Between A Russian and A Ukrainian Place

Ending the Russo-Ukraine War is the epitome of the expression “between a rock and a hard place” for both those directly involved, their allies and the international community.

Believing that an invasion of its former Soviet territory would lead to easy victory, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his “special military operation” in Ukraine one year ago.

Britannica has a detailed timeline leading to where things are today.

So far, the “special military operation” -or in plain speech, full invasion- has produced, according to analyst and agency estimates:

• 200,000 Russian troops killed or wounded
• 100,000 Ukrainian troops killed or wounded
• 30,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths
• 8 million Ukrainians displaced throughout Europe

Much of the West and some of the international community has been delighted with how Ukraine has defied Russia. What Mr. Putin and his top advisors thought would take days or weeks has lasted a year.

As I covered last year, Ukraine and Russia, along with their allies, have conflicting, incompatible goals. Ukraine wants Russia out of its territory and to distance itself from its imperial overlord of centuries past. The West and the U.S. do not want Eastern Europe to fall under Russian domination again.

Russia, depending on the analysis, either hopes to reconstruct the heights it achieved under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), whose collapse Mr. Putin has publicly lamented, and/or stop the encroachment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) eastward spread.

From Mother Russia’s perspective, Ukraine’s willingness to abandon its former partner in the Russian Empire is not only a betrayal, but opens them up to hostile influences on her borders. For anyone with a passing familiarity with Russian history, foreign invasion has been an unfortunate reality for the Russian psyche. The age of ground troop wars may be slipping into the past, but old fears die hard.

During the Cold War, the USSR created a counter to NATO: the Warsaw Pact, headquartered in the capital of Poland. While now old news, it’s still mind boggling that the core of the Warsaw Pact is now a part of NATO.

(If you’re interested in the history of the USSR, I encourage you to watch this clever and informative YouTube video.)

Interestingly, the current director of the CIA, William J. Burns, has been preoccupied by this development for years.

In 1995, when serving as a political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Mr. Burns reported that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”

In 2008, as the American ambassador to Moscow, Mr. Burns wrote:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer disagrees, arguing that NATO’s territorial enlargement has little to do with Russia’s actions in Ukraine. For instance, Mr. Pifer writes:

“In fact, in May 2002, Putin met NATO leaders in Rome and agreed to a joint declaration on deepening and giving a new quality to NATO-Russia relations. In his address at that NATO-Russia summit, Putin expressed no concern about NATO enlargement, even though the Alliance planned a second summit later that year, and the Russian president had to know that NATO then would invite additional countries, quite probably including the Baltic states, to join.”

It’s worth noting that Boris Yeltsin served as post USSR Russia’s first president from 1991–1999. There was an era of semi “good feelings” between Mr. Yeltsin and the West, as the USSR’s authoritarian legacy was weakened, or so the international community thought. Mr. Putin assumed office in 2000, and had to rebuild a weakened Russia (in his eyes) so I believe that it’s possible that he never liked NATO’s encroachment, but wasn’t in a place to do something about it until years later.

Regardless of your feelings about modern Russia, its treatment of its former subjects- now sovereign nations- and the reasons for acting as such, there’s a fundamental difference between the goals of Russia and Ukraine, and their capabilities in achieving said goals.

As geopolitical strategist George Friedman points out: “Over the past year, Ukraine has fared much better than expected, and Russia much worse. But major powers have the luxury of early stumbling, their size giving them the resources needed to recover from early defeats. The successes of weaker powers sometimes die on the vine.”

How long will Ukraine last against Russian aggression? How long and how far will their respective allies go in supporting the country?

What to do?

It’s no doubt that Russia has been heavily damaged both domestically and internationally. Mr. Pifer details how in another great piece. In addition to heavy casualties, Russia’s military has lost 8,000 pieces of equipment. It’s economy contracted by 5% from September 2021 to September 2022. A “brain drain” of talented professionals along with 1,000 Western companies leaving the country further weakens Russia.

My position is for the West to keep giving aid to Ukraine without getting involved, further grinding down Russia so that the peace settlement is as favorable as possible to Ukraine. The policy blog Libertarian Jew articulated why the U.S. getting directly involved is a bad idea last year.

Hopefully, a peace settlement would include:

1. Russian acknowledges Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. How much they chose to recognize or give back will depend on their position at the moment of peace talks, but perhaps Russia could cede the Donbas regions as well as the Crimea to Ukraine. As Mr, Pifer details, Russia’s recent actions have caused the majority of Ukrainians to view Russia as the enemy, unlike the ’90s, in which most were “positive or ambivalent” about Russia. Territorial sovereignty is the most important component to ending this conflict.

(Interestingly enough, the Crimea was a gift to Ukraine almost 70 years ago by then USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev).

2. Ukraine pledges to never join NATO or the European Union. Russia has clearly indicated its opposition to Ukraine joining both organizations, so a guarantee of not joining them would accomplish one of the invasion’s main goals. As a friend said, “the model should be Finland or Austria, which throughout the Cold War and to the present day were neutral and not part of NATO.”

3. A truly independent government and free elections. Ukraine has shuffled between presidents who have been puppets or friendly to a particular side like former president Viktor Yanukovych or current president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The exact framework would have to be hammered out, but with an independent government and independent elections without ties to Russia or the West Ukraine would not be as likely to be pulled along for the whims of these other powers.

This conflict has dragged on long enough. Hopefully, Russia and the West will come to the negotiating table before things escalate further.

Welcome to international relations, where you’re often stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It’s the furthest thing from easy. Just ask Russia and Ukraine.