing the organic unity of the Russian Empire and its people—especially its Slavic, Orthodox core—in a form of what the historian Timothy Snyder calls the “politics of eternity,” the belief in an unchanging historical essence.

The salience that Putin and other Russian elites assign to the idea of Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian unity helps explain the origins of the current conflict, notably why Moscow was willing to risk a large-scale war on its borders when neither Ukraine nor NATO posed any military threat. It also suggests that Moscow’s ambitions extend beyond preventing Ukrainian NATO membership and encompass a more thorough aspiration to dominate Ukraine politically, militarily, and economically.

Read the rest of the report at CSIS -

Jeffrey Mankoff is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University.

The views expressed are the authors own and do not reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

9 big questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, answered

Addressing some of the most pressing questions of the whole war, from how it started to how it might end.

by Zack Beauchamp

A Ukrainian woman stands with her belongings outside a bombed maternity hospital in Mariupol.

The Russian war in Ukraine has proven itself to be one of the most consequential political events of our time — and one of the most confusing.

From the outset, Russia’s decision to invade was hard to understand; it seemed at odds with what most experts saw as Russia’s strategic interests. As the war has progressed, the widely predicted Russian victory has failed to emerge as Ukrainian fighters have repeatedly fended off attacks from a vastly superior force. Around the world, from Washington to Berlin to Beijing, global powers have reacted in striking and even historically unprecedented fashion.

What follows is an attempt to make sense of all of this: to tackle the biggest questions everyone is asking about the war. It is a comprehensive guide to understanding what is happening in Ukraine and why it matters.

1) Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

In a televised speech announcing Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24 , Russian President Vladimir Putin said the invasion was designed to stop a “genocide” perpetrated by “the Kyiv regime” — and ultimately to achieve “the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.”

Though the claims of genocide and Nazi rule in Kyiv were transparently false , the rhetoric revealed Putin’s maximalist war aims: regime change (“de-Nazification”) and the elimination of Ukraine’s status as a sovereign state outside of Russian control (“demilitarization”). Why he would want to do this is a more complex story, one that emerges out of the very long arc of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Ukraine and Russia have significant, deep, and longstanding cultural and historical ties; both date their political origins back to the ninth-century Slavic kingdom of Kievan Rus. But these ties do not make them historically identical, as Putin has repeatedly claimed in his public rhetoric. Since the rise of the modern Ukrainian national movement in the mid- to late-19th century , Russian rule in Ukraine — in both the czarist and Soviet periods — increasingly came to resemble that of an imperial power governing an unwilling colony .

Russian imperial rule ended in 1991 when 92 percent of Ukrainians voted in a national referendum to secede from the decaying Soviet Union. Almost immediately afterward , political scientists and regional experts began warning that the Russian-Ukrainian border would be a flashpoint, predicting that internal divides between the more pro-European population of western Ukraine and relatively more pro-Russian east , contested territory like the Crimean Peninsula , and Russian desire to reestablish control over its wayward vassal could all lead to conflict between the new neighbors.

It took about 20 years for these predictions to be proven right. In late 2013, Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the authoritarian and pro-Russian tilt of incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych, forcing his resignation on February 22, 2014. Five days later, the Russian military swiftly seized control of Crimea and declared it Russian territory, a brazenly illegal move that a majority of Crimeans nonetheless seemed to welcome . Pro-Russia protests in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine gave way to a violent rebellion — one stoked and armed by the Kremlin , and backed by disguised Russian troops .

Protesters carrying a huge European Union flag.

The Ukrainian uprising against Yanukovych — called the “Euromaidan” movement because they were pro-EU protests that most prominently took place in Kyiv’s Maidan square — represented to Russia a threat not just to its influence over Ukraine but to the very survival of Putin’s regime. In Putin’s mind, Euromaidan was a Western-sponsored plot to overthrow a Kremlin ally, part of a broader plan to undermine Russia itself that included NATO’s post-Cold War expansions to the east.

“We understand what is happening; we understand that [the protests] were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration,” he said in a March 2014 speech on the annexation of Crimea. “With Ukraine, our Western partners have crossed the line.”

Beneath this rhetoric, according to experts on Russia, lies a deeper unstated fear: that his regime might fall prey to a similar protest movement . Ukraine could not succeed, in his view, because it might create a pro-Western model for Russians to emulate — one that the United States might eventually try to covertly export to Moscow. This was a central part of his thinking in 2014 , and it remains so today.

“He sees CIA agents behind every anti-Russian political movement,” says Seva Gunitsky, a political scientist who studies Russia at the University of Toronto. “He thinks the West wants to subvert his regime the way they did in Ukraine.”

Beginning in March 2021, Russian forces began deploying to the Ukrainian border in larger and larger numbers. Putin’s nationalist rhetoric became more aggressive: In July 2021, the Russian president published a 5,000-word essay arguing that Ukrainian nationalism was a fiction, that the country was historically always part of Russia, and that a pro-Western Ukraine posed an existential threat to the Russian nation.

Europe’s embrace of Ukrainian refugees, explained in six charts and one map

“The formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us,” as he put it in his 2021 essay .

Why Putin decided that merely seizing part of Ukraine was no longer enough remains a matter of significant debate among experts. One theory, advanced by Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar , is that pandemic-induced isolation drove him to an extreme ideological place.

But while the immediate cause of Putin’s shift on Ukraine is not clear, the nature of that shift is. His longtime belief in the urgency of restoring Russia’s greatness curdled into a neo-imperial desire to bring Ukraine back under direct Russian control. And in Russia, where Putin rules basically unchecked, that meant a full-scale war.

2) Who is winning the war?

On paper , Russia’s military vastly outstrips Ukraine’s. Russia spends over 10 times as much on defense annually as Ukraine; the Russian military has a little under three times as much artillery as Ukraine and roughly 10 times as many fixed-wing aircraft. As a result, the general pre-invasion view was that Russia would easily win a conventional war. In early February, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley told members of Congress that Kyiv, the capital, could fall within 72 hours of a Russian invasion .

But that’s not how things have played out . A month into the invasion, Ukrainians still hold Kyiv. Russia has made some gains, especially in the east and south, but the consensus view among military experts is that Ukraine’s defenses have held stoutly — to the point where Ukrainians have been able to launch counteroffensives .

A soldier walks in front of a destroyed Russian tank in Kharkov, Ukraine, on March 14.

The initial Russian plan reportedly operated under the assumption that a swift march on Kyiv would meet only token resistance. Putin “actually really thought this would be a ‘special military operation’: They would be done in a few days, and it wouldn’t be a real war,” says Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the CNA think tank.

This plan fell apart within the first 48 hours of the war when early operations like an airborne assault on the Hostomel airport ended in disaster , forcing Russian generals to develop a new strategy on the fly. What they came up with — massive artillery bombardments and attempts to encircle and besiege Ukraine’s major cities — was more effective (and more brutal). The Russians made some inroads into Ukrainian territory, especially in the south, where they have laid siege to Mariupol and taken Kherson and Melitopol.

Assessed territory in Ukraine controlled by Russian military (in red).

But these Russian advances are a bit misleading. Ukraine, Kofman explains, made the tactical decision to trade “space for time” : to withdraw strategically rather than fight for every inch of Ukrainian land, confronting the Russians on the territory and at the time of their choosing.

As the fighting continued, the nature of the Ukrainian choice became clearer. Instead of getting into pitched large-scale battles with Russians on open terrain, where Russia’s numerical advantages would prove decisive, the Ukrainians instead decided to engage in a series of smaller-scale clashes .

Ukrainian forces have bogged down Russian units in towns and smaller cities ; street-to-street combat favors defenders who can use their superior knowledge of the city’s geography to hide and conduct ambushes. They have attacked isolated and exposed Russian units traveling on open roads. They have repeatedly raided poorly protected supply lines.

This approach has proven remarkably effective. By mid-March, Western intelligence agencies and open source analysts concluded that the Ukrainians had successfully managed to stall the Russian invasion. The Russian military all but openly recognized this reality in a late March briefing, in which top generals implausibly claimed they never intended to take Kyiv and were always focused on making territorial gains in the east.

“The initial Russian campaign to invade and conquer Ukraine is culminating without achieving its objectives — it is being defeated, in other words,” military scholar Frederick Kagan wrote in a March 22 brief for the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank.

Currently, Ukrainian forces are on the offensive. They have pushed the Russians farther from Kyiv , with some reports suggesting they have retaken the suburb of Irpin and forced Russia to withdraw some of its forces from the area in a tacit admission of defeat. In the south, Ukrainian forces are contesting Russian control over Kherson .

And throughout the fighting, Russian casualties have been horrifically high.

It’s hard to get accurate information in a war zone, but one of the more authoritative estimates of Russian war dead — from the US Defense Department — concludes that over 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the first three weeks of fighting, a figure about three times as large as the total US service members dead in all 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan. A separate NATO estimate puts that at the low end, estimating between 7,000 and 15,000 Russians killed in action and as many as 40,000 total losses (including injuries, captures, and desertions). Seven Russian generals have been reported killed in the fighting, and materiel losses — ranging from armor to aircraft — have been enormous. (Russia puts its death toll at more than 1,300 soldiers, which is almost certainly a significant undercount.)

This all does not mean that a Russian victory is impossible. Any number of things, ranging from Russian reinforcements to the fall of besieged Mariupol, could give the war effort new life.

It does, however, mean that what Russia is doing right now hasn’t worked.

“If the point is just to wreak havoc, then they’re doing fine. But if the point is to wreak havoc and thus advance further — be able to hold more territory — they’re not doing fine,” says Olga Oliker, the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

3) Why is Russia’s military performing so poorly?

Russia’s invasion has gone awry for two basic reasons: Its military wasn’t ready to fight a war like this, and the Ukrainians have put up a much stronger defense than anyone expected.

Russia’s problems begin with Putin’s unrealistic invasion plan. But even after the Russian high command adjusted its strategy, other flaws in the army remained.

“We’re seeing a country militarily implode,” says Robert Farley, a professor who studies air power at the University of Kentucky.

One of the biggest and most noticeable issues has been rickety logistics. Some of the most famous images of the war have been of Russian armored vehicles parked on Ukrainian roads, seemingly out of gas and unable to advance. The Russian forces have proven to be underequipped and badly supplied, encountering problems ranging from poor communications to inadequate tires .

Part of the reason is a lack of sufficient preparation. Per Kofman, the Russian military simply “wasn’t organized for this kind of war” — meaning, the conquest of Europe’s second-largest country by area. Another part of it is corruption in the Russian procurement system. Graft in Russia is less a bug in its political system than a feature; one way the Kremlin maintains the loyalty of its elite is by allowing them to profit off of government activity . Military procurement is no exception to this pattern of widespread corruption, and it has led to troops having substandard access to vital supplies .

The same lack of preparation has plagued Russia’s air force . Despite outnumbering the Ukrainian air force by roughly 10 times, the Russians have failed to establish air superiority: Ukraine’s planes are still flying and its air defenses mostly remain in place .

“The Russian Army was not prepared to fight this war” —Jason Lyall, Dartmouth political scientist

Perhaps most importantly, close observers of the war believe Russians are suffering from poor morale. Because Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine was kept secret from the vast majority of Russians, the government had a limited ability to lay a propaganda groundwork that would get their soldiers motivated to fight. The current Russian force has little sense of what they’re fighting for or why — and are waging war against a country with which they have religious, ethnic, historical, and potentially even familial ties. In a military that has long had systemic morale problems, that’s a recipe for battlefield disaster.

“Russian morale was incredibly low BEFORE the war broke out. Brutal hazing in the military, second-class (or worse) status by its conscript soldiers, ethnic divisions, corruption, you name it: the Russian Army was not prepared to fight this war,” Jason Lyall, a Dartmouth political scientist who studies morale, explains via email. “High rates of abandoned or captured equipment, reports of sabotaged equipment, and large numbers of soldiers deserting (or simply camping out in the forest) are all products of low morale.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a speech via videoconference to the US Congress at the Capitol on March 16.

The contrast with the Ukrainians couldn’t be starker. They are defending their homes and their families from an unprovoked invasion, led by a charismatic leader who has made a personal stand in Kyiv. Ukrainian high morale is a key reason, in addition to advanced Western armaments, that the defenders have dramatically outperformed expectations.

“Having spent a chunk of my professional career [working] with the Ukrainians, nobody, myself included and themselves included, had all that high an estimation of their military capacity,” Oliker says.

Again, none of this will necessarily remain the case throughout the war. Morale can shift with battlefield developments. And even if Russian morale remains low, it’s still possible for them to win — though they’re more likely to do so in a brutally ugly fashion.

4) What has the war meant for ordinary Ukrainians?

As the fighting has dragged on, Russia has gravitated toward tactics that, by design, hurt civilians. Most notably, Russia has attempted to lay siege to Ukraine’s cities, cutting off supply and escape routes while bombarding them with artillery. The purpose of the strategy is to wear down the Ukrainian defenders’ willingness to fight, including by inflicting mass pain on the civilian populations.

The result has been nightmarish: an astonishing outflow of Ukrainian refugees and tremendous suffering for many of those who were unwilling or unable to leave.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , more than 3.8 million Ukrainians fled the country between February 24 and March 27. That’s about 8.8 percent of Ukraine’s total population — in proportional terms, the rough equivalent of the entire population of Texas being forced to flee the United States.

Another point of comparison: In 2015, four years into the Syrian civil war and the height of the global refugee crisis, there were a little more than 4 million Syrian refugees living in nearby countries . The Ukraine war has produced a similarly sized exodus in just a month, leading to truly massive refugee flows to its European neighbors. Poland, the primary destination of Ukrainian refugees, is currently housing over 2.3 million Ukrainians, a figure larger than the entire population of Warsaw, its capital and largest city.

The map shows the escape routes for people fleeing the Ukraine crisis. It includes 31 border checkpoints to neighboring countries, and six humanitarian corridors.

For those civilians who have been unable to flee, the situation is dire. There are no reliable estimates of death totals; a March 27 UN estimate puts the figure at 1,119 but cautions that “the actual figures are considerably higher [because] the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration.”

The UN assessment does not blame one side or the other for these deaths, but does note that “most of the civilian casualties recorded were caused by the use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area, including shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and airstrikes.” It is the Russians, primarily, who are using these sorts of weapons in populated areas; Human Rights Watch has announced that there are “early signs of war crimes” being committed by Russian soldiers in these kinds of attacks, and President Joe Biden has personally labeled Putin a “war criminal.”

Nowhere is this devastation more visible than the southern city of Mariupol, the largest Ukrainian population center to which Russia has laid siege. Aerial footage of the city published by the Guardian in late March reveals entire blocks demolished by Russian bombardment:

In mid-March, three Associated Press journalists — the last international reporters in the city before they too were evacuated — managed to file a dispatch describing life on the ground. They reported a death total of 2,500 but cautioned that “many bodies can’t be counted because of the endless shelling .” The situation is impossibly dire:

Airstrikes and shells have hit the maternity hospital, the fire department, homes, a church, a field outside a school. For the estimated hundreds of thousands who remain, there is quite simply nowhere to go. The surrounding roads are mined and the port blocked. Food is running out, and the Russians have stopped humanitarian attempts to bring it in. Electricity is mostly gone and water is sparse, with residents melting snow to drink. Some parents have even left their newborns at the hospital, perhaps hoping to give them a chance at life in the one place with decent electricity and water.

The battlefield failures of the Russian military have raised questions about its competence in difficult block-to-block fighting; Farley, the Kentucky professor, says, “This Russian army does not look like it can conduct serious [urban warfare].” As a result, taking Ukrainian cities means besieging them — starving them out, destroying their will to fight, and only moving into the city proper after its population is unwilling to resist or outright incapable of putting up a fight.

5) What do Russians think about the war?

Vladimir Putin’s government has ramped up its already repressive policies during the Ukraine conflict, shuttering independent media outlets and blocking access to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram . It’s now extremely difficult to get a sense of what either ordinary Russians or the country’s elite think about the war, as criticizing it could lead to a lengthy stint in prison.

But despite this opacity, expert Russia watchers have developed a broad idea of what’s going on there. The war has stirred up some opposition and anti-Putin sentiment, but it has been confined to a minority who are unlikely to change Putin’s mind, let alone topple him.

The bulk of the Russian public was no more prepared for war than the bulk of the Russian military — in fact, probably less so. After Putin announced the launch of his “special military operation” in Ukraine on national television, there was a surprising amount of criticism from high-profile Russians — figures ranging from billionaires to athletes to social media influencers. One Russian journalist, Marina Ovsyannikova, bravely ran into the background of a government broadcast while holding an antiwar sign.

“It is unprecedented to see oligarchs, other elected officials, and other powerful people in society publicly speaking out against the war,” says Alexis Lerner, a scholar of dissent in Russia at the US Naval Academy.

There have also been antiwar rallies in dozens of Russian cities. How many have participated in these rallies is hard to say, but the human rights group OVD-Info estimates that over 15,000 Russians have been arrested at the events since the war began.

Could these eruptions of antiwar sentiment at the elite and mass public level suggest a coming coup or revolution against the Putin regime? Experts caution that these events remain quite unlikely.

Putin has done an effective job engaging in what political scientists call “coup-proofing.” He has put in barriers — from seeding the military with counterintelligence officers to splitting up the state security services into different groups led by trusted allies — that make it quite difficult for anyone in his government to successfully move against him.

“Putin has prepared for this eventuality for a long time and has taken a lot of concerted actions to make sure he’s not vulnerable,” says Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan who studies the history of coups in Russia and the former communist bloc.

Similarly, turning the antiwar protests into a full-blown influential movement is a very tall order.

“It is hard to organize sustained collective protest in Russia,” notes Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard who studies protest movements . “Putin’s government has criminalized many forms of protests, and has shut down or restricted the activities of groups, movements, and media outlets perceived to be in opposition or associated with the West.”

Underpinning it all is tight government control of the information environment. Most Russians get their news from government-run media , which has been serving up a steady diet of pro-war content. Many of them appear to genuinely believe what they hear: One independent opinion poll found that 58 percent of Russians supported the war to at least some degree.

Prior to the war, Putin also appeared to be a genuinely popular figure in Russia. The elite depend on him for their position and fortune; many citizens see him as the man who saved Russia from the chaos of the immediate post-Communist period. A disastrous war might end up changing that, but the odds that even a sustained drop in his support translates into a coup or revolution remain low indeed.

6) What is the US role in the conflict?

The war remains, for the moment, a conflict between Ukraine and Russia. But the United States is the most important third party, using a number of powerful tools — short of direct military intervention — to aid the Ukrainian cause.

Any serious assessment of US involvement needs to start in the post-Cold War 1990s , when the US and its NATO allies made the decision to open alliance membership to former communist states.

Many of these countries, wary of once again being put under the Russian boot, clamored to join the alliance, which commits all involved countries to defend any member-state in the event of an attack. In 2008, NATO officially announced that Georgia and Ukraine — two former Soviet republics right on Russia’s doorstep — “ will become members of NATO ” at an unspecified future date. This infuriated the Russians, who saw NATO expansion as a direct threat to their own security.

There is no doubt that NATO expansion helped create some of the background conditions under which the current conflict became thinkable, generally pushing Putin’s foreign policy in a more anti-Western direction. Some experts see it as one of the key causes of his decision to attack Ukraine — but others strongly disagree, noting that NATO membership for Ukraine was already basically off the table before the war and that Russia’s declared war aims went far beyond simply blocking Ukraine’s NATO bid .

“NATO expansion was deeply unpopular in Russia. [But] Putin did not invade because of NATO expansion,” says Yoshiko Herrera, a Russia expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Regardless of where one falls on that debate, US policy during the conflict has been exceptionally clear: support the Ukrainians with massive amounts of military assistance while putting pressure on Putin to back down by organizing an unprecedented array of international economic sanctions.

Antiwar activists march during a protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Times Square, New York City, on March 26.

On the military side, weapons systems manufactured and provided by the US and Europe have played a vital role in blunting Russia’s advance. The Javelin anti-tank missile system, for example, is a lightweight American-made launcher that allows one or two infantry soldiers to take out a tank . Javelins have given the outgunned Ukrainians a fighting chance against Russian armor, becoming a popular symbol in the process .

Sanctions have proven similarly devastating in the economic realm .

The international punishments have been extremely broad, ranging from removing key Russian banks from the SWIFT global transaction system to a US ban on Russian oil imports to restrictions on doing business with particular members of the Russian elite . Freezing the assets of Russia’s central bank has proven to be a particularly damaging tool, wrecking Russia’s ability to deal with the collapse in the value of the ruble, its currency. As a result, the Russian economy is projected to contract by 15 percent this year ; mass unemployment looms .

There is more America can do, particularly when it comes to fulfilling Ukrainian requests for new fighter jets. In March, Washington rejected a Polish plan to transfer MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine via a US Air Force base in Germany, arguing that it could be too provocative.

But the MiG-29 incident is more the exception than it is the rule. On the whole, the United States has been strikingly willing to take aggressive steps to punish Moscow and aid Kyiv’s war effort.

7) How is the rest of the world responding to Russia’s actions?

On the surface, the world appears to be fairly united behind the Ukrainian cause. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion by a whopping 141-5 margin (with 35 abstentions). But the UN vote conceals a great deal of disagreement, especially among the world’s largest and most influential countries — divergences that don’t always fall neatly along democracy-versus-autocracy lines.

The most aggressive anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian positions can, perhaps unsurprisingly, be found in Europe and the broader West. EU and NATO members, with the partial exceptions of Hungary and Turkey , have strongly supported the Ukrainian war effort and implemented punishing sanctions on Russia (a major trading partner). It’s the strongest show of European unity since the Cold War, one that many observers see as a sign that Putin’s invasion has already backfired.

Germany, which has important trade ties with Russia and a post-World War II tradition of pacifism, is perhaps the most striking case. Nearly overnight, the Russian invasion convinced center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz to support rearmament , introducing a proposal to more than triple Germany’s defense budget that’s widely backed by the German public.

“It’s really revolutionary,” Sophia Besch, a Berlin-based senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told my colleague Jen Kirby . “Scholz, in his speech, did away with and overturned so many of what we thought were certainties of German defense policy.”

Thousands of people take part in an antiwar demonstration in Dusseldorf, Germany, on March 5.

Though Scholz has refused to outright ban Russian oil and gas imports, he has blocked the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and committed to a long-term strategy of weaning Germany off of Russian energy. All signs point to Russia waking a sleeping giant — of creating a powerful military and economic enemy in the heart of the European continent.

China, by contrast, has been the most pro-Russia of the major global powers.

The two countries, bound by shared animus toward a US-dominated world order, have grown increasingly close in recent years. Chinese propaganda has largely toed the Russian line on the Ukraine war. US intelligence, which has been remarkably accurate during the crisis, believes that Russia has requested military and financial assistance from Beijing — which hasn’t been provided yet but may well be forthcoming.

That said, it’s possible to overstate the degree to which China has taken the Russian side. Beijing has a strong stated commitment to state sovereignty — the bedrock of its position on Taiwan is that the island is actually Chinese territory — which makes a full-throated backing of the invasion ideologically awkward . There’s a notable amount of debate among Chinese policy experts and in the public , with some analysts publicly advocating that Beijing adopt a more neutral line on the conflict.

Most other countries around the world fall somewhere on the spectrum between the West and China. Outside of Europe, only a handful of mostly pro-American states — like South Korea, Japan, and Australia — have joined the sanctions regime. The majority of countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America do not support the invasion, but won’t do very much to punish Russia for it either.

Why India isn’t denouncing Russia’s Ukraine war

India is perhaps the most interesting country in this category. A rising Asian democracy that has violently clashed with China in the very recent past , it has good reasons to present itself as an American partner in the defense of freedom. Yet India also depends heavily on Russian-made weapons for its own defense and hopes to use its relationship with Russia to limit the Moscow-Beijing partnership. It’s also worth noting that India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has strong autocratic inclinations .

The result of all of this is a balancing act reminiscent of India’s Cold War approach of “non-alignment” : refusing to side with either the Russian or American positions while attempting to maintain decent relations with both . India’s perceptions of its strategic interests, more than ideological views about democracy, appear to be shaping its response to the war — as seems to be the case with quite a few countries around the world.

8) Could this turn into World War III?

The basic, scary answer to this question is yes: The invasion of Ukraine has put us at the greatest risk of a NATO-Russia war in decades.

The somewhat more comforting and nuanced answer is that the absolute risk remains relatively low so long as there is no direct NATO involvement in the conflict, which the Biden administration has repeatedly ruled out . Though Biden said “this man [Putin] cannot remain in power” in a late March speech, both White House officials and the president himself stressed afterward that the US policy was not regime change in Moscow.

“Things are stable in a nuclear sense right now,” says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear weapons at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “The minute NATO gets involved, the scope of the war widens.”

In theory, US and NATO military assistance to Ukraine could open the door to escalation: Russia could attack a military depot in Poland containing weapons bound for Ukraine, for instance. But in practice, it’s unlikely: The Russians don’t appear to want a wider war with NATO that risks nuclear escalation, and so have avoided cross-border strikes even when it might destroy supply shipments bound for Ukraine.

In early March, the US Department of Defense opened a direct line of communication with its Russian peers in order to avoid any kind of accidental conflict. It’s not clear how well this is working — some reporting suggests the Russians aren’t answering American calls — but there is a long history of effective dialogue between rivals who are fighting each other through proxy forces.

“States often cooperate to keep limits on their wars even as they fight one another clandestinely,” Lyall, the Dartmouth professor, tells me. “While there’s always a risk of unintended escalation, historical examples like Vietnam, Afghanistan (1980s), Afghanistan again (post-2001), and Syria show that wars can be fought ‘within bounds.’”

President Biden meets NATO allies in Poland on March 25 as they coordinate reaction to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

If the United States and NATO heed the call of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to impose a so-called “no-fly zone” over Ukrainian skies, the situation changes dramatically. No-fly zones are commitments to patrol and, if necessary, shoot down military aircraft that fly in the declared area, generally for the purpose of protecting civilians. In Ukraine, that would mean the US and its NATO allies sending in jets to patrol Ukraine’s skies — and being willing to shoot down any Russian planes that enter protected airspace. From there, the risks of a nuclear conflict become terrifyingly high.

Russia recognizes its inferiority to NATO in conventional terms; its military doctrine has long envisioned the use of nuclear weapons in a war with the Western alliance . In his speech declaring war on Ukraine, Putin all but openly vowed that any international intervention in the conflict would trigger nuclear retaliation.

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside: If you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” the Russian president said. “I hope you hear me.”

The Biden administration is taking these threats seriously. Much as the Kremlin hasn’t struck NATO supply missions to Ukraine, the White House has flatly rejected a no-fly zone or any other kind of direct military intervention.

“We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine,” Biden said on March 11 . “Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”

This does not mean the risk of a wider war is zero . Accidents happen, and countries can be dragged into war against their leaders’ best judgment. Political positions and risk calculi can also change: If Russia starts losing badly and uses smaller nukes on Ukrainian forces (called “tactical” nuclear weapons), Biden would likely feel the need to respond in some fairly aggressive way. Much depends on Washington and Moscow continuing to show a certain level of restraint.

9) How could the war end?

Wars do not typically end with the total defeat of one side or the other. More commonly, there’s some kind of negotiated settlement — either a ceasefire or more permanent peace treaty — where the two sides agree to stop fighting under a set of mutually agreeable terms.

It is possible that the Ukraine conflict turns out to be an exception: that Russian morale collapses completely, leading to utter battlefield defeat, or that Russia inflicts so much pain that Kyiv collapses. But most analysts believe that neither of these is especially likely given the way the war has played out to date.

“No matter how much military firepower they pour into it, [the Russians] are not going to be able to achieve regime change or some of their maximalist aims,” Kofman, of the CNA think tank, declares.

A negotiated settlement is the most likely way the conflict ends. Peace negotiations between the two sides are ongoing, and some reporting suggests they’re bearing fruit. On March 28, the Financial Times reported significant progress on a draft agreement covering issues ranging from Ukrainian NATO membership to the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. The next day, Russia pledged to decrease its use of force in Ukraine’s north as a sign of its commitment to the talks.

American officials, though, have been publicly skeptical of Russia’s seriousness in the talks. Even if Moscow is committed to reaching a settlement, the devil is always in the details with these sorts of things — and there are lots of barriers standing in the way of a successful resolution.

Ukrainian evacuees stand in line as they wait for further transport at the Medyka border crossing near the Ukrainian-Polish border on March 29.

Take NATO. The Russians want a simple pledge that Ukraine will remain “neutral” — staying out of foreign security blocs. The current draft agreement, per the Financial Times, does preclude Ukrainian NATO membership, but it permits Ukraine to join the EU. It also commits at least 11 countries, including the United States and China, to coming to Ukraine’s aid if it is attacked again. This would put Ukraine on a far stronger security footing than it had before the war — a victory for Kyiv and defeat for Moscow, one that Putin may ultimately conclude is unacceptable.

What, exactly, is a “neutral” Ukraine?

Another thorny issue — perhaps the thorniest — is the status of Crimea and the two breakaway Russian-supported republics in eastern Ukraine. The Russians want Ukrainian recognition of its annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions; Ukraine claims all three as part of its territory. Some compromise is imaginable here — an internationally monitored referendum in each territory, perhaps — but what that would look like is not obvious.

The resolution of these issues will likely depend quite a bit on the war’s progress. The more each side believes it has a decent chance to improve its battlefield position and gain leverage in negotiations, the less reason either will have to make concessions to the other in the name of ending the fighting.

And even if they do somehow come to an agreement, it may not end up holding .

On the Ukrainian side, ultra-nationalist militias could work to undermine any agreement with Russia that they believe gives away too much, as they threatened during pre-war negotiations aimed at preventing the Russian invasion .

On the Russian side, an agreement is only as good as Putin’s word. Even if it contains rigorous provisions designed to raise the costs of future aggression, like international peacekeepers, that may not hold him back from breaking the agreement.

This invasion did, after all, start with him launching an invasion that seemed bound to hurt Russia in the long run. Putin dragged the world into this mess; when and how it gets out of it depends just as heavily on his decisions.

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Understanding Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Aaron Stein
Maia Otarashvili
February 24, 2022
Eurasia Program

Introduction

On February 24, 2022 Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

In times of crisis, balanced, in-depth analysis and trusted expertise is paramount. The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) remains committed in its mission to provide expert analysis to policy makers and the public on the most pressing foreign policy challenges.

To help you understand this evolving crisis, we have compiled a list of publications, event recordings, and podcasts to help explain current events in Ukraine. FPRI has also included resources about other protracted conflicts, the neighboring Baltic states, and the role of NATO in managing the fallout from the war.

If you have not already done so, be sure to follow the FPRI fellows listed below for further reading and resources. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Russian Aggression in Ukraine & Russian Defense

Moscow’s Mind Games: Finding Ideology in Putin’s Russia – February 2023
The Confrontation with Russia and US Grand Strategy – February 2023
Tanks a Lot (Well, Actually Not That Many for Ukraine) – February 2023
Wagner Group Redefined: Threats and Responses – January 2023
‘Let’s Make a Deal’? Ukraine and the Poor Prospects for Negotiations with Putin – January 2023
Will Russia Survive Until 2084? – December 2022
How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success – December 2022
Ecological Path to Peace Is Possible in Ukraine – November 2022
Putin’s Philosophers: Reading Vasily Grossman in the Kremlin – November 2022
The Russian-Ukrainian War Triggers an Energy Revolution – September 2022
Ukraine’s Defense Industry and the Prospect of a Long War – September 2022
Understanding Russia’s Efforts at Technological Sovereignty – September 2022
Watching the War on Russian Television – August 2022
War Crimes in Ukraine: In Search of a Response – August 2022
Why Russian Elites Are Standing By Putin – July 2022
Climate Action Meets Energy Security: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Adds a New Dimension to Energy Transition – June 2022
The War’s Impact on Russia’s Economy and Ukrainian Politics – June 2022
The Evolving Political-Military Aims in the War in Ukraine After 100 Days – June 2022
How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine has Affected Kazakh Politics – June 2022
Russia’s Use of Cyberattacks: Lessons from the Second Ukraine War – June 2022
What’s Next for Ukraine’s (and its Neighbors’) Domestic and Foreign Policy? – June 2022
Reviving the Prospects for Coercive Diplomacy in Ukraine – May 2022
Food Prices, Elections, and the Wagner Group in Africa – April 2022
Appraising the War in Ukraine and Likely Outcomes – April 2022
Ukraine War Sparks Suspicion over Russia’s Designs on Kazakhstan – April 2022
Do Russians Really “Long for War” in Ukraine? – March 2022
Kadyrov’s Ukraine Gamble – March 2022
Lukashenka’s Fatal Mistake – March 2022
What We Can Learn about Russian Strategy from Ivan III – March 2022
The Russian Navy in the Russia-Ukraine War Scare – February 2022
How Will China Respond to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis? – January 2022
Moscow’s Compellence Strategy – January 2022
Zapad 2021 and Russia’s Potential for Warfighting – September 2021
Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy – August 2021
Russia’s Forever Wars: Syria and Pursuit of Great Power Status – September 2021
Understanding Russia’s Cyber Strategy – July 2021
Russia’s Nuclear Strategy: A Show of Strength Despite COVID-19 – May 2021
Even Thieves Need a Safe: Why the Putin Regime Causes, Deplores, and Yet Relies on Capital Flight for its Survival – November 2021
Five Years of War in the Donbas – October 2019
Coal Mines, Land Mines and Nuclear Bombs: The Environmental Cost of the War in Eastern Ukraine – September 2019
Volodymyr Zelensky: Ukraine’s Servant of the People? – September 2019
Russia’s Tragic Great Power Politics – March 2019
Ukraine’s Presidential Election and the Future of its Foreign Policy – March 2019
Bond of War: Russian Geo-Economics in Ukraine’s Sovereign Debt Restructuring – September 2018
The Ukrainian Military: From Degradation to Renewal – August 2018
Reflecting on a Year of War – February 2023
Will Russia Survive Until 2084? – January 2023
The Russia-Ukraine War and Implications for Azerbaijan – July 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: Uncompromising Objectives and an Uncertain Future – June 2022
The State of Play in Ukraine – May 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: Nukes, Negotiations, and Neutrality – April 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: Implications for China – March 2022
What the West Needs to Know About Russia’s War in Ukraine – March 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: Analyzing the Western Military and Economic Response – March 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Humanitarian Crisis and Prospects for Resolution – March 2022
Russia’s Long Shadow and the Future of Europe – February 2022
Russia-Ukraine Tensions: Will Moscow’s Compellence Strategy Work? – January 2022
Interview with Russian Dissident Ilya & Former Duma Member Ilya Ponomarev – January 2022
Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy – August 2021
FPRI Special Briefing: U.S. Sanctions Against Russia – March 2021
FPRI Special Briefing: Alexeyi Navalny and U.S.-Russia Relations – February 2021
Don’t Mention the War – April 2023
Torn in the USA: How Important is the War in Ukraine for the United States? – March 2023
Ukraine One Year In: The Helpers – March 2023
Reflecting on a Year of War – February 2023
Mobilize This – January 2023
War in Ukraine: A Firsthand Account – December 2022
Public Opinion in Russia: What Do We Know, What Can We Know? – November 2022
Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Strategic Picture – September 2022
Russia’s Manpower Conundrum in Ukraine – May 2022
The Air War Over Ukraine – March 2022
Debating a No Fly Zone: The Risk of Escalation with Moscow – March 2022
Examining Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – March 2022
The Risk of War: Russia’s Options for War in Ukraine – February 2022
The Risk of War in Ukraine: Moscow’s Military Posture – February 2022
Tensions Over Ukraine: Russia’s Rationale for War – February 2022
Russian Perceptions of Military AI and Automation – February 2022
Russia’s Anti-Satellite Weapon: Understanding Russia’s ASAT Test – November 2021
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Navalny? – September 2021
Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy: Looking Back at the Ukraine Crisis – August 2021
Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – May 2021
Learning From Our Adversaries: Russian Aerial Operations in Syria – April 2021

Protracted Conflicts: Moldova and Georgia

War As a Neighbor: Moldova and the Challenges of Facing Russian Aggression in Ukraine – April 2023
Strategic Connectivity in the Black Sea: A Focus on Georgia – December 2021
Taking Stock of U.S. Military Assistance to Georgia – December 2021
Georgia’s Democracy is in Trouble, It’s Time for Closer Engagement – November 2021
Russia’ Permanent War Against Georgia – March 2021
Georgia’s Doomed Deep-Sea Port Ambitions: Geopolitics of the Canceled Anaklia Project – October 2020
Anatomy of a Fraud: The Moldovan Parliamentary Elections – March 2019
Geopolitical Games Expected Ahead of Moldova’s 2018 Elections – October 2017
The Future of US Strategic Interests in the South Caucasus: Challenges and Opportunities for the Biden Administration – October 2021
Tug of War in the Black Sea: Defending NATO’s Eastern Flank – July 2021
The Turkish Veto: Why Erdogan Is Blocking Finland and Sweden’s Path to NATO – March 2023
Article 5 for the Next Decade of NATO – December 2022
The Art of the Possible: Minimizing Risks as a New European Order Takes Shape – November 2022
The Baltics Predicted the Suspension of the Ukraine Grain Deal — and Contributed to its Resumption – November 2022
Good and Bad Neighbors: Perceptions in Latvian Society – September 2022
Europe’s Wait for Turkmen Natural Gas Continues – September 2022
From the Migrant Crisis to Aggression in Ukraine: Belarus is Still on the Baltic Agenda – July 2022
Two Less Obvious Lessons for Baltic Defense from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – June 2022
The Baltic Road to Energy Independence from Russia Is Nearing Completion – May 2022
America Needs a Comprehensive Compellence Strategy Against Russia – April 2022
Baltic Sea Mining as an Extension of the Russian Gray Zone – April 2022
The Significance of the Turkish Straits to the Russian Navy – March 2022
Fear, Solidarity, and Calls for Further Action in the Baltics as Russia Invades Ukraine – March 2022
Latvia’s First Response to Russia’s War in Ukraine – March 2022
Turkey’s Careful and Risky Fence-Sitting between Ukraine and Russia – February 2022
At the Double: Poland’s Military Expansion – January 2022
Turkey’s Response to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis – January 2022
Afghanistan was a Turbulent NATO Proving Ground for the Baltic States – December 2021
Crowded Pond: NATO and Russian Maritime Power in the Baltic Sea – December 2021
Baltic Perspectives on U.S. and Transatlantic Nuclear Negotiations with Russia – October 2021
Namejs vs. Zapad: Military Exercises on Both Sides of the Frontline – September 2021
Reconceptualizing Lithuania’s Importance for U.S Foreign Policy – July 2021
Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – April 2021
Nord Stream 2: Germany’s Faustian Bargain with Gazprom and Why it Matters for the Baltics – December 2020
Cooperation, Competition, and Compartmentalization: Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – May 2021
America’s Approach to the Three Seas Initiative – May 2021
The Baltic States as NATO Heavyweights – March 2023
The Future of European Energy – February 2023
What’s Happening With Russian Speakers in Latvia? – January 2023
We Can France if We Want To: What Does Paris Want for Ukraine and Europe? – November 2022
Giorgia on My Mind: Italy’s Rightward Turn and Its Implications – October 2022
Stuck in the Magyar: Why is Hungary the “Bad Boy” of Europe? – October 2022
Bloc Party: The EU and the War in Ukraine – September 2022
The View from Ukraine: An interview with Dr. Volodymyr Dubovyk – August 2022
What Does Erdogan, Erdo-want? – July 2022
Baltic Power Hour – July 2022
No More Niinistö Nice Guy: Has Finland’s Security Calculus Changed? – June 2022
Swedening the Deal: Stockholm Turns to NATO – June 2022
The Energy Trilemma: An interview with Dr. Andrei Belyi – May 2022
The Sejm Difference? Poland and the New, Old Europe – May 2022
Bundes-where? Germany’s Politics and Security in Changing Times – May 2022
Ukrainian Refugees in Latvia: An interview with Agnese Lāce – April 2022
Who Speaks For Eastern Europe? – February 2022
Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs on Latvia’s Foreign Policy Challenges – November 2021
Reframing the Baltic states: An Interview with Dr. Andres Kasekamp – October 2021

FPRI Experts to Follow

Rob Lee – @RALee85 Eurasia Senior Fellow, PhD Student at King’s College, London
Bob Hamilton – @BobHam88 Black Sea Fellow, Research Professor at the U.S. Army War College
Maia Otarashvili – @MaiaVanRijn Deputy Director of Research
Aaron Stein – @aaronstein1
Chris Miller – @crmiller1 Director of Eurasia Program, Assistant Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Nikolas Gvosdev @FPRI_Orbis Editor, Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs, Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in Economic Geography and National Security at the U.S. Naval War College
Clint Watts – @SelectedWisdom Distinguished Research Fellow , National Security Contributor for NBC News and MSNBC
Indra Ekmanis – @indraekmanis Baltic Sea Fellow and Editor of the Baltic Bulletin
Una Bergmane @UnaBergmane Baltic Sea Fellow, Researcher at the University of Helsinki
Mitchell Orenstein @m_orenstein Eurasia Senior Fellow, Professor of East European and Russian Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Stephanie Petrella @sdpetrella Eurasia Fellow
Sara Ashbaugh @sara_ashbaugh Editor in Chief, BMB Russia
Eilish Hart @EilishHart Eurasia F ellow, Eurasia Program
Clara Marchaud @ClaraMarchaud Editor of BMB Ukraine

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A simple guide to the Ukraine-Russia crisis: 5 things to know

What led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? And what could come next? We answer the critical questions.

Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin authorised, what he called, a “special military operation” in the east.

The attacks on Thursday came as weeks of intense diplomacy and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin, who had massed between 150,000 and 200,000 soldiers along the borders of Ukraine.

Keep reading

Russian forces launch full-scale invasion of ukraine, russia invades ukraine: what we know so far in 500 words, video: what’s happening in mariupol after russia invaded ukraine, photos: russia launches ‘full-scale invasion’ in ukraine.

Here are five things you should know about what led to the invasion, what is happening now and what could come next.

[Editor’s note: This explainer, originally published in January, has been updated to reflect the latest developments].

What is the background to the conflict?

Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991. It moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.

A decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Moscow led to mass protests that saw him removed as the leader in 2014.

Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist rebellion that broke out in Ukraine’s east.

Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Moscow denied that, saying the Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers.

According to Kyiv, more than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that devastated Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.

For its part, Moscow has strongly criticised the United States and its NATO allies for providing Ukraine with weapons and holding joint drills, saying that such moves encourage Ukrainian hawks to try to regain the rebel-held areas by force.

Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO are a red line, and expressed concern about plans by some NATO members to set up military training centres in Ukraine. This, he has said, would give them a military foothold in the region even without Ukraine joining NATO.

For a more detailed analysis of what is behind the conflict, click here.

What does Russia want?

It is more about what Russia does not want. Russia does not want Ukraine in NATO – and has said as much in its list of security demands which were sent to the US last December. The demands included a halt to any NATO drills near Russia’s border. It also wants NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe.

In December, Putin said Russia was seeking guarantees “that would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory”.

Many of these ultimatums have been slammed as non-starters by the West.

Putin, who denied for months that he was planning an invasion, has also called Ukraine an artificial creation carved from Russia by enemies, a characterisation Ukrainians call shocking and false.

Samir Puri, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, had told Al Jazeera in January that Russia’s aim would likely be to “defeat the Ukrainian armed forces in the field, inflict a crushing military defeat that humiliates the Ukrainians and by extension create concern that the backing Ukraine has from its allies in the West, the US and UK, is insufficient”.

Could Ukraine join NATO?

Ukraine is not a NATO member, but it wants to be. It is considered a partner of the alliance.

Ukraine’s admission to the alliance would require the unanimous approval of the 30 states that make up the body.

Before being considered for membership, NATO says, Kyiv needs to root out scourges such as corruption.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in December rejected Russian demands to rescind a 2008 commitment to Ukraine that the country would one day become a member.

Analysts however say that NATO allies, mainly the US, are reluctant to expand their military footprint in the region and further jeopardise their relationship with Moscow.

While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has voiced support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, President Joe Biden has been more ambiguous on the question.

How did the invasion break out?

Shelling in the Donbas region had intensified since Monday when Putin recognised the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent and ordered the deployment of what he called peacekeepers, a move the West called the start of an invasion .

On Wednesday, the separatists issued a plea to Moscow for help to stop alleged Ukrainian aggression – claims the US dismissed as Russian propaganda.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion on Thursday shortly after Putin said he had authorised military action to defend itself against what he said were threats emanating from Ukraine.

Russian missiles hit multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, as Ukraine reported columns of troops pouring across its borders into the eastern Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, and landing by sea at the cities of Odesa and Mariupol in the south.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law and appealed to world leaders to impose all possible sanctions on Russia, including on Putin, who he said wanted to destroy the Ukrainian state.

What happens next?

The full scope of the Russian military operation was not immediately clear.

Zelenskyy called on all citizens who are ready to defend the country from Russian forces to come forward, saying Kyiv would issue weapons to everyone who wants them.

The US has predicted that a Russian attack to take Kyiv may cause up to 50,000 civilian casualties, along with that of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. European countries have been preparing for the likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing an assault.

President Biden, who has ruled out putting US troops on the ground in Ukraine, said Putin had chosen a premeditated war that would bring a “catastrophic loss of life and human suffering”. He said he would speak to G7 leaders and promised Russia would be held “accountable”.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell also promised the toughest financial sanctions the bloc had ever imposed.

Washington and London have previously spoken of personal sanctions targeting the Russian president in the event of a major escalation in military action.

Cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial system, which moves money from bank to bank around the globe, would be one of the toughest financial steps they could take, damaging Russia’s economy immediately and in the long term.

The move could cut Russia off from most international financial transactions, including international profits from oil and gas production, which accounts for more than 40 percent of the country’s revenue.

The US also holds one of the most powerful financial weapons against Putin if he invades Ukraine – blocking Russia from access to the US dollar. The currency still dominates in financial transactions around the world, with trillions of dollars in play daily.

The US is considering imposing export controls, potentially cutting Russia off from the high tech that, among other things, helps warplanes and passenger jets fly and powers smartphones.

Russia has a war chest of more than $600bn in foreign exchange reserves and gold that it can use to prop up the currency and absorb the shock of sanctions.

The prospect of war and sanctions disrupting energy and commodities markets posed an immediate threat to a global economy barely emerging from the pandemic. Stocks and bond yields plunged, while the dollar and gold rocketed higher. Brent oil surged past $100/barrel for the first time since 2014.

Lessons from Ukraine

Editor’s Note: This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program .

Introduction

Constanze stelzenmüller.

At the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, much Western commentary features a mixture of relief and self-congratulation. Both are deserved in considerable measure. Ukrainians have proved astonishingly brave and resilient in the face of an assault of a scale and brutality not seen in Europe since 1945. The war galvanized the trans-Atlantic alliance into unity and action, with forceful and generous American leadership, and an unexpectedly muscular role played by the European Union. Indeed, the United States and Europe have been highly effective in leveraging each other’s diplomatic, economic, and military assets to support Ukraine, and constrain Russia. Public opinion, too, has remained remarkably supportive of aiding Ukraine.

At the same time, the alliance has been careful to draw red lines. Western leaders have said throughout that they are giving Ukraine the means to defend itself, but will not become parties to the conflict, for instance by establishing a no-fly zone or deploying NATO troops. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has also — despite his repeated assertions that Russia is being attacked by the West, and bald-faced threats of escalation — observed red lines himself by avoiding overt military action against Ukraine’s supporters. And despite ambivalence in the rest of the world in view of calls to take sides on behalf of Ukraine, it is notable how many non-Western countries have spoken out in condemnation of Russia’s actions, or (like Japan and South Korea) sent money and materiel to Kyiv.

Nonetheless, for what may already be the defining crisis of our era, crucial questions remain unresolved: how to avoid an escalation of the war; how and when to bring this war to an end; how to stop sanctions evasion; how to avoid impunity for the perpetrators and bring them to justice; how to assure the effectiveness of NATO deterrence and defense; how to prevent key non-Western powers — above all China — from throwing their full weight in with Russia; how to mitigate the immense costs of supporting Ukraine and the global consequences of the war; how to reconstruct Ukraine and bring back refugees; how to redefine the European security order against an imperialist Russia; and how to do better at protecting the world from the depredations of autocratic great powers.

This much is clear: 2023 could be a decisive year for the future of Ukraine, the West, and global order and security — for better, but also for worse. Below, 16 Brookings scholars examine the lessons of the first year of Russia’s war against Ukraine and look ahead to coming challenges.

Fiona Hill observes that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a full-scale assault on the post-World War II global order and demands nothing less than a U.S.-led revamping of the international security system. Restoring European security and deterrence will require the United States and its allies to persuade skeptical middle powers that a world order that is safe for all nations can only be based on international law and the United Nations Charter. Steven Pifer addresses the thorny question of how Ukraine can best protect itself against future Russian aggression; he argues that the West’s red lines — NATO boots on the ground and membership for Ukraine — mean that Kyiv must be given all the arms it needs to defend itself.

James Goldgeier explains that the Biden administration, after a remarkably adept and forceful response, must nonetheless now contemplate a long and demanding war; and he cautions America’s allies that the bipartisan consensus around supporting Ukraine may not last. Tara Varma writes that the invasion of Ukraine provoked a strategic awakening in Europe. But the coming months may well see intra-European division — and Europe’s security dependency on the United States — resurface. Aslı Aydıntaşbaş charts Turkey’s complex balancing act between Russia and the West under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and predicts that — despite a potential post-earthquake warming of relations between Ankara and its NATO allies — Turkey will remain ambivalent as long as there is no clear victor in Ukraine.

Patricia M. Kim maintains that China’s “no limits” partnership with Russia will endure because both powers share an interest in challenging what they perceive as a Western-dominated global order. But China also stands to lose much more than Russia from global insecurity. Western powers should use this leverage to get Chinese leaders to constructively influence Moscow to prevent escalation in Europe. Suzanne Maloney points out that Iran’s emergence as the only state to provide offensive weaponry to Moscow reflects a decisive shift in Tehran’s risk tolerance and its geopolitical orientation toward Russia and China. It puts paid to efforts by the Biden administration and its European allies to resuscitate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as Tehran nears nuclear breakout.

Tanvi Madan argues that the Western-led coalition supporting Ukraine should not be surprised by the reservations and ambivalence of non-Western powers like India. Instead, the West should highlight how Russian imperialism is a threat to the global order and offer real alleviation to these countries’ concerns. Bruce Jones says the West needs to face up to a future of unstable great power relations and the risk of manifold disruptions from deepening global interdependence; building security will be hard and costly for democracies.

Caitlin Talmadge notes that the danger of nuclear escalation has constrained both Russia and the West in this war, but other states are likely to reconsider the importance of having nuclear weapons of their own. Melanie W. Sisson interrogates the Western alliance’s many failures to predict the course of this war and warns that a focus on incremental, tactical successes could mask a real problem: the absence of a compelling vision of how to end it. Michael E. O’Hanlon is struck by the echoes of World War I: not just in the battlefield dynamics, but also in the prospect of a long war of attrition — and especially in the challenge of finding a peace settlement that does not merely create a pretext for the next horrific war.

David Wessel remarks that some of the war’s economic lessons challenge conventional wisdom: the resilience of Ukraine’s economy — as well as Russia’s, despite unprecedented Western sanctions — and the ability of Europeans to wean themselves off Russian fossil fuel imports. Samantha Gross describes the global tensions between climate change mitigation policies and the energy market disruptions unleashed by the war — as well as the extraordinary efforts made by governments, businesses, and consumers to soften their impact. But she cautions that 2023 might witness significant new disturbances.

Finally, Sophie Roehse and Kemal Kirişci remind us of the horrific human cost paid by Ukrainians: a displacement crisis on a scale and speed not seen in Europe since World War II. Nearly 40% of the country’s citizens have been driven from their homes in the past year; more than 8 million are refugees in Europe or North America, and more than 5 million are internally displaced. Their ability to return safely to their homes will determine Ukraine’s ability to reestablish itself as a functioning and prosperous state in Europe.

Russia and European security

Assault on global order.

This commentary is based on Dr. Hill’s opening statement to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global security challenges and strategy on February 15, 2023. Video of the hearing can be found here .

The war in Ukraine has necessitated the third intervention by the United States in a European conflict in a little over a century; and what will likely be its third attempt at revamping the international security system. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was an assault on the post-World War II global order. This wasn’t just an American-imposed order but a set of rules that all nations, including Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, had agreed to. Russia violated the United Nations Charter and fundamental principles of international law by attacking an independent state that had been recognized by all members of the international community — including Russia itself — for more than 30 years.

The current challenge in Europe is how to craft more durable regional security arrangements that roll back Russia’s land grab in Ukraine, are embraced by all Europeans, and set a precedent for reinvigorating the larger set of international agreements. We need to find a formula that is not entirely dependent on U.S. military and economic power and political leadership to ensure its long-term success.

The European security environment was ruptured in 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and sparked off a brutal proxy war in the Donbas region. None of the United States and Europe’s mechanisms and practices for keeping the peace after World War II and during the Cold War had much, if any, effect on deterring Russia from seizing Crimea or attempting to take Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine in 2022. Western deterrence failed in part because American and European policymakers never meaningfully emphasized the West’s redlines. Indeed, one might even ask, “what were the redlines?” The West certainly did not appear to uphold the postwar principle of ensuring independent states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity. Instead, after 2014, European leaders, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rushed to push Russia’s annexation of Crimea to one side and broker a quick peace settlement in Donbas — the Minsk Accords, which would have limited Ukraine’s sovereignty if fully implemented.

We have spent more time contemplating the perils of provoking Russia’s mercurial president, Vladimir Putin, than the merits of bolstering Europe’s resilience and capacity to limit Putin’s coercive power.

The tepid Western political response to Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territory and the limited application of international sanctions after this first invasion convinced Moscow that attacking Ukraine was not, in fact, a serious breach of post-World War II norms. Indeed, Western commentary since 2014 has frequently focused on the risks of stepping over Russia’s redlines, rather than enforcing the West’s. We have spent more time contemplating the perils of provoking Russia’s mercurial president, Vladimir Putin, than the merits of bolstering Europe’s resilience and capacity to limit Putin’s coercive power.

In charting a path forward, we need to recognize that the war in Ukraine has been brewing for decades because of a key distinction in the way the international community approached the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In the case of Yugoslavia, the country was dissolved without the recognition of a single successor state. Serbia’s territorial claims against its neighbors were rejected. In the case of the USSR, the United States and every other country recognized Russia as the sole successor state. Moscow inherited the Soviet Union’s U.N. Security Council seat and its other privileges and obligations, as well as, it seemed, the Soviet Union’s Cold War sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Ukraine and other former Soviet republics fell into a gray zone where Russia’s interests trumped theirs’. They were deemed Russia’s “near abroad.”

Putin has repeatedly stated that Moscow has the right to dominate this neighborhood and reclaim “lost” territory. For Putin, the war in Ukraine is a continuation of the Soviet struggle with the United States to carve up Europe after 1945. Russia still sees NATO as a U.S. Cold War bloc — a cover for American imperialism, not an alliance of equals to ensure common defense and security. In this context, NATO’s post-Cold War expansion and Ukraine’s reluctance to implement the Minsk Accords in Donbas became the current war’s casus belli.

Redefining European security and restoring deterrence will involve explicitly countering this narrative. Building an international coalition against Russia’s aggression to facilitate an eventual settlement of the war will require the same. The United States and its allies must clarify and emphasize that they are supporting Ukraine on the battlefield to uphold the United Nations Charter and international law. Building on President Joe Biden’s historic February 20 visit to Kyiv to underline enduring U.S. support for Ukraine, Washington needs to step up diplomatic efforts, including in the U.N., to convince friends and ambivalent middle powers in the so-called Global South that the West’s goal is not to retain supremacy in Europe but to keep the world safer for every nation. If Russia succeeds in carving up Ukraine, then the future sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states could be imperiled. Upholding international norms must once again be a central part of U.S. global security strategy.

Arm Kyiv for self-defense

Steven pifer.

Ukraine has surprised many, not least the Kremlin, with its resistance against the aggression that Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed in February 2022. The tenacity, skill, and courage of Ukraine’s soldiers, and many of its civilians as well, have frustrated an all-out invasion launched by what was regarded as the world’s second or, at least, third most powerful military.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has demonstrated that modern force-on-force warfare consumes much in terms of ammunition, materiel, and soldiers’ lives. That provides an important lesson for Western militaries, now in the process of restoring their focus on traditional territorial defense in the face of a very evident Russian security threat to Europe.

By dint of tactical agility and innovation , a lesser-armed but more motivated Ukrainian military has withstood the attacks of a larger and far more powerful adversary. The West can learn from that, and, as it integrates more sophisticated Western arms into its operations, the Ukrainian military will want to maintain that agility and innovation.

As for the Ukrainian civilian population, it has shown remarkable resilience , particularly as the Russian military launched attacks on electric power, municipal central heating, and other infrastructure to make up for its lack of progress in battle. The lesson here is that a people who see themselves in an existential fight for their national identity, democracy, and land will endure great hardship.

The West has helped Ukraine by providing weapons , financial assistance , and intelligence support . Ukraine needs to maintain and expand that flow.

At the same time, Kyiv has to recognize that the West has drawn a firm red line: no troops. NATO members have armed and trained Ukrainians, but no member has offered to join the fight. President Joe Biden, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and other Western leaders ruled out a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as it raised the prospect of U.S. and NATO pilots shooting down Russian planes and conducting strikes against Russian air defenses — perhaps in Russia itself.

Looking to the longer term, Kyiv should bear the West’s red line in mind, including as it considers postwar security arrangements.

To be sure, Ukraine has not asked for troops. Still, looking to the longer term, Kyiv should bear the West’s red line in mind, including as it considers postwar security arrangements. It is difficult to see Moscow winning — at least in the sense implied by the Russian army’s multiple attack vectors in February 2022, which suggested Kremlin goals of occupying Kyiv and perhaps the eastern one-half to two-thirds of Ukraine. However, a Ukrainian victory or a stalemated end to the current fighting would still leave Ukraine facing the risk of future Russian aggression.

To deal with that, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy understandably seeks NATO membership . Ukraine meets the democratic standards that NATO expects of aspiring members and, prior to the war, had built a functioning if flawed market economy. Ukraine’s military has proven a force to be reckoned with; just ask General Valery Gerasimov.

Nine European members of NATO have expressed support, as has Canada . However, membership would require the consent of all 30 alliance members (32 once Finland and Sweden enter). Each would have to be prepared to go to war against Russia for Ukraine. True, with Ukraine in the alliance, NATO’s military would be added to the equation of helping Ukraine deter a new Russian attack. That seems less risky than what might happen if NATO forces were to enter the ongoing war.

Still, a majority of NATO members currently deem that risk too great. This suggests a serious membership bid would have little prospect in the near term.

In the future, Ukraine will need a modernized military to deter a new Russian assault. Kyiv should look to the West for the weapons to arm that military. That means Abrams and Leopard tanks, Bradley and other fighting vehicles, ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, and fighter aircraft, among other things.

Many Western leaders seem readier to agree to arm Ukraine than to support its NATO membership. Now, and in a post-conflict situation, Kyiv should ask for — and the West should pay — a significant price in weapons in return for the delay of Ukraine’s NATO quest.

That does not mean NATO membership comes off the table forever. Ukraine should continue its preparations so that, when the political window opens, it can pass through. In the meantime, a strongly armed Ukraine would put Ukraine’s defense where it best belongs: in the hands of Ukrainians.

United States

Leadership, but for how long, james goldgeier.

Considering how the United States responded to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine, namely with economic sanctions and supplying only non-lethal military aid to Kyiv, one could be forgiven for being repeatedly surprised over the past year. Perhaps if Russia had succeeded in taking over much of Ukraine right away, toppled the government, and installed a puppet regime, the U.S. response in 2022 would not have been dramatically different than it was eight years earlier. But despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longstanding obsession with controlling Ukraine and his apparent belief he could get away with it, the Russians failed in their drive to occupy Kyiv, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not flee to form a government in exile. And the rest of Europe finally realized what the Balts and Poles had been trying to tell them for years: Putin was a threat to the peaceful continental order the Europeans thought they had achieved after the end of the Balkans wars more than two decades ago.

With Ukrainians fighting valiantly against a brutal invasion, the United States and its allies stepped into the breach to assist them. After four years of his predecessor denigrating and dismissing allies, all the while expressing admiration for Putin, President Joe Biden was eager to rally American allies and partners to support Ukraine. If there was anything his long political career as senator, vice president, and president prepared him for, it was leading the trans-Atlantic alliance in a vigorous response to the horrific Russian attack. While explicitly refusing to send American troops into the fight to prevent a direct NATO-Russia conflagration, Biden committed nearly $47 billion dollars in U.S. military assistance after February 2022, with increasing levels of lethality, and he rallied NATO allies and partners to send significant military assistance of their own. Over time, the United States enhanced its intelligence and military support by sending a variety of systems not contemplated at the war’s outset, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, Patriot air defense missile systems, Bradley fighting vehicles, and finally M1 Abrams tanks (to be delivered later).

As the war continues with little sign of slowing down, and the prospects for a peace settlement remain quite dim, the United States and its allies will have to continue to stand fast in the face of Putin’s imperial designs.

With strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and among the general public, the United States was engaged in a European conflict in ways that few would have predicted on February 23, 2022, particularly after the administration entered office determined to focus attention on the China challenge and had only recently completed a chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan. While Putin may have been emboldened by the administration’s desire to pivot to Asia and its mishandling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, he completely miscalculated what the United States and its allies were willing to do for Ukraine.

As the war continues with little sign of slowing down, and the prospects for a peace settlement remain quite dim , the United States and its allies will have to continue to stand fast in the face of Putin’s imperial designs. They must prepare for a long war that will require continued investments in Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction for years to come. The U.S. policy to help Ukraine liberate more territory without provoking a NATO-Russia war remains the right approach. However, given the divided government that emerged after the U.S. 2022 midterm elections, it is increasingly uncertain whether or not that kind of sustained involvement is politically possible .

Strategic wake-up call

A year into Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Europeans are taking stock — literally and figuratively — of where they stand and where they need to be in a few months’ time.

They have undergone several shocks: First, war, in the form of a massive attack by one state upon another, was back on the continent. Second, Europe had created dependencies, especially on Russian gas and oil, that were endangering its very existence. It needed to become a more sovereign actor.

The first shock was hard to recover from. Despite U.S . and U.K. warnings as early as the fall of 2022 that Russian President Vladimir Putin was intent on invading not only part of Ukraine but the whole country, Western Europeans were mostly skeptical. They did prepare an economic response and threatened Putin with heavy sanctions if he went ahead with his plans. But they were still in shock when his troops entered the country. Past the initial state of paralysis, the European Union acted steadfastly in coordinating with NATO and implementing the first of several sanctions packages meant to seriously damage the Russian economy. Europeans also realized the extent of their dependency on Russian gas and oil and worked to effectively be free of it by the end of 2022. Putin’s aggression provoked a strategic awakening on one of the most sensitive topics in European foreign policy, relations with Russia.

For a long time, Europeans were divided on their approach to Russia: some privileged the economic dimension, some warned of the existential threat Russia posed, and others wanted to integrate Russia into a new European security architecture. When Putin decided to invade Ukraine, he thought he could exploit those divisions once again, as he had in the past. He wasn’t expecting — few were — such a wave of Ukrainian resistance, which in turn won European and U.S. support for Kyiv. Soon, materiel, humanitarian aid, and lethal weapons were flowing to Ukraine, including, unprecedently, through the EU .

The strategic awakening mentioned above took several forms. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a “Zeitenwende” or turning point for Berlin’s foreign policy, but that remains incomplete . France also fought the belief of its Central and Eastern European partners that Paris had been complacent when it came to Russia. These eastern partners took on a much greater role in shaping the debate in European foreign policy. The war proved how the Europeanization of climate, energy, and defense has become critical. On sanctions, the sense of unity was strong. But now that weaponry for Ukraine is the central discussion, and since military spending remains a national member-state prerogative, the risk of comparison and division is emerging again.

The European and trans-Atlantic unity we witnessed is still fragile. There are divisions in the EU about supporting more sanctions packages, with ramifications in national debates. This has been evident in both Bulgaria and Hungary , for example, and debate on the war and its economic consequences was very present in the Italian and French elections in 2022.

European reliance on the United States was also made clear. We need only to see how anxiously Europeans were following the American midterm elections in the fall, as several Republican leaders indicated that if they won control of Congress, they might end U.S. support to Ukraine. European security still very much depends on the United States. The reciprocal is far less true amidst deteriorating U.S. relations with and concern about China.

The future of the European project will be determined by what comes next and by the Europeans’ capacity to respond to major challenges ahead: political, economic, social, and geopolitical.

For Europeans, the outcome of the war carries special weight, as they have now granted EU membership perspectives to both Ukraine and Moldova, which is also the target of Russian destabilization. Hence, the future of the European project will be determined by what comes next and by the Europeans’ capacity to respond to major challenges ahead: political, economic, social, and geopolitical. Responding to these risks will require them to develop European sovereignty when it comes to information, decision, and action: fostering their agency to address the economic and security challenges posed by the interdependence mentioned above, all the while defending the trans-Atlantic partnership and the rules-based order.

The war has shifted the nature of the debate everywhere in Europe: after a 30-year opt-out, Denmark will now be participating in EU defense initiatives ; Sweden and Finland have formally sought to join NATO; and many European member states are increasing their defense spending in line with NATO requirements. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has suggested that the EU proceed to common procurement of weapons for Ukraine, as it did for vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU’s Strategic Compass and NATO’s Strategic Concept , published in March and July 2022, paved the way for a common vision of Europe’s role as a global actor and security provider. This vision now needs implementation, for the sake of Ukraine, Moldova, and Europe.

(L): Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan meet on the sidelines of the sixth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA), in Astana, Kazakhstan, October 13, 2022. Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via Reuters. (R): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hold talks before signing an agreement on rebuilding Ukraine’s damaged infrastructure, in Lviv, Ukraine, August 18, 2022. EYEPRESS News via Reuters.

East-West balancer

Aslı aydıntaşbaş.

As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, with waves of soldiers on both sides fighting and dying on the battlefield, Turkey is turning inward. The massive earthquake that hit southern Turkey in early February will have significant political and economic consequences for the country.

For starters, the earthquake disrupts Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s re-election plans and his carefully calibrated balancing act between the West and Russia. Self-confident and eager for a greater role on the world stage, Erdoğan’s Turkey had seen Russia as an economic partner and useful leverage in its relations with the West. While Turkey has been selling drones to Ukraine and has restricted Russian access in the Bosporus and Dardanelles, Ankara has also deepened its economic ties with Moscow and kept a line of communication open with the Kremlin. Erdoğan has been proud of his “balanced” policy and has criticized the robust Western response to Russia’s invasion as “ provocative .”

There are both geopolitical and domestic imperatives for Ankara’s desire to protect its relations with Moscow. Over the past few years, Russia has made investments in Turkey’s energy industry and, facing an economic downturn, Erdoğan’s government has been relying on financial flows from Russia — as well as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — to muddle through until the Turkish elections. Russian energy giant Rosatom reportedly announced plans last summer to transfer $15 billion to Turkey’s central bank for the construction of the country’s first nuclear reactor; Gazprom also pledged to delay Ankara’s natural gas payments. These steps, coupled with the inflow of Russian tourists and investors, led Russia to emerge as an indispensable partner for the Turkish government ahead of a highly competitive election season.

But that doesn’t mean Ankara’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort is unimportant. Turkey truly plays both ends of the equation. Early in the war, Turkish drones made a difference on the battlefield and in the defense of Kyiv. Erdoğan has been essential in securing the grain deal that allowed for Ukrainian food supplies to reach world markets. Turkey has also facilitated prisoner swaps and organized two rounds of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. If the current stalemate on the battlefield pushes either side toward negotiations later this year, Turkey will once again emerge as an enabler, providing a possible meeting point and important channel to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia continues to be indispensable for Erdoğan, the Turkish economy, and Turkey’s strategic leverage in Syria — and the earthquake will not change that.

But will the earthquake that hit Turkey this month alter that equation? While this might create a desire in Turkey for closer cooperation with Europe and the United States, it is unlikely to change the symbiotic nature of the Turkish government’s relationship with Russia — sealed at the top by the chemistry between Putin and Erdoğan. Russia continues to be indispensable for Erdoğan, the Turkish economy, and Turkey’s strategic leverage in Syria — and the earthquake will not change that.

However, earthquake diplomacy can create a better atmosphere in Ankara’s relations with Washington. Turkey’s estranged neighbors like Greece and Armenia, as well as its NATO allies, were quick to come to its aid in the early phase of search and rescue operations — invalidating the government’s consistent domestic narrative that the West is not Turkey’s friend and even has ambitions to destabilize it. Days before the devastating earthquake, Turkey’s interior minister had accused Washington of organizing terrorist acts in Turkey and called on the U.S. ambassador to “take [his] dirty hands off of Turkey.” Today, European nations and the United States are already making plans to provide reconstruction aid to Turkey’s devastated southern region.

This catastrophic natural disaster could usher in a new honeymoon between Turkey and the West. Ankara will need reconstruction funds for years to come and support from NATO allies and multinational organizations will be essential. Rekindling ties with the trans-Atlantic community may lead Erdoğan’s government to moderate its tone toward NATO allies and even greenlight Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession.

But even if Turkey tilts a little toward the West, it will not become another Poland overnight. The Turkish public and its leadership are united in an intuitive desire for neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine War. Whether under Erdoğan or a future leader, Turkey will be cautious about antagonizing Russia.

As long as the war in Ukraine continues, with no clear winner, Ankara will, for good or bad, stick to its balancing act between the West and Russia.

A strategic alliance with risks

Patricia m. kim.

The last 12 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have revealed three striking aspects of China and Russia’s strategic alignment, including the depth of their ties, the limits of their partnership, and the prospects for China to serve as a moderating force to Russia’s violent revisionism.

Since declaring a “no limits” partnership with Moscow in February of last year, Beijing has doubled down on its alignment with Moscow, despite the steep costs to its global reputation and strategic interests, particularly around Taiwan. While claiming to be a neutral party to the conflict and to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, Beijing has refused to explicitly condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal aggression in Ukraine and expressed sympathy for Moscow’s “legitimate security concerns.”

China-Russia ties have been maintained, if not strengthened, across the diplomatic, economic, and military domains in recent months. High-ranking Chinese officials and their Russian counterparts, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin, have met consistently both in person and virtually. China-Russia trade has boomed, breaking previous records to reach more than $190 billion last year. Quite strikingly, Beijing has also continued its joint military exercises with Moscow. These include bilateral naval exercises in Northeast Asia last spring as U.S. President Joe Biden visited the region and again this past December . This year, China and Russia held their first military exercise together with South Africa off the latter’s coast, which coincided with the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

The last year has made clear that China and Russia’s strategic alignment is not simply a marriage of convenience, but a deep partnership that is likely to endure for the foreseeable future.

The last year has made clear that China and Russia’s strategic alignment is not simply a marriage of convenience, but a deep partnership that is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. To be sure, Beijing’s embrace of Moscow is motivated in part by a hardheaded calculation of the need to stabilize relations with its former rival and militarily formidable neighbor as China braces for long-term competition with the United States. But beyond realpolitik concerns, at the core of Beijing and Moscow’s 21st-century partnership is a shared aim of challenging what these two states perceive to be a Western-dominated global order that enables the United States and its allies to impose their standards, values, and interests on others thanks to international institutions that were created by and continue to favor Western powers.

Although China and Russia seek to jointly challenge the existing global order, the two do not always see eye to eye on the means to achieving these shared objectives given their different material circumstances. China, as the world’s second-largest economy, stands to lose much more than Russia from global instability and economic isolation. Chinese leaders have therefore called for a cease-fire in Ukraine and expressed opposition to the threat or use of nuclear weapons in the conflict. While there are recent reports of Chinese companies selling dual-use items such as commercial drones to Russian entities, Beijing has refrained thus far from providing Putin with direct military assistance. The Biden administration has recently revealed that China may be on the cusp of supplying Russia with lethal weapons, however, and has strongly warned Beijing not to take such steps. According to a breaking report , the Russian military is in negotiations with a Chinese drone manufacturer to mass produce so-called “kamikaze” drones. Whether Beijing allows this or other weapons transactions to move forward with increased global scrutiny remains to be seen. At present, it seems unlikely that China will lean into the conflict to militarily support Moscow to the degree that the United States and its partners have assisted Kyiv.

Barring an extreme situation, such as the use of weapons of mass destruction by Russian forces, Beijing is also unlikely to join in on Western sanctions against Russia or to embrace other measures that may endanger its ties with Moscow. China has a strong self-interest in a stable global environment as it seeks sustained economic growth and prosperity for its people. Consequently, Washington and its allies should continue to lean on Chinese leaders to, at a minimum, refrain from assisting Moscow’s war efforts, and to constructively use their influence to reduce escalatory risks as the war rages on in Europe. Recent diplomatic efforts by Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and others to press Xi to oppose Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling were critical for sending the right signal to Russia. Similar efforts should be made to ensure China cooperates in advocating for a peace agreement that does right by Ukraine, once such a roadmap emerges.

Turn toward Moscow

Suzanne maloney.

In the first year of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran has emerged as an unlikely wild card — the only state in the world that is providing offensive weaponry to Moscow to bolster its brutal military campaign. Tehran’s unusual gambit to insert itself into a war in the heart of Europe reflects a decisive shift in its geopolitical orientation and risk tolerance. The conflict in Ukraine has supercharged a strategic partnership between Iran and Russia that began nearly eight years ago in Syria, accelerating Iran’s embrace of authoritarian alternatives to the West and dooming any prospects for the Biden administration’s dogged efforts to resuscitate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Some observers have described the Tehran-Moscow relationship as an “ alliance of convenience ,” a case of short-term opportunism by a beleaguered regime. After all, Iranians know something about wars of aggression, having endured their own catastrophic conflict with a neighbor, the eight-year “ imposed war ” precipitated by Saddam Hussein’s 1980 invasion. And the legacy of Russian territorial acquisitiveness still looms large in Iran, which ceded the southern Caucasus to imperial Russia in the 19th century and outmaneuvered Soviet attempts to install proxies in northwest Iran after World War II. While their more recent engagement in Syria has been mutually beneficial, Tehran has always been clear-eyed about the divergence in Russian and Iranian interests there.

And yet this inauspicious legacy has not inhibited Iran’s support for the Russian war effort. As the conflict approached its six-month mark, Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles began striking Ukraine’s critical infrastructure . Reports suggest that Tehran is helping to train Russian soldiers and transfer drone production systems to Russia, and ballistic missile exports to Moscow may be next. In return, Moscow has promised fighter jets, helicopters, and newer air defense systems. Even so-called pragmatic political figures in Iran endorse the Russian narrative that its war is purely defensive. As a result, the cagey cooperation established between their militaries in Syria has now blossomed into “ a full-fledged defense partnership ” according to the Biden administration — one that provides significant military value to both regimes. Iran’s intervention can’t turn the tide of the war in Moscow’s favor, but Iranian drones can impose significant financial costs on Ukraine and terrorize its citizens.

The reciprocal military cooperation reflects only one dimension of the deepening strategic partnership between the two countries. Beyond the battlefield, Tehran and Moscow have exchanged a series of high-level visits and significantly upgraded military, economic, and energy cooperation. The fruits of this new partnership include a mostly speculative commitment of a $40 billion Russian investment in Iran’s oil and gas development and sanctions-proof trade corridors and financial mechanisms .

Today, Iranian leaders are persuaded that their country’s fortunes lie in China and Russia.

The multifaceted relationship between Tehran and Moscow belies any sanguine assertion of opportunism. Rather, Iranian leaders are pursuing longstanding pledges to pivot east . Iran’s leaders have long anticipated — and exulted in — the decline of U.S. influence on the world stage. That forecast has increasingly been supplemented by a recognition of the shift in the locus of economic, diplomatic, and military power to Asia. While Beijing has not delivered on its epic 2021 $400 billion economic pact with Tehran, its imports of Iranian crude oil in defiance of U.S. sanctions have proven an essential lifeline for sustaining Iran’s economy and its ruling system. With Tehran’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization last year, the influential Iranian newspaper Kayhan celebrated this newfound convergence among “ the three great powers ” — Russia, China, and Iran.

Tehran’s embrace of Russia and China also reflects its assessment that the West is no longer a desirable or reliable conduit for economic or diplomatic opportunities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine coincided with hard-fought progress toward resuscitating the nuclear deal with Iran. A decade ago, access to Western finance was a central imperative in persuading Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear program, but today, Iranian leaders are persuaded that their country’s fortunes lie in China and Russia. That calculation suits Russian interests neatly; whatever benefits Moscow might once have perceived in constraining Iran’s nuclear advances have been displaced by the exigencies of the war in Ukraine. As a result, Washington now must be prepared to balance a brewing crisis over Iran’s proximity to nuclear breakout even as it contends with the monumental Russia and China challenges.

Global South

It’s complicated, tanvi madan.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the “Global South” — encompassing a diverse range of countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific — has been seen as “sitting on the fence.” Yet in vote after vote in the UN General Assembly, most of the developing world has criticized Moscow’s actions. The abstentions — particularly India’s in the U.N. Security Council — received greater attention, but even the abstainers list is striking since it includes several traditional Russian partners who declined to support Moscow’s actions despite Russian lobbying. Bhutan’s permanent representative identified the reason , “for small states [the UN principles] serve as the guarantor of our existence … We cannot condone the unilateral redrawing of international borders.” The Kenyan representative asserted that security concerns did not justify “breach[ing]” Ukraine’s territorial integrity or legitimizing “irredentism and expansionism.”

Yet the Kenyan representative also exposed a North-South fault line. He suggested that the powerful — and not just Russian President Vladimir Putin — operated on the basis of one rule for me, but not for thee. Other officials have noted that the West expects the Global South to care about European security but doesn’t reciprocate. More broadly, there is worry that the war — which unleashed intensified inflationary pressures, debt sustainability doubts, and food and energy insecurity as a result of higher grain, fuel, and fertilizer prices — has worsened developing countries’ economic challenges, which COVID had already exacerbated. And they question whether the West will now meet its commitments to help address their development, health security, and climate change-related challenges. In addition, defense trade partners of Russia and Ukraine are facing military supply disruptions.

The response and impact in the Global South have varied. India, for instance, has been more reluctant to criticize Russia by name, but it shares several of these concerns — one reason it seeks to play a bridging role between North and South and East and West. Moreover, the war is making India’s largest military supplier (Russia) more dependent on India’s primary adversary (China). New Delhi is also concerned about China filling the vacuum left in the developing world by a distracted Russia, and how the war has complicated its ties with crucial partners in North America, Europe, and Asia — and might reduce their attention on the Indo-Pacific.

Given these concerns, it should not be surprising that the developing world wants to see the Russia-Ukraine War end.

Developing countries have see the West condemning them for what the United States and Europe often do — protecting their own interests.

Yet many Western observers seem taken aback by the Global South’s reaction. That perhaps reflects that developing countries are overlooked when Washington or Brussels do not perceive them as relevant to their dominant strategic frameworks. Now that developing countries’ views are coming into focus, they find themselves being criticized for not isolating Moscow. Instead of acknowledging their comments in support of the international order, they see the West condemning them for what the United States and Europe often do — protecting their own interests.

This is counterproductive for the West. Rather, it could heed the lessons from President Dwight Eisenhower’s second-term engagement with non-aligned countries: (1) learn to tolerate differences, and (2) honey works better than vinegar. Moreover, instead of taking a with-us-or-against-us attitude or talking about weakening Russia, a more effective approach would keep the focus on Moscow’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the need for it to end the war (and thus alleviate the developing world’s pain). Outreach from Russia’s neighbors — e.g., Central and Eastern European countries that don’t have imperial baggage or had pre-1991 ties with the Global South — might resonate more than from major powers who are seen as selectively citing the rules-based order. They can also highlight the imperial nature of Putin’s project, using his own words — not least to counter Moscow’s attempt to portray itself as anti-imperialist and Russia and China’s messaging that NATO, not Russia, is responsible for this war. The United States and its European allies should also more proactively highlight that it is primarily Putin’s war of choice rather than Western sanctions that is causing developing countries’ pain — most countries don’t realize that food, fuel, and fertilizer are largely not sanctioned.

The West has made some efforts along these lines. This has been evident in the Biden administration’s outreach to Africa, and Berlin’s acknowledgment of the need to demonstrate concern about developments beyond the West.

Most significantly, however, the West needs to be visibly responsive in alleviating the pain being felt beyond its borders and addressing these countries’ development concerns — especially vis-à-vis food, energy, health, and climate security. This cannot be a one-time effort. It needs to involve consistent outreach that recognizes the variation in the Global South and these countries’ agency, and tailors engagement accordingly. This will not be easy given bandwidth and other constraints, but it is a necessary task on which Western countries should collaborate with each other and with like-minded partners in the “Global South” as well.

International order

This will be hard (and could get worse), bruce jones.

Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine does not yet rank among the deadliest wars of the post-Cold War period, but it is surely the most dangerous — with nuclear-armed Russia invading a sovereign country that borders NATO members, signaling wider ambitions, and threatening nuclear escalation. The West has reacted accordingly, pouring weaponry and money into the fight, as well as imposing sanctions on Russia — while staying open to (credible) diplomacy.

A year in, we can take stock of the wider consequences. Politically speaking, Ukraine’s courage and the West’s response have helped stem the leaching of influence away from the democratic powers. China was stunned by the sophistication of America’s operational intelligence in advance of Russia’s invasion, giving Beijing pause for thought in its own regional ambitions. Russia itself is weakened (though not hobbled), and its partnership with China is revealed to have sharp limits. The diplomacy surrounding the war, though, also revealed that the non-Western middle powers (including democracies) have limited stakes in an order whose “rules” do little to help them through crises, and much to frustrate their growth. As guardians at the gate, the United States and the European powers are the objects of much resentment for keeping the southern powers from a seat at the table at the key institutions that shape the economic order — to say nothing about the deep anger at the West’s nationalist and recalcitrant responses in the first phase of the COVID-19 crisis and vaccine distribution. An order that fails to attract rising adherents is at risk.

We must retool our security concepts around the fact of sustained tension and the economic architecture around the need for less dependence on distrusted partners.

The war is also chipping away at the remaining delusions about operating a global system built, over 40 years, on the premise of stable great power relations. We are beginning to understand that we must retool our security concepts around the fact of sustained tension and the economic architecture around the need for less dependence on distrusted partners. The reality we still shy away from is: this is going to be extremely costly and dangerous.

But the alternatives are likely worse. Among them: a naval crisis in the western Pacific that badly disrupts global trade. Despite “teaching moments” in the Suez Canal and Long Beach, we are still sea-blind: our imaginations do not encompass how dependent every major economy (including America’s) is on the flow of goods — industrial, agricultural, energy — by sea. Despite the sophistication of U.S. intelligence on Ukraine, we were caught flat-footed when naval conflict in the Black Sea roiled global food markets, risking famine for tens of millions. A similar, sustained interruption of trade flows through the East and South China Seas would cause a global economic crisis and kneecap the American economy — as well as China’s. Yet scenario exercises around a Taiwan crisis often underestimate the effect of interrupting shipping. Integrating the reality of sea-borne globalization into our strategic planning is vital.

There’s another cost: to our bandwidth for other crises. In Haiti, Yemen, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa, violence, lawlessness, or famine rises while the West’s attention, deployments, and resources dwindle — to say nothing of the disaster left behind in Afghanistan. The United States and Europe may rise to the occasion in response to the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, but their central role in managing global crises is diminishing.

And then there are the hazards. The conflict in Ukraine is not yet a direct war between the nuclear powers, but it is the most important of several recent instances that have seen the armed personnel of one nuclear power killed by partners of another. In the absence of robust deterrence beyond allied territory and determined to resist new “spheres of influence,” the West is drawn into these indirect but substantial fights over non-allied territory. Escalation dynamics are running ahead of either real deterrent capacity or diplomatic guardrails. A sense of being in the wars before the war is mounting.

This leaves us in urgent need of invigorating our defenses for a geopolitical contest that no longer seems likely to remain “ short of war .” And with the long, hard graft of re-globalizing to decrease the role of China in vulnerable supply chains. Except in niche technologies, the wrong approach to that is expensive friend-shoring; the right approach is adapting our investments and trade rules to better support productive growth in emerging economies.

All of this lies ahead of us even if Russia fails to win — which, in parallel, we must work with Ukraine to guarantee.

Nuclear deterrence

We will all go together when we go, caitlin talmadge.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine reminded the world, “Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states,” and fears of Russian nuclear use have persisted with varying intensity throughout the conflict. Neither the conventional war nor the prolonged nuclear crisis it has sparked appears likely to end any time soon, so modesty is warranted in drawing any grand conclusions. Yet given that data on nuclear crises are (thankfully) rare, the past year offers an unusual opportunity to reflect on the emerging contours of strategic deterrence in an era of resurgent competition. Three lessons stand out.

The Russia-Ukraine War has reinforced how important nuclear weapons are because, by their very existence, they dramatically raise the potential costs of escalation.

First, nuclear weapons still cast a long shadow on world politics. They have not been fired in anger since 1945, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve gone away. The Russia-Ukraine War has reinforced how important they are because, by their very existence, they dramatically raise the potential costs of escalation. Putin has leveraged this fact, repeatedly reminding the world of his country’s arsenal in an effort to dissuade other countries from intervening on Ukraine’s behalf. His nuclear threats have not succeeded in stopping outside aid, but they have induced significant restraint in the extent, nature, and pace of that support. Western military assistance, while vigorous, has been piecemeal , careful , and cautious due to fears of escalation . Absent Russian nuclear weapons, the escalation discussion would sound very different, and the West would worry much less about the dangers of a decisive Russian defeat. Instead, it faces a situation in which it has to balance a desire to support Ukraine against the need to avoid World War III if Putin’s conventional campaign implodes. Of course, Putin has to worry about U.S. nuclear weapons too, which is a major reason that he has avoided attacking NATO supply lines.

Second, nuclear weapons deter invasion — and states without the protection of such weapons are more vulnerable to attack. Even though nuclear weapons have not been employed in this war, the fact that the war occurred at all surely reminds states of the inescapable value of nuclear deterrence in protecting the homeland. No one wants to be the next Ukraine. Ukraine had neither its own nuclear weapons nor an extended deterrence guarantee from a nuclear patron. Facing a nuclear-armed Ukraine, or a Ukraine under NATO’s nuclear umbrella, Russia would have had to worry that a large-scale invasion might prompt a nuclear response. Instead, Russia gambled on invasion, knowing that doing so would never put its own cities at risk. Watching this unfold, Japan , South Korea , Taiwan , and others (perhaps Iran and Saudi Arabia) have all undoubtedly been taking notes. They are likely to infer the renewed importance of acquiring their own nuclear weapons, pursuing nuclear sharing , or obtaining stronger security guarantees from a nuclear power. This is not good news for the global non-proliferation regime.

Third, arms control is a vital tool in a world of nuclear danger. As scary as the nuclear dimensions of the war have been, some of the guardrails in the U.S.-Russian relationship held during the first year of the war, most notably the New START Treaty. Though on life support , this strategic arms control framework still managed to provide some assurances to each side about the other’s nuclear arsenal at a time of intense distrust. It also enabled the two sides to continue communicating about routine peacetime nuclear activities such as missile tests , reducing the chance that a test might be mistaken for a launch against the backdrop of hostilities. Just as important have been the less formal methods of risk reduction between the two sides, such as maintaining military-to-military communications to avoid miscalculations. The war thus reinforces the role of dialogue as a tool for managing escalation — a mutual interest shared by even the most bitter enemies. Of course, Putin’s recent announcement that Russia is suspending its participation in the treaty raises deep concerns about the future; it will be important to discern whether Putin intends to evade the treaty’s force limits or simply to halt inspections permanently. Either way, the episode also reminds us that the United States and China lack an arms control framework for managing their interactions akin to what the United States and Russia have had over the past year. Were conflict to break out over Taiwan, for example, even the minimal guardrails that have been present in the current war would be absent.

Future of warfare

Plan for the end of the war, or be sorry, melanie w. sisson.

There has been intense interest over the past year in extracting lessons from the allied West’s attempt to forestall Russian President Vladimir Putin’s appalling aggression in Ukraine, and from the war that has followed. There is examination of whether and how the West could have done more and better to deter Putin from acting on his ego and id, on whether and how modern technologies — drones, precision munitions, and cyber operations — are affecting the course of this war and what they mean for the future of warfare , and on whether and how this conflict will affect the likelihood of others after it, most especially in the contested Taiwan Strait .

All of these very pragmatic areas of inquiry deserve the attention they are getting. So too, however, should the war in Ukraine reinforce the fact — not the idea, but the fact — that war is inherently unpredictable. It should be sobering not just that Putin’s predictions were so very wrong , but that so too were those of the West — despite the most modern and sophisticated intelligence organizations in the world, despite the collective expertise of scholars and analysts who have devoted their careers to studying Putin and warfare, and despite the observable, ongoing consequences of the West’s own poor predictions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NATO similarly has surprised itself with the extent of its willingness to arm Ukrainian fighters. Hard lines drawn in February 2022 for fear of escalation have softened over the course of the conflict. Now, one year in, the unthinkable has become the doable with the promised delivery to Ukraine of German Leopard and U.S. M1 Abrams tanks. Policymakers explain this evolution as a responsiveness to conditions on the ground , to the wisdom of pressing advantages as they arise. When viewed through the unsentimental lens of history, however, this progression usually is called mission creep, the pejorative term used to describe an incrementalism that either makes wars longer and bloodier or that puts the conflict on a path toward expansion and escalation.

It should be sobering not just that Putin’s predictions were so very wrong, but that so too were those of the West.

The likelihood of mission creep correlates with the extent to which policymakers enter their nation into war — as a direct combatant or as a material supporter thereof — without a clear concept of the peace they are seeking to achieve, or with only idealized visions of how that peace will come about. The latter characterizes the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which succeeded in the breaking but failed in the building, and there is reason to be concerned that the former characterizes the alliance’s engagement in Ukraine today.

Economically, it is unclear for how long or until what point the alliance intends to use sanctions, export controls, financial restrictions, and other measures to punish Russia. Militarily, the White House is taking great care not to assert that the goal is either Ukrainian victory or Russian defeat, much less to describe what either of those terms would mean in practice. Instead, it is declaring an intent to ensure that Ukraine is in the “ strongest possible position ” to defend itself on the battlefield so that it can be “ in the best possible position at the negotiating table ” when that time comes. This framing makes it difficult not to worry that policymakers will be tempted to use Ukrainian battle victories as predictors of future success, as indicators of irreversible progress toward having that strong hand at the negotiating table, and therefore as justification for continuing to redraw the lines of what military armaments are, and are not, out of bounds.

Allowing events to alleviate the pressure on policymakers to make hard decisions about goals and objectives and to reduce NATO vigilance about escalation can have dangerous effects in a war with a cynical, sadistic, nuclear-armed adversary. Perhaps the most unpleasant of all lessons to be learned from the first year of this terrible war, then, is that strategies led by predictions about how the fighting will go rather than by a vision of how it should end run the risk of failing either very slowly, or in very dangerous ways.

Parallels with WWI

Nothing quiet on the eastern front, michael e. o’hanlon.

As I reflect on the Ukraine war one year in, the many parallels with World War I haunt me.

The similarities, or at least strong echoes, begin with the causes of conflict. Old-fashioned imperial ambitions and rivalries were key then, and in the case of Moscow, they have been important here too.

But it is in the war’s actual combat dynamics where the World War I analogy may apply best, even if of course they are not exact. At the tactical level, the heavy use of artillery constitutes an obvious parallel, as does the widespread use of trenches to protect against it. In this conflict, as in World War I, aircraft have been important but not too important; the same is true of tanks so far. Offensives have been possible in both wars; for example, on the Western Front, the front lines moved considerably in both 1914 and 1918. But such offensives tend to be difficult, costly in casualties, and inconclusive in strategic effect. Where weapons have improved, countermeasures often partially cancel out their advanced characteristics. For example, much Russian artillery today is still unguided, as in World War I, but even those weapons that are more precise can often be partly countered through jamming, defensive measures like deeper trenches, dispersal of combat forces, and other responses.

I fear there could be another echo of World War I in today’s conflict — the distinct possibility that we could be in for a long war. Few expected as much, of course, in the summer of 1914, when leaders widely expected that “the boys will be home before the leaves fall” or at least before Christmas. But after September 1914’s so-called “Miracle on the Marne,” in which the Entente Powers stymied Germany’s attempt at Paris, and subsequently, the inconclusive “race to the sea” around Ypres, Belgium, stalemate settled in. By year’s end, there was a trench line nearly 500 miles long from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps, and the parties settled in for a protracted struggle. Each winter, industry would churn out prodigious amounts of weaponry as generals would plot new offensives for the coming spring and summer. But until 1918 at least, these efforts proved generally futile. Front lines barely moved for about three years.

If proposed terms of peace are too lenient, Russia may be able to attack again after months or a few years of preparation. Alternatively, if they are too tough, Russia may wind up destitute, angry, and vengeful.

Admittedly, that was the Western Front in World War I. The Eastern Front, including today’s Ukraine, was usually more fluid. Also, today’s fight features precision weaponry, drones, and exquisite intelligence that the parties to World War I did not possess. The parallels, therefore, are far from absolute. Still, many aspects of the current fight have an uncanny precedent in World War I. It seems distinctly possible that the durations of the two wars could wind up similar as well — we will have to see — though this war could be shorter or, heaven forbid, even longer. That will call for continued Western resolve in helping Ukraine over the long haul.

Avoiding a forever war in Ukraine may also hinge on a smart strategy for eventual negotiations — even if now is not yet the time. This is where the echoes of World War I are particularly poignant. The Versailles peace wound up establishing the predicate for World War II more than producing stability; it is for that reason that historian Margaret MacMillan entitled her history of the conflict The War that Ended Peace.

The lessons for today are twofold. If proposed terms of peace are too lenient, or if there is simply a cease-fire but no durable agreement on ending the conflict, Russia may be able to attack again after months or a few years of preparation. Alternatively, if they are too tough, Russia may wind up destitute, angry, and vengeful. Right now, the latter concerns seem beside the point, given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s horrendous behavior and his disinterest in talks. But that could change. We need to be ready if it does — so that we can wind up this war better than nations a century ago were willing and able to stop World War I.

All m easures short of war

David wessel.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught us a lot — about Russia’s revanchism, the strength of the NATO alliance, and the nature of warfare in the early 21st century. It has reminded us of the horrors of war, especially since this time we are seeing it in almost real time on our smartphones. This is not primarily an economic event, but we have learned a few economic lessons, some of which challenge what was conventional wisdom just a year ago.

The war has been devastating for Ukraine, its people, and its economy, but the economy has done better than many predicted.

First, the Ukrainian economy is impressively resilient. Russia’s cruel assault on Ukrainian infrastructure, industry, and neighborhoods has taken an enormous human toll and devastated the Ukrainian economy. Ukraine’s GDP shrank by 30% in 2022 . (That’s Great Depression territory.) The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that as of November 2022 $136 billion worth of buildings and infrastructure had been destroyed, a sum equal to about two-thirds of pre-invasion GDP. Photos and videos remind me of the pictures of Berlin, Dresden, Kassel, and other German cities at the end of World War II. But beyond that horror, Ukrainians have proved remarkably resilient amid the largest military aggression in Europe since World War II. The government is functioning, even from bunkers . Pensions are being paid. The banking system, strengthened before the invasion, is working. The central bank is setting up stations with backup electricity for Ukrainians to charge phones and tap ATMs when there are blackouts — and I’m told even in Russian-occupied territory, Ukrainians can tap their hryvnia bank accounts for transactions on their phones. Of course, the war has been devastating for Ukraine, its people, and its economy, but the economy has done better than many predicted.

Second, unprecedented Western sanctions have not debilitated Russia’s economy. We have learned that the United States and its allies can and will impose stiff economic sanctions, such as freezing what Russia says is about half of its more than $600 billion in foreign-currency reserves. Restricting Russia’s imports of high-tech (and not-so-high-tech) goods is harming its economy. Russian automakers, for example, were forced to produce cars without airbags and anti-lock braking-system sensors, an industry standard. Because of U.S. and European sanctions, Russia is forced to sell its oil at a deep discount to India and China. But Russia’s economy did not melt down. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Russia’s 2022 economic contraction was smaller than IMF economists anticipated , and the economy will grow a bit this year, not shrink as the IMF predicted in its October forecast. Since Russia continues to run a significant current-account surplus — it is importing less and the price of its primary export, oil, is up — it has weathered the freezing of reserves and other financial sanctions. The worst may be yet to come, though: Russia’s government budget deficit is growing as military spending soars and sanctions bite. There has been a significant loss of human capital (due to both death and emigration), and the inability to import key parts and technology points to slower productivity growth in the future. Still, economic sanctions do not seem to have influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressiveness on the battlefield.

Third, Russia is an unreliable energy supplier. A year ago, the notion that Europe could wean itself off Russian energy imports seemed far-fetched. No longer. When this war ends — and it will someday — Russia will find that Europe is no longer a lucrative market for its natural gas. Germany is acquiring floating terminals so it can import liquified natural gas from the United States and Qatar — and will add capacity over the next few years. It will be a long time — if ever — before Europe looks to Russia to satisfy its appetite for petroleum and natural gas. Russia probably will find other markets eventually, though that is easier for petroleum (much of which travels by ships) than for natural gas (which, for Russia, requires pipelines). However, for Russia, transporting to these markets will be costlier than selling to Europe and the other buyers (e.g., China and India) probably will have more bargaining power.

Fourth, all this slowed the move to wean the world off fossil fuels. Despite the rising angst about climate change and the popularity of renewable energy, the spike in energy prices and the urgent need to replace Russian gas in Europe has led to calls to increase the production of fossil fuels outside of Russia. One energy expert quipped the other day that the major legacy of the Greens in the German coalition government may be to extend the life of coal in the country’s energy mix. And in the United States, one sign of the changing attitude toward oil and natural gas production came at S&P Global’s annual CERAWeek conference. At the March 2021 conference, newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s rhetoric was all about investing in clean energy and weaning the nation off of fossil fuels to combat climate change. At CERAWeek 2022, her message was different: “We need more supply. Right now, we need oil and gas production to rise to meet current demand.”

Unpleasant trade-offs

Samantha gross.

In the energy policy world, we refer to the challenge of providing sustainable, secure, and affordable energy as the “energy trilemma.” Policy focus in recent years has been on the sustainable part of the equation, given the imperative of preventing the worst impacts of climate change. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminded us that the secure and affordable parts of the equation are also critical.

The war in Ukraine is disrupting energy markets all over the world, as both Russia and the West attempt to use energy markets and energy interdependence to further their goals. The European Union, G-7 countries, and Australia have sanctioned Russian crude oil and oil products , an unprecedented action against one of the world’s largest oil exporters, in an attempt to reduce an important source of funding for Russia’s war machine. Russian oil and oil products can avoid the sanctions if they are sold below specified prices. The effectiveness of “price caps,” as the mechanism is called, is uncertain so far.

But unquestionably, the European natural gas market has been hardest hit by the energy impacts of the war. Russia is weaponizing its gas supply to try to soften European support for Ukraine. In 2021, Russia supplied nearly 40% of Europe’s total natural gas consumption, imported mostly through pipelines. Slowdowns in gas deliveries started before the war, in the fall of 2021, when the state-owned Russian gas provider Gazprom did not fill gas storage facilities it owned or controlled in Europe in advance of the winter. Since that time, gas flows have slowed to a trickle. Little gas was flowing through the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany in September 2022, when an act of sabotage damaged both that pipeline and its completed, but not operational, twin, Nord Stream 2. The culprit is not yet known.

Europe has not wavered in its support for Ukraine, but greatly reduced natural gas supply has brought hardship to European governments and citizens. European gas prices reached their highest level ever in August 2022 . Heading into the winter, Europeans were concerned not just about high prices, but about actual shortages, potentially requiring shutdowns of gas-reliant industries. In response, the European Union established a plan for member states to reduce their gas demand 15% by March 2023 and prioritized sectors to receive gas in case of shortage. Subsidies are also blunting the impact on gas consumers of tight supply and high prices, but at great expense to EU governments. Subsidies and other policies to cope with the natural gas crisis cost 1.7% of GDP in Germany, 2.3% in Spain, 2.8% in Italy, and 3.7% in Greece.

In addition to financial impacts, reduced natural gas supply required some difficult decisions by the EU and member governments. For example, Germany extended the lives of its last three nuclear power plants by several months, until April 2023. The EU is supporting the development of natural gas supply in the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and liquified natural gas (LNG) receiving facilities on the continent. Coal consumption in Europe increased in each of the last two years as a substitute for natural gas in power generation (and to make up for shortfalls in French nuclear power generation). Each of these decisions would have been nearly unthinkable before the crisis.

Although Europe has managed to dodge an energy crisis, more challenges lie ahead, and not just because next winter might be colder.

Despite fears of idled factories and cold homes, Europe is surviving the winter quite well, and natural gas prices are now below their prewar level . LNG has been a savior for Europe, although there is not enough LNG in the world to make up for the loss of Russian pipeline gas. Europe’s LNG imports increased by 65% in 2022 over their 2021 volume, with the United States as the largest supplier . Europe managed to enter the winter heating season, when natural gas demand is highest, with more than 90% of its reserve storage capacity filled . Reduced gas demand has been the other key factor, due to warm weather and conservation efforts and fuel switching by gas consumers. If trends continue, European gas storage could exit the winter approximately half full .

Although Europe has managed — with a lot of money, some gas conservation efforts, and more than a little good luck — to dodge an energy crisis, more challenges lie ahead, and not just because next winter might be colder. China’s economy is recovering quickly from its COVID-19 woes and is likely to increase its demand for energy, including LNG. No new LNG facilities are coming online in 2023 , meaning that the global market is expected to be tight, and expensive. Europe is likely to face very high prices yet again, having already spent significant resources to get through the first round. The transition to a low-carbon energy system is the long-term answer to fossil fuel crises but cannot occur overnight. In the meantime, Europe must continue its efforts to conserve natural gas, find new sources of supply, and accelerate its energy transition.

The human cost

Sophie Roehse and Kemal Kirişci

One year of Russia’s war in Ukraine has triggered a displacement crisis of staggering speed and scale. Almost 40% of Ukraine’s prewar population has been driven out of its homes since the invasion. With no end to the conflict in sight, the future of displaced Ukrainians remains highly uncertain. For Ukraine, the return of refugees from abroad and effective support of internally displaced persons (IDPs) will determine the country’s ability to reestablish itself as an independent state, prosper, and deter future attacks on its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Putin’s strategy of terror and displacement. Russia has waged a ruthless campaign of destruction in Ukraine. The victims are Ukrainian civilians, who have been terrorized by widespread bombing campaigns, targeted airstrikes on energy and social infrastructure, and regional massacres in Russian-controlled territories. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tactics have prompted millions to leave the war-torn country, with over 8 million Ukrainian refugees having fled to Europe and hundreds of thousands crossing the Atlantic Ocean to seek refuge in the United States and Canada . An additional estimated 5.4 million Ukrainians are currently displaced within Ukraine, among whom almost 60% have lived outside their habitual residences for six months or longer.

Forced relocations. An ominous aspect of the displacement crisis is the fate of the almost 3 million Ukrainian refugees reported to have fled to Russia . Though some Ukrainians — especially residents of eastern Ukraine — may reasonably have gone voluntarily to escape active fighting , forced deportations of Ukrainian civilians to Russia and Russian-occupied territories have raised serious international concern. At crossing points bordering Russian-controlled areas, investigations have uncovered a “ filtration process ” suspected to ensure obedience with Kremlin-doctrine and deny entry of individuals deemed ideologically threatening . Those who fail screening are reportedly detained in “ filtration camps ,” which have been discovered across occupied and illegally annexed territories and described as a new form of Russian mass incarceration . Hundreds of thousands of children have been among these involuntary removals, including orphans relocated with adoptive Russian families and children separated from their parents.

Refugees’ decisions about whether to return or not will have tremendous demographic consequences for Ukraine, shaping its ability to recover economically, repair its social fabric, and defend its national security.

Domestic resilience and international political will are central to Ukraine’s survival. Using terror and the displacement of civilians as a war tactic is not new. One needs to look no further than Syria , where the Assad regime and Russia used forced mass migration as a way of applying international political pressure. In Ukraine, however, Putin’s plan to coerce Ukraine’s government and civil society into negotiations and create a fait accompli with annexed territories has not succeeded. The Zelenskyy government and the Ukrainian people have proven outstandingly courageous and resilient in defending Ukrainian independence. Beyond the country’s borders, societies across the European Union and in the United States have risen to the challenge of arriving Ukrainian refugees — contrary to expectations — with solidarity and temporary protection. When safe conditions are met, however, most Ukrainians abroad hope to return home. Yet the longer the conflict endures, the deeper their roots in host communities will grow. Refugees’ decisions about whether to return or not will have tremendous demographic consequences for Ukraine, shaping its ability to recover economically, repair its social fabric, and defend its national security. Similarly, ensuring the return of those internally displaced through safe transit routes as well as supporting them with housing and economic assistance will be crucial in rebuilding communities from the local level up. In reconstruction planning, Ukraine’s supporters should start to think now about strategies for incorporating refugees and IDPs.

As for Russia, its forced relocation of Ukrainian civilians constitutes an outright violation of international humanitarian laws . The laws of war articulated in the four Geneva Conventions aim to protect civilian life and minimize harm to innocent civilians in conflict situations, which Putin’s troops have violated repeatedly. Forcibly deporting people as a means of erasing Ukrainian national identity is increasingly resembling the ethnic cleansing experienced during the war in Yugoslavia, when displacement was last weaponized in Europe. Some have even argued that Russia’s actions may constitute genocide . Necessarily, the Kremlin regime and its perpetrators on the battlefield and in the state bureaucracy will have to face international legal accountability for their offenses. It is the right thing to do; but more fundamentally, it is crucial to ensure compliance with the international laws of war, to confirm respect for the inviolability of territorial integrity and national sovereignty, and to protect human life beyond Ukraine.

About the Authors

Director – center on the united states and europe, senior fellow – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, nonresident senior fellow – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology, arms control and non-proliferation initiative, visiting fellow – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, visiting fellow – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, the turkey project, david m. rubenstein fellow – foreign policy, center for east asia policy studies, john l. thornton china center, vice president and director – foreign policy, director – the india project, director – project on international order and strategy, nonresident senior fellow – foreign policy, strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology, fellow – foreign policy, strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology, director of research – foreign policy, director – the hutchins center on fiscal and monetary policy, director – energy security and climate initiative, sophie roehse, research assistant – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, kemal kirişci, nonresident senior fellow – foreign policy, center on the united states and europe, the turkey project, for more….

The Russia-Ukraine War: Year two and strategic consequences

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The Kremlin’s grand delusions

Meeting the Russia challenge: Lessons from the foreign policy transition from Bush to Obama

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As many people, to their horror, saw the Russian leader Vladimir Putin publicly ordering military activities against Ukraine, its government, and its citizens, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has galvanized the world. Teachers may discuss current events in the world every day in class, and the greatest way to see your perspective on a subject is to have you write an essay.

Ukraine and Russia War Essay

Wars are unavoidable evils, and there are no words to depict the sheer number and scope of their horrors adequately. In addition to impeding national progress, it undermines social cohesion. Wars happen in every generation in each country, but the most prominent of current wars is considered to be Russian-Ukrainian warfare. So, let’s have a look at the Russian-Ukrainian war background.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent once the Soviet Union had fallen apart.
Before the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Ukraine was its part, and ever since, Russia has tried to keep it inside its sphere of influence.
As a result of Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, a separatist uprising began in the Donetsk Basin, the country’s industrial heartland in the east of the country.
Russia demands written security guarantees from NATO, claiming its interests have been jeopardized by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) “enlargement” to the east.

Because of this, the EU and the US have vowed to protect Ukraine’s borders’ integrity. As a result, the conflict in Ukraine is currently the subject of conversation worldwide, and many students in America and worldwide got a homework assignment in the form of an essay on the Russian invasion.

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Six ways the war changed the world.

The ripple effects of Russia’s invasion have reordered lives and upended economies. Here are some of the consequences.

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By Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Published Feb. 24, 2023 Updated Feb. 27, 2023

A year of war in Ukraine has reshaped the world in ways few had predicted. Far beyond the front lines, the ripple effects of Russia’s invasion have reordered lives and upended economies.

Here is a look at the war’s consequences in six key areas.

An orthodox church seen through a barley field in Odesa. Ukraine.

The war helped push global grain prices to record highs, given the importance of Russia and Ukraine as exporters of food crops including wheat. The United Nations warned that millions of people, especially in parts of Africa and the Middle East, were threatened with famine. In July, Moscow and Kyiv signed an agreement to release millions of tons of grain stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports because of a de facto Russian naval blockade. Although Russia briefly suspended its participation in the deal in October, the agreement has largely held, and global grain prices have returned to prewar levels.

The war unleashed the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s. Energy prices soared in many parts of the world as nations reduced or cut off their purchases of Russian fossil fuels. In Europe, gas bills nearly doubled and electricity costs spiked about 70 percent in the first six months of the war. European Union diplomats in December agreed on a $60-per-barrel limit on the price at which Russian oil can be traded outside the bloc in another bid to deprive Moscow of revenue for the war. But with global supplies tight, Russia has remained a dominant exporter, selling more oil and gas to China and India over the last year.

The global economy was just emerging from the pandemic, and the energy crisis and slower growth contributed to higher inflation. Soaring prices ate away at people’s savings and paychecks, causing real wages to fall in many countries and slashing purchasing power. High inflation has become a political headache for leaders in countries including the United States , France and Britain , with governments raising spending to ease the pain for families and businesses using price caps, subsidies and reduced taxes.

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Russia-Ukraine crisis explained ... in 100 words

The Russia-Ukraine crisis is becoming a top global issue, with Russia seemingly preparing to invade.

With tensions high, more people are watching the two countries closely hoping for a peaceful resolution. But for those who aren't aware of the crisis, here is a brief synopsis of the issue.

In true indy100 style, we tried to keep it short, to-the-point, and tried our very best to keep to 100 words, plus the help of some memes.

It begins back in the USSR...

From 1919 to 1991, Ukraine was part of the USSR. The two countries share a border making them deeply connected. But since Ukraine's independence, Russia has expressed desire to reunite the two.

In 2014, ukraine's last pro-russia leader was overthrown. president vladimir putin responded by seizing crimea, a territory of ukraine., ukraine has tried to move away from russian influence, attempting to join the eu and becoming a partner country to nato., now putin is trying to intimidate ukraine by putting troops near the border with invasion looming. now, the world waits. fingers crossed., did raygun actually score zero points at the olympics, fpl gameweek 1: transfers, injuries, suspensions, fixtures and picks, biden has a brutal new two word nickname for trump, molly-mae and tommy fury's breakup became a viral joke – we need to do better, tom cruise was forcibly kissed at the olympic closing ceremony – sparking debate about consent, ‘world’s oldest pyramid' was not made by humans, archaeologists claim, girls trip interrupted by 'friendly lady' who's in fact shania twain, what does the project 2025 document actually say, study finds microwaves home to swarms of radiation-resistant bacteria, pot overflowing with gold coins unearthed beneath home, trump branded a 'traitor' by own family member after congratulating putin, logan paul breaks silence on if he is banned from japan, trump's team gives blunt response to 'lisp' claims in musk interview, does trump wear dentures.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, inciting the largest war in Europe since World War II. In the months prior, Western intelligence had warned that the attack was imminent, amidst a concerning build-up of military force on Ukraine’s borders. The intelligence was correct: Putin initiated a so-called “special military operation” under the pretense of securing Ukraine’s eastern territories and “liberating” Ukraine from allegedly “Nazi” leadership (the Jewish identity of Ukraine’s president notwithstanding).

Once the invasion started, Western analysts predicted Kyiv would fall in three days. This intelligence could not have been more wrong. Kyiv not only lasted those three days, but it also eventually gained an upper hand, liberating territories Russia had conquered and handing Russia humiliating defeats on the battlefield. Ukraine has endured unthinkable atrocities: mass civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, torture, kidnapping of children, and relentless shelling of residential areas. But Ukraine persists.

With support from European and US allies, Ukrainians mobilized, self-organized, and responded with bravery and agility that evoked an almost unified global response to rally to their cause and admire their tenacity. Despite the David-vs-Goliath dynamic of this war, Ukraine had gained significant experience since fighting broke out in its eastern territories following the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 . In that year, Russian-backed separatists fought for control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas, the area of Ukraine that Russia later claimed was its priority when its attack on Kyiv failed. Also in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the historical homeland of indigenous populations that became part of Ukraine in 1954. Ukraine was unprepared to resist, and international condemnation did little to affect Russia’s actions.

In the eight years between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine sustained heavy losses in the fight over eastern Ukraine: there were over 14,000 conflict-related casualties and the fighting displaced 1.5 million people . Russia encountered a very different Ukraine in 2022, one that had developed its military capabilities and fine-tuned its extensive and powerful civil society networks after nearly a decade of conflict. Thus, Ukraine, although still dwarfed in comparison with Russia’s GDP ( $536 billion vs. $4.08 trillion ), population ( 43 million vs. 142 million ), and military might ( 500,000 vs. 1,330,900 personnel ; 312 vs. 4,182 aircraft ; 1,890 vs. 12,566 tanks ; 0 vs. 5,977 nuclear warheads ), was ready to fight for its freedom and its homeland. Russia managed to control up to 22% of Ukraine’s territory at the peak of its invasion in March 2022 and still holds 17% (up from the 7% controlled by Russia and Russian-backed separatists before the full-scale invasion ), but Kyiv still stands and Ukraine as a whole has never been more unified.

The Numbers

Source: OCHA & Humanitarian Partners

Civilians Killed

Source: Oct 20, 2023 | OHCHR

Ukrainian Refugees in Europe

Source: Jul 24, 2023 | UNHCR

Internally Displaced People

Source: May 25, 2023 | IOM

As It Happened

During the prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion, HURI collated information answering key questions and tracing developments. A daily digest from the first few days of war documents reporting on the invasion as it unfolded.

Frequently Asked Questions

Russians and Ukrainians are not the same people. The territories that make up modern-day Russia and Ukraine have been contested throughout history, so in the past, parts of Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Other parts of Ukraine were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Poland, among others. During the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, policies from Moscow pushed the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, resulting in a largely bilingual country in which nearly everyone in Ukraine speaks both Ukrainian and Russian. Ukraine was tightly connected to the Russian cultural, economic, and political spheres when it was part of the Soviet Union, but the Ukrainian language, cultural, and political structures always existed in spite of Soviet efforts to repress them. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, everyone living on the territory of what is now Ukraine became a citizen of the new country (this is why Ukraine is known as a civic nation instead of an ethnic one). This included a large number of people who came from Russian ethnic backgrounds, especially living in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as well as Russian speakers living across the country.

See also: Timothy Snyder’s overview of Ukraine’s history.

Relevant Sources:

Plokhy, Serhii. “ Russia and Ukraine: Did They Reunite in 1654 ,” in The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Plokhy, Serhii. “ The Russian Question ,” in The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Ševčenko, Ihor. Ukraine between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century (2nd, revised ed.) (Toronto: CIUS Press, 2009).

“ Ukraine w/ Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon (#221).” Interview on The Road to Now with host Benjamin Sawyer. (Historian Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon joins Ben to talk about the key historical events that have shaped Ukraine and its place in the world today.) January 31, 2022.

Portnov, Andrii. “ Nothing New in the East? What the West Overlooked – Or Ignored ,” TRAFO Blog for Transregional Research. July 26, 2022. Note: The German-language version of this text was published in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte , 28–29/2022, 11 July 2022, pp. 16–20, and was republished by TRAFO Blog . Translation into English was done by Natasha Klimenko.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for the protection of its territorial sovereignty in the Budapest Memorandum.

But in 2014, Russian troops occupied the peninsula of Crimea, held an illegal referendum, and claimed the territory for the Russian Federation. The muted international response to this clear violation of sovereignty helped motivate separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk regions—with Russian support—to declare secession from Ukraine, presumably with the hopes that a similar annexation and referendum would take place. Instead, this prompted a war that continues to this day—separatist paramilitaries are backed by Russian troops, equipment, and funding, fighting against an increasingly well-armed and experienced Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian leaders (and many Ukrainian citizens) see membership in NATO as a way to protect their country’s sovereignty, continue building its democracy, and avoid another violation like the annexation of Crimea. With an aggressive, authoritarian neighbor to Ukraine’s east, and with these recurring threats of a new invasion, Ukraine does not have the choice of neutrality. Leaders have made clear that they do not want Ukraine to be subjected to Russian interference and dominance in any sphere, so they hope that entering into NATO’s protective sphere–either now or in the future–can counterbalance Russian threats.

“ Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin’s aggression now? ” Lee Feinstein and Mariana Budjeryn. The Conversation , January 21, 2022.

“ Ukraine Gave Up a Giant Nuclear Arsenal 30 Years Ago. Today There Are Regrets. ” William J. Broad. The New York Times , February 5, 2022. Includes quotes from Mariana Budjeryn (Harvard) and Steven Pifer (former Ambassador, now Stanford)

What is the role of regionalism in Ukrainian politics? Can the conflict be boiled down to antagonism between an eastern part of the country that is pro-Russia and a western part that is pro-West?

Ukraine is often viewed as a dualistic country, divided down the middle by the Dnipro river. The western part of the country is often associated with the Ukrainian language and culture, and because of this, it is often considered the heart of its nationalist movement. The eastern part of Ukraine has historically been more Russian-speaking, and its industry-based economy has been entwined with Russia. While these features are not untrue, in reality, regionalism is not definitive in predicting people’s attitudes toward Russia, Europe, and Ukraine’s future. It’s important to remember that every oblast (region) in Ukraine voted for independence in 1991, including Crimea.

Much of the current perception about eastern regions of Ukraine, including the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk that are occupied by separatists and Russian forces, is that they are pro-Russia and wish to be united with modern-day Russia. In the early post-independence period, these regions were the sites of the consolidation of power by oligarchs profiting from the privatization of Soviet industries–people like future president Viktor Yanukovych–who did see Ukraine’s future as integrated with Russia. However, the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests changed the role of people like Yanukovych. Protesters in Kyiv demanded the president’s resignation and, in February 2014, rose up against him and his Party of Regions, ultimately removing them from power. Importantly, pro-Euromaidan protests took place across Ukraine, including all over the eastern regions of the country and in Crimea.

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Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Reasons for Russian Aggression

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

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