Attachments
Sixteen months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, its attacks on Ukrainian cities continue, while Ukraine’s counteroffensive slowly advances. With NATO leaders convening soon, Crisis Group experts explain in this Q&A why a lengthy war may loom and what that means for NATO members and other states.
How do Ukrainian officials define victory, and what are their prospects?
Ukrainian officials, and their backers, tell two stories of what victory looks like. The first entails Ukraine regaining all of its territory and receiving reparations from Moscow for the damage caused, while the Russian leadership stands trial for war crimes and the crime of aggression. No senior Ukrainian official has suggested in public that a compromise over Ukrainian territory, whether that seized by Russia-backed separatists in 2014 or that captured since the full-scale invasion in early 2022, is possible. The logic is clear: to make such a suggestion would undermine both military morale and Ukraine’s position in any eventual negotiations. It would also be politically untenable when polls continue to show that vast majorities of Ukrainian citizens believe that their country can and will regain all of its internationally recognised territory.
Still, the odds of Ukraine rapidly liberating all of its territory by force of arms remain low, despite the Western tanks and other equipment continuously entering its arsenal. As fighting in June demonstrated, Russians are dug in to defensive positions on both the eastern front, in Donetsk and Luhansk, and on the southern front, where Moscow holds a land bridge to Crimea and the Zaporizhzhye nuclear power plant, on the grounds of which it has established a military base. Kyiv’s commanders and troops have proven themselves capable and brave, and the new weapons are helping. But Russian lines are not collapsing, and Ukraine’s forward movement in its counteroffensive is slow. The U.S. decision on 6 July to provide Kyiv with cluster munitions, highly controversial (and banned by many countries) due to their history of killing and maiming civilians long after war ends, may indicate fears among Ukraine and its partners that progress is, indeed, too slow.Even if it speeds up, the summer’s fighting is highly unlikely to see Ukraine retake all of its lands in one fell swoop.
Rather, the months that follow the counteroffensive may well resemble those that preceded it. That means an ugly, enduring, destructive and largely nonproductive fight all along the fronts, with small chunks of territory changing hands and neither party achieving the military dominance it needs to grab tactical or strategic advantage. In the meantime, both sides will build up forces until one or the other is ready to undertake the next big campaign.
Even if Ukraine, which has surprised observers before, should reach its eastern border and break through Russia’s southern land bridge, it faces several problems. One is the question of how it would retake Crimea, which Moscow has held since 2014 and which hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet. A blockade of the peninsula, possible only if Ukraine regains substantial land in the south, might be one way. It would limit escalation risks by avoiding a frontal Ukrainian assault on territory that – while unquestionably Kyiv’s under international law – is both highly prized and claimed by the Kremlin. (Ukraine already engages in shelling and missile strikes and these would presumably continue.) This tactic could additionally offer negotiating leverage with Moscow. But a blockade would be tremendously difficult, militarily and logistically. It would also risk grave humanitarian impact, while leaving the peninsula in Russia’s hands.
Another problem is Russia. Despite the mutiny by the head of the Wagner private military company Yevgeny Prigozhin on 23-24 June, the Russian military still appears cohesive – and has just been promised a pay raise. There is no guarantee that Ukrainian military successes in themselves would be enough to achieve Russia’s defeat on the terms Kyiv seeks. However far Kyiv gets, it runs the risk that Russia responds not with negotiation or capitulation, but with obstinacy, regrouping and looking to fight again, including with attacks across the border and airstrikes throughout Ukraine.
Hence there is a second version of how Ukraine sees victory. This narrative is about the transformation of Russia, up to and including the country’scollapse and a change in its government. To be sure, the latter is not official policy in Kyiv or the capitals backing it. But Ukrainian officials and several Western experts with ties to their governments say peace is impossible absent fundamental change in Moscow. Some harbour hopes of the government’s downfall, though this cadre does not include the Biden administration, which has takenpains to make clear that such an outcome is neither its aim nor its desire. The failed Wagner mutiny, on one hand, indicates that the Kremlin can withstand shocks. On the other, it makes clear that internal turmoil is more plausible than Moscow seems to have anticipated.
This scenario is understandably appealing to those who seek Ukraine’s success, in that it at least theoretically allows for all that Kyiv wants, including the international criminal prosecutions that would otherwise require a sitting government to, in effect, turn itself in. (Of course, a successor government might also hesitate to hand over a former Russian head of state.) In any case, this second scenario is neither particularly likely nor in the power of anyone outside Russia to effect, both because the Russian leadership’s response if it believes a foreign government is seeking its overthrow could be dangerously escalatory and because there is simply no clear path to carrying something like this out. It is therefore not a useful planning parameter.