While the US election was underway, Russian officials, when asked, repeatedly said that it would not matter much to them who won, since they believed it will not change outcomes in Ukraine and probably not US-Russia relations generally. However, angry and panicked European leader have made clear they think otherwise. And Biden petulantly and recklessly over the weekend authorizing long-range missile strikes into Russia, which does cross a genuine Russian red line and puts the US directly at war with Russia, does make a difference even if that move will not stop or even slow Russia from prevailing in Ukraine. Russia has said if the US took that step, that American assets all over the world were targets. Given how long this threat has been in play, Russia probably has a very good idea of where some punches could do the most damage.
We’ll look briefly at this show of US belligerence, which Trump can roll back as soon as he assumes office, and look at some additional ways Trump back in power might make a difference.
The long-range missiles authorization illustrates that the steady Russian attrition and occasional very stern warnings had managed to keep the US and Ukraine from doing anything too reckless (if you omit the US destroying the Nord Stream pipeline and Ukraine, the Kharkova dam, which in the long term are actually detrimental to their own interests). The prospect of Trump accelerating the end of the war, as we are seeing, has focused a lot of minds and is producing some flailing about.
Nevertheless, Russia remains in control of how far it takes the conflict, in terms of territorial occupation. Could Trump, or different EU conduct as a result of Trump, wind up changing Russian calculations?
If Trump is unwilling or unable to get the EU to support Ukraine neutrality, as in “No NATO evah in Ukraine” (and that failure still seems baked in), Russia still faces dilemma of having to deal with the problem of a generally unfriendly western Ukraine at the end of the war. Taking it means much higher subordination and reconstruction costs, as well as potentially alienating some of Russia’s economic allies in BRICS; leaving western Ukraine to its own devices assures it becoming NATO-lite and among other things, NATO putting missiles there, if nothing else, out of spite.
However, as we will discuss, Russia might be able to improve the optics with comrades-in-all-but-arms by explicitly drawing its occupation model from the Allies with Germany at the end of World War II.1
Later wWe’ll discuss one path for ending the war that the Trump Administration might wind up opening up, but we think the odds of it coming about are exceedingly low. One solution the problem of “How to credibly insure Ukraine neutrality in the face of persistent Collective West bad faith?” would be for Turkiye and Hungary to provide security guarantees. Turkiye is colorable due to having the biggest NATO forces near the theater; Hungary could be included or volunteer by virtue of its president Orban having discussed peace prospects with Zelensky, Putin, Trump, and Xi. Either state could veto a future effort to get a rump Ukraine into NATO.
Having two NATO members guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality means they would be expected (ideally required) to vote against any Ukraine ascension to NATO.
We’ll recap below the near-impossibility of a negotiated outcome; even diplomacy advocate Alexander Mercouris has concluded that Russia will impose terms. But if there were any way for Russia not to have to occupy Ukraine or leave Western Ukraine as a festering wound, it would be a tidier solution all around.3
Let’s first consider the US long range missiles escalation and then take a broader look.
US Authorizes Long-Range Missile Strikes into Russia
The New York Times broke the story and recites the bizarre justification that the (almost certainly a Ukraine propaganda creation) participation of North Korean forces in the Russian defense of Kursk amounts to an escalation. The story admits that this move won’t do much to help Ukraine:
While the officials said they do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war, one of the goals of the policy change, they said, is to send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them.
Remember, Ukraine depends on the US to operate the missiles, here ATACMS, and for targeting, so the Russians are correct to depict these attacks as made by the US.
Scott Ritter unpacks the implications. Do click through to read the entire tweet:2
The Biden administration just gave Ukraine the green light to use US-made and provided ATACMS missiles against Russian targets inside Russian territory, including Kursk.
It should be noted that the US, together with NATO, helped plan and execute the Ukrainian incursion into…— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) November 17, 2024
Russia Still Has Its “Losing the Peace” Problem
Odds favor that the Biden efforts at Trump sabotage don’t make much difference in the end, or may even work to some advantage to Russia (as in justifying tit for tat retaliation, say in the Middle East).
But Russia has no obvious answers to what to do with Ukraine, even with its position continuing to improve as it further weakens Ukraine, US and NATO combat capabilities.
Without belaboring the history, the US is strategically overextended. Its underestimation of Russia led to the US enlisting allies, including ones not even in the theater, to send weapons to Ukraine, resulting in stocks all among them being reduced to low levels. Continuing supplies to Ukraine are now coming from globally inadequate new production, plus forays into couch cushions turning up some quarters.
Current conventional wisdom is that one of two things is likely to exhaust Ukraine even before the firepower gap with Russia makes continued fighting impossible. The New York Times reported at the start of November that the Pentagon view was that Ukraine has enough manpower to carry on only for another six to twelve months.
Power shortages over the winter could represent a second breaking point, not just for the military but for government operations and civil society. La Niña has the potential to bring a cold winter to Europe. Russia has just launched another punishing round of electric system strikes. And when a grid is damaged, more demand (here from cold weather) can also produce additional breakage.
Trump’s openly antipathy toward NATO, or at least the US spending much to support it, compounds the difficulty of keeping Project Ukraine going. Some have suggested that one way for Trump to deliver on his “I’ll end the war in one day/I’ll end it before I take office” is to end US involvement as in US funding and weapons deliveries. The war would be over as far as US voters are concerned. And NATO has admitted that it would have trouble carrying on if the US cut the air supply.
Both the US European governments clearly fear Trump will stop funding the Ukraine conflict, witness the scramble to “Trump proof” it. But this comes when European economies are weak and government spending for social safety nets is already under pressure. It’s not hard to argue that the German government fell due to a fight over Ukraine spending.4 Finance Minister Christian Lindner refused to go along with prime minister Olaf Scholz’s pressure for more ambitious spending, which Linder said was a demand to pause the constitutional “debt brake”. Scholz sacked Linder and Linder pulled his party out of the coalition, producing in not too short order the scheduling of new elections.
However, Russia still faces the same dilemma. Putin, out of his general caution, would almost certainly prefer not to take any more of Ukraine than necessary. However, Russia’s paramount goal is securing Ukraine’s neutrality. Leaving anything more than an itty rump Ukraine will almost assure European meddling, if nothing else out of wounded pride. And if the Democrats come back into power in 2028, they would join in.
So What About an Occupation?
So a lasting resolution would seem to require Russia to subjugate all of Ukraine, even though that would contradict one of Putin’s earlier pledges, that Russia would not go where it was not wanted. Of course, depending on how things break, such as a government collapse, Russia could position itself as stabilizing an otherwise chaotic and lawless situation. Regardless, Russia would want to move into any vacuum if at all possible.
But “Better than alternatives” can be “Way short of ideal.” Recall how Russia handled the integration of Crimea and the four oblasts into Russia, that Russia scheduled referenda on joining Russia. The resulting approvals were credible, despite Western whinging, by virtue of those areas historically backing Russia-friendly national candidates. This mechanism is also important for establishing legitimacy in the eyes of Russia’s allies, who are still not entirely comfortable with Russia continuing to take more and more of Ukraine.
Other oblasts that are both ethnically Russian and strategically valuable like Kharkiv and Odessa would similarly be likely to vote in favor of joining Russia in the event of a Ukraine military/political collapse or other development that allows Russia to force a surrender.5
So what model would Russia use to deal with captured and presumed not terribly friendly territory? John Helmer suggested one, which we thought could be taken even further, that of a great big de-electrified zone. It would come to resemble the Unorganized Territory of Maine, which has very low population density, consisting nearly entirely of “men with beards,” as in hardy survivalists.
Another could be how the Allies handled Germany after its unconditional surrender in World War II. I confess only to having just started to look at this topic and would welcome links to good academic treatments. However, a quick look at Wikipedia shows some precedents that might be useful to Russia, such as for a 10 year occupation:6
In the west, the occupation continued until 5 May 1955, when the General Treaty (German: Deutschlandvertrag) entered into force. However, upon the creation of the Federal Republic in May 1949, the military governors were replaced by civilian high commissioners, whose powers lay somewhere between those of a governor and those of an ambassador. When the Deutschlandvertrag became law, the occupation ended, the western occupation zones ceased to exist, and the high commissioners were replaced by normal ambassadors. West Germany was also allowed to build a military, and the Bundeswehr, or Federal Defense Force, was established on 12 November 1955.
And:
Despite the grants of general sovereignty to both German states in 1955, full and unrestricted sovereignty under international law was not enjoyed by any German government until after the reunification of Germany in October 1990. Though West Germany was effectively independent, the western Allies maintained limited legal jurisdiction over ‘Germany as a whole’ in respect of West Germany and Berlin. At the same time, East Germany progressed from being a satellite state of the Soviet Union to increasing independence of action; while still deferring in matters of security to Soviet authority. The provisions of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, also known as the “Two-plus-Four Treaty”, granting full sovereign powers to Germany did not become law until 15 March 1991, after all of the participating governments had ratified the treaty. As envisaged by the Treaty, the last occupation troops departed from Germany when the Russian presence was terminated in 1994, although the Belgian Forces in Germany stayed in German territory until the end of 2005.
These approaches would not reduce hard and human costs to Russia, which already has serious labor shortages. But it would legitimate a generous time window for sorting things out.
Negotiations?
Even with the exit of the extreme Putin-hating Biden and his replacement Trump wrapped up in his self-image as a master deal-maker, it’s hard to see how negotiations get off the ground, let alone get anywhere. Admittedly, all the speculation about Trump trying to negotiate with Putin or otherwise press for talks will elevate expectations among Russia’s BRICS supporters, pretty much all of whom don’t like the conflict even if they accept Russia’s justifications. So Putin will be under even more pressure to make good on his oft-made promise to enter into talks if approached.
However, many if not most Russians are persuaded that negotiating with the duplicitous West is asking to be betrayed. Given America’s openly two-faced conduct in Palestine and with China (among many example), there’s ongoing confirmation of these concerns.
Interestingly, Putin appears to have cut off the “Talk to the [dishonest] organ grinder rather than the monkey” in his recent talk with German prime minister Olaf Scholz. From the Kremlin readout:
Speaking on the prospects for reaching a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict, the President of Russia pointed out that the Russian side had never rejected and was still open to resuming the talks broken off by the Kiev regime.
So Putin has now thrown down a marker about process, not just substance. Not only is the bare minimum starting point Istanbul, adjusted for new realities (no NATO membership, limits on Ukraine’s military, and now Russia incorporating the four oblasts into Russia) but the procedure is Russia negotiating with Ukraine, not the US or NATO. Not that “NATO” actually can negotiate; despite the appearances of solidity, it’s a very weak coalition with member states retaining autonomy on pretty much everything, including whether to respond to an Article 5 violation. That’s why, for instance, each state decided (even in the face of peer pressure and US arm-twisting) independently what if anything in the way of arms to send to Ukraine.
This process requirement works to Russia’s advantage now in multiple ways:
Russia did not agree to a ceasefire as part of Istanbul. It kept prosecuting the war. So even in the remote event that formal discussions were to start, Russian can keep attritting Ukraine (albeit likely at a less aggressive pace because optics)
Zelensky is opposed to negotiations and even if he had the occasional thought about relenting, the high odds of him quickly being assassinated by Banderites would restore his faith
Russia has bona fide procedural objections that need to be cleared before any talks could begin. First is the Constitutional amendment that Ukraine will not negotiate with Russia as long as Putin is president. That would need to be set aside. Second is that Zelensky cannot make binding commitments because he is not the legitimate leader of Ukraine
Even if the US and NATO somehow bribe Zelensky to leave and then Ukraine holds presidential elections, the earliest timing, per a recent Economist piece, is spring 2025. There is not likely to be much of a functioning Ukraine by then. And the Western, or at least EU, preferred replacements, former general Zaluzhny or former president Poroshenko, would be as opposed to making minimal necessary concessions as Zelensky. Plus Zaluzhny is a hard core Banderite and would be unacceptable to Russia
This is a long-winded way of saying that even if Russia feels it is in its interest to play along with “shape of the table” discussions, Ukraine’s collapse is pretty certain to advance faster than they will.
So in other words, as they like to say in Maine, there seems to be no way to get there from here, in terms of the idea of having some NATO members individually guarantee Ukraine security. 7 If they were independent-minded ones like Turkiye and Hungary, that deal would allow them to stand up to later pressure, if it came, to vote for rump Ukraine entry into NATO. Donald Trump would also get some satisfaction from end-running EU/NATO schemes to thwart his desire to bring the Ukraine war to a close.
However, it remains that the end-phases of a war which can generate the most reckless behavior. The US used the pretext of the difficulty of subduing Japan for its deadly demonstration of its nuclear weapons. Scott Ritter likes to point out that the Germany inflicted the highest personnel losses on the Allies in the last month of World War II. Here, so far, the reckless Biden gambit of authorizing long-range strikes into Russia can presumably be walked back, with a hoped-for result of no lasting escalation, by the Trump team. So so far, the “recklessness” can be contained to the political realm. But with the UK and EU also determined to throw spanners, will we be so lucky as to have that continue?
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1 Recall Russia is legalistic and used the same procedure that the US used with Kosovo to justify its invasion of Ukraine as defense of an ally per a mutual defense pact (the ally here being the newly-recognized breakaway Donbass republics).
2 Ritter’s suggestion that if Trump were to try to undermine the Biden provocation, that it would be an unprecedented act, is not correct. Richard Nixon, as a candidate, engaged in an arguably more egregious interference with a sitting President via sabotaging the Paris peace talks.
3 Of course, the last thing the Western establishment wants is a tidy solution….
4 It is frustrating but predictable that the mainstream press and commentary glosses over the fact that the EU’s economic distress is the direct result of the war. The US led Europe down what John Mearsheimer calls the primrose path, by convincing itself and its EU camp followers that Russia would quickly collapse under economic sanctions and that if Russians were dragooned into fighting, they’d run away as soon as they faced Western wunderwaffen and ubermenschen. When that did not work out, Plan B largely amounted to doing Plan A harder, including blowing up the Nordstream pipelines. Yet the Anglosphere and one assumes the mainstream European press depicts high energy prices and the resulting economic weakness and rising citizen unhappiness as if they just happened, as opposed were the result of actions to cut off Europe from cheap Russian energy. Michael Hudson has argued that the US embarked on this path to weaken Europe.
5 Russia does have the “Who signs the document”? problem. Putin and others have pointed out that Zelensky is no longer the legitimate president of Ukraine since his term has expired. Putin discussed that the Russian reading of the Ukraine constitution is that the executive power then falls to the head of the Rada, but Ukraine needs to make the determination.
6 Recall that Russia promised war crimes trials, another post World War II fixture. There are apparently more than enough ugly videos of Ukraine soldiers torturing Russian POWs to make the charges stick with Russia’s economic allies. That would help reinforce the notion that Ukraine has done plenty to merit Third Reich treatments.
7 Due to this post already getting a bit long, I have had to skip over why NATO entering into security guarantees, even if the big members were to have a Damascene conversion, is also vanishingly unlikely. I am not sure if that initiative would require unanimity; recall the Balts and probably the UK would remain opposed to any resolution of the war where any of pre-2014 Ukraine is recognized as part of Russia. So that could prove to be an insuperable obstacle.
In addition, I believe that many of the governance and operation issues that Auerelien raised in his fine essay, NATO’s Phantom Armies, on why a NATO intervention in Ukraine was pretty much impossible, would also apply to a peacekeeping force on the scale needed for Ukraine (even if Russia were to trust NATO as a peacekeeper; it would probably require the participation of friendlies like China). Confirming my suspicions, Wikipedia list only Bosina-Herzgovinia and Serbia-Kosovo as peacekeeping missions. That of course does not mean that some NATO members might form a coalition of the willing but brand it as NATO.
