One month into the war in Ukraine, there are a few things we can say with some confidence.
First, despite Vladimir Putin’s protestations about the invasion proceeding as planned, the Russian president is almost certainly fuming at just how little progress the Russian military has made. Russian forces are skilled at destroying apartment buildings and lobbing missiles into populated areas. But they appear incapable of ensuring their supply lines are protected and keeping their front-line soldiers motivated. Reports of Russian troops pillaging shops for food are indicative of an army that is either totally unprepared for anything more than the most symbolic Ukrainian resistance or which strongly believed the entire operation would be over in days.
Second, Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine demonstrates that the West is hardly the spent force that countries like Russia and China so often claim. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when you could be forgiven for thinking this was the case. Before the first missiles struck Ukraine, Europe was the quintessential example of a lazy underachiever. The continent was largely content with hiding behind Washington’s military shield, slurping Russian natural gas, lecturing Putin for his moral sins, and instituting a few sanctions here and there.
The war, however, has shocked Europe out of its comfortable slumber. The grisly images of dead civilians on the street, frightened families in subway stations, and millions of tired refugees walking toward Poland have injected a large dose of righteous indignation into Europe’s veins. The European Union, often thought of as a cluster of divided bureaucrats, no longer looks quite so divided. Putin has managed to do the impossible — push the Germans into investing more than $100 billion into a malfunctioning military, convince the Italians to launch an assault against Russian oligarchs, move Britain into cracking down on dirty Russian money, and make Hungary’s Viktor Orban look like a politician who is tolerant of refugees. Europe, the uninspiring afterthought, is now throwing its geopolitical weight around.
Third, Putin has done more harm to his own image as a leader than the United States and Europe ever could. While Putin might be able to keep his propaganda machine alive and retain the majority of support at home, his reputation as a metaphorical chessmaster of international politics is broken and might be beyond repair. I used to think the Russian president was a brutal but relatively clever individual — someone who had the foresight to see three or four steps ahead.
Putin’s move into Ukraine has exposed the emptiness behind this description. Whether the source of Russia’s troubles can be traced to bad information from his security elite, a genuine belief the Ukrainians would simply roll over, or a change in Putin’s thought process, Russia will come out of this conflict a strategic loser.
Putin has put Russia in a terrible spot. If he concludes serious negotiations are needed because his forces are unable to defeat the Ukrainians conventionally, it will look like a humiliating climb-down for a man who once declared the demilitarization of Ukraine as one of his primary objectives. But if he escalates and does eventually defeat Kyiv militarily, the Russian military will be tasked with a bloody, expensive occupation of 40 million angry Ukrainians. There is no other way a pro-Russian puppet regime could survive.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have spent days trying to come to terms on how to end a war that is making the Ukrainian people’s lives a living hell and highlighting Putin as a strategic dunce. A diplomatic resolution would serve the interests of both sides. Unfortunately, an agreement depends entirely on two combatants who have vastly different positions on what terms are acceptable.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
