The Ukrainians are now fighting for their homeland with a bravery, determination and skill which has rightly fired the imagination of a large part of the world.
The West, after a hesitant start, has impressively united to assemble a vast arsenal of sanctions which will over time collapse the Russian economy.
Even if Putin succeeds in subjugating Ukraine by brute force, which is not at this point clear, such subjugation cannot be sustained.
I am confident that in the end Ukraine will emerge as a strong independent nation and in the end, this aggression may well herald the downfall of Putin.
Those Russians with no access to information other than through the state propaganda machine may support his action, but many younger and better informed Russians will regard it as a complete disaster, making the country “a stench in the nostrils” of the world, to use the old Biblical words, and destroying what was left of their ambitions to become properly connected to the global economy.
But the operative phrase is “in the end”.
The question is: how long lasts the agony, how widely stretches the arena of conflict, how much of the world does he pull down around him, as he descends into the abyss.
The danger is that we are witnessing the third incarnation of Putin: first he was the Western-oriented leader I met more than two decades ago, in St Petersburg, wanting to reform Russia; second he became the autocrat, accumulating personal wealth and unfettered power, a Russian nationalist intent on rebuilding the Russian sphere of influence – but though cold-blooded, still calculating.
The anxiety is a third incarnation, Putin detached from reality, and with no one around him prepared to tell him the truth.
I have visited Ukraine at least once a year since 2007, and the Institute has a longstanding project there. Anyone who knows Ukrainians, particularly the young Europe-oriented cadres who represent the country’s future and who are increasingly forming the backbone of its government, knows the idea of them wanting to live under the heel of Putin’s Russia is an absurdity.
They say they will fight to the last drop of blood and they mean it.
The question to which no one knows the answer is: to what extent does Putin retain some ability to conduct policy rationally?
Is there method in what to many seems madness? Has he launched this war to extract concessions, in respect of Ukraine’s future or its territory, or does he seriously believe he can govern a nation of 45 million people against their will, when even in Kharkiv he has faced bitter resistance, and has lost in four weeks a third to a quarter of the troops the Soviet Union lost in the ten years of occupying Afghanistan?
Comparisons with the second world war are easy to make. Put the television pictures in black and white and they could be from the 1940s.
But the differences are more important. Hitler led a Europe-wide fascist movement. Putin’s war is a one-man mission. More significant, Britain and the USA committed armed force to destroy Hitler. We have not made that commitment in respect of Putin. Indeed, we have gone out of our way to eschew it. The fighting will be done by Ukrainians.
And if the Russian army – for sure underperforming and as it turns out badly trained – uses its full military might, it will be tough for Ukraine to prevail in the short term, at least without terrible loss of life.
The West therefore needs a two-pronged strategy: ratchet up maximum pressure; and, at the same time, push for negotiation.
The pressure should be stated and clear. We knew for months this aggression was being planned. I favoured before the invasion a NATO conference held in person in Eastern Europe led by the president of the United states, which would have detailed all the different measures we would take if the invasion happened. It may be that nothing would have deterred Putin, but the toughest measures came after the invasion, and therefore had a punitive but not deterrent effect.
We should lay out now the further measures we will take in the event of escalation, and these should include:
- Further economic sanctions and complete ostracisation from the international financial community.
- An adjustment in our energy mix, which allows us credibly to relieve Europe of dependence on Russian gas and oil faster, and to allow us to ban or levy a punitive tax on Russian exports. We will need changes in European and American policy around fossil-fuel extraction, nuclear and even the temporary use of coal.
- A warning to Belarus, whose people do not support Putin’s actions, that it will pay a heavy price if it enters the war.
- Above all, the supply of weapons to Ukraine – particularly an uplift in surface-to-air missile (SAM) capacity and a commitment that arming Ukraine will be ongoing and will cover the full range of its needed capabilities.
I understand and accept that there is not political support for any direct military engagement by NATO of Russia. But we should be clear-eyed about what Putin is doing. He is using our correct desire not to provoke escalation alongside his willingness to escalate as a bargaining chip against us. When he is threatening NATO, even stoking fears of nuclear conflict, in pursuit of his attempt to topple by force a peaceful nation’s democratically elected president and wage war on its people, there is something incongruous about our repeated reassurance to him that we will not react with force.
I accept the reasoning behind our stance. But suppose he uses chemical weapons or a tactical nuclear weapon, or tries to destroy Kyiv as he did Aleppo in Syria, without any regard to the loss of civilian life – is it sensible to tell him in advance that whatever he does militarily, we will rule out any form of military response? Maybe that is our position and maybe that is the right position, but continually signalling it, and removing doubt in his mind, is a strange tactic.
This posture underlines the importance of the other prong of the strategy: a concerted and structured push for a negotiated settlement.
There will be those who say, rightly, that Putin deserves nothing but total defeat.
But the burden of this struggle is being borne by Ukrainians, not by us.
And the long-term punishment for Putin will rest not only on sanctions, but on the voluntary dissociation from Russia – country and corporate – which will not end until the end of his rule.
The next two weeks may be the last chance to achieve a negotiated settlement before the assault on Kyiv becomes worse, the Ukrainian people become hostile to any negotiation, or Putin faces a binary choice between “double down” or retreat.
And we should not underestimate the real economic price the world will pay for continued conflict with steep rises in fuel prices, food prices, global trade and inflation, as ever hitting the poorest in our society the worst.
The representatives of Ukraine and Russia are meeting. Israel and Turkey have been trying to mediate. The United States and China are in discussion. Chancellor Scholz and President Macron have directly engaged Putin.
But it appears quite ad hoc.
The president of Ukraine has rightly kept open a negotiated agreement. For the people of Ukraine that is the only alternative to a bitter, bloody and protracted guerrilla war.
We know Putin’s stated issues:
- NATO vs neutrality
- The stationing of offensive Western weapons systems in Ukraine
- Crimea
- The eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk
On the first two a deal is conceivable, though Ukraine would require binding guarantees from the West to contemplate giving up on NATO membership, and it will not yield on potential EU membership.
On the second two it may be possible to construct a process by which eventually their status will be decided, provided Putin doesn’t add a demand to keep the territory he is currently taking with considerable brutality in the corridor between Rostov and Odessa, a demand Ukraine could never accede to.
The final decision in any negotiation rests with Ukraine.
And we must not let this slip into another frozen conflict open to exploitation by Putin, as happened after 2014.
Ukraine will also need a Marshall Plan-type reconstruction.
All the various initiatives for peace need to be aligned, with Europe and the United States standing behind Ukraine in a structured negotiation which continues until agreement is reached or is clearly unreachable.
Ultimately, Europe and the United States will need to think through new security arrangements for Europe, the region and with Russia, as we had with the Soviet Union.
