Some two and a half years after Russia launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine there appears to be little thought given to how the conflict could realistically end. Currently, both parties claim that their goal is “victory.”

For President Volodymyr Zelensky, this entails the return to Ukraine of all the territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea, and NATO membership.

North Korean floods again: Will the Kims ever learn?Read More
For President Vladimir Putin victory means that Russia gets to keep the territories it seized from its neighbor and that Ukraine not only abstains from joining NATO but acknowledges that it is part of Russia’s sphere of influence.

In other words, each party demands the unqualified capitulation of its adversary as of today. Given the current circumstances, these conditions are not likely to be met, and if recent history is a guideline, they probably never will be.

The Second World War was the last major conflict that ended with the total defeat of one of the opposing sides, in that case, the Axis powers embodied by Japan and Germany. All subsequent wars, from Korea to Vietnam to the Iran/Iraq conflict ended either with a negotiation, a compromise (be it temporary) or a return to the status quo ante.

And in the two cases where the invading power was initially successful, namely Iraq and Afghanistan, it proved incapable of consolidating its hold on its opponent.

Therefore, one can realistically assume, irrespective of the official pronouncements made by all the parties to the Ukraine conflict, that the outcome will be some sort of “modus vivendi,” even if this might take the form of an unending, protracted, low-intensity confrontation. But whatever the outcome, there are a number of realities that cannot be ignored.

In terms of demographics, Russia’s population is currently estimated at 144 million. The combined populations of Germany, Poland and France are 192 million, reaching 259 million if one adds Ukraine.

From an economic standpoint, Russia’s situation is not much better. Currently, Russia has an average yearly per capita GDP of some US$15,200, compared with $48,700 for Germany, $39,000 for France and $18,500 for Poland.

Thus, in terms of both demography and economic clout, Putin embarked on his Ukrainian venture from a position of relative weakness. These deficiencies were further emphasized by Russia’s performance in the military arena.

On February 27, 2022, a Russian armored column made a beeline for Kiev with the purpose of installing in the Ukrainian capital a pro-Russian government. It was supposed to be a lightning strike lasting 48 hours at best. For Russia, it has proved instead an unmitigated disaster.

Not only did Ukrainian forces put up an unexpected resistance against the Russian forces but the Russian army, which allegedly had been reformed and reorganized under Putin, proved incapable of seizing the Ukrainian capital – thus further galvanizing a resistance embodied literarily overnight by Zelensky.

Coming after the Russian takeover of Crimea, Putin’s move against Ukraine had a devastating effect on the whole issue of international relations as it had been conceived since the end of World War II.

Granted, it was not the first time that a nation-state without international endorsement invaded another. Thus, in principle, there was little to distinguish the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the American invasion of Iraq.

Likewise, India’s annexation of Sikkim in April 1973 and the “referendum” that followed could have caused a ripple, but it did not. Ultimately, Sikkim was irrelevant and America’s invasion of Iraq was a sideshow.

Ukraine, however, is in the heart of Europe. It is one of the world’s main cereal producers and it shares a border with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Thus, in geostrategic terms, a Russian-dominated Ukraine has the potential of appearing as a threat to Western Europe. But to do so it has to be solidly in Russia’s grip. For Putin, the problem is not only to impose his hegemony on Ukraine but, once he has, to keep it in his grasp.

Except for the region of the Donbas and Crimea, inhabited by Russian speakers, one can presume that the rest of Ukraine would not welcome being under Russian rule. The number of troops Putin would need to keep an occupied Ukraine under his grip is a moot point, but if history provides an example it does not play in his favor.

When Germany occupied part of France in 1940, it took some 350,000 German soldiers to keep some 25 million Frenchmen under control. That ratio took into account the fact that, for all practical purposes at the grass-roots level, French authorities continued to administer the country.

Thus the postal service, railways, schools, road maintenance, the courts and the like endured as they always had and practically all of the 72,500 Jews who were deported to the death camps were arrested not by the Germans but by the French police operating on behalf of the occupiers.

Keeping in mind as a reference the size of the French population in relation to the number of occupying Germans, and assuming that the Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation would not be more committed than that of the French, it would take at least one million troops, if not more, for Putin to impose his rule on an occupied Ukraine.

The fact that he does not have these numbers begs another question, namely whether a hostile and occupied Ukraine would not, in the long term, be a bigger challenge to Putin’s vision of Russia than his present predicament.

On paper, there were two ways of denying Putin’s ambition to impose his hegemony on Ukraine.

The first was to let him have his way while ensuring that the burden it would impose on Russia from within would thwart his dream of recreating a Russian empire on the Stalinist model.

However, this would not only have entailed a long-term strategy for which the West was ill-equipped. It also would have required, above all, that the Ukrainians throw in the towel. While this might have occurred some 20 years ago, a resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism ensured that the country would not submit to Russia’s subjugation in the 2020s.

The second way of denying Putin’s ambition—refusing to let him have his way—is what has emerged as the current situation. Today, there is a general consensus among Western countries that Putin’s geopolitical agenda must be constrained.

That raises two questions:

Why?
At what cost?
Much of the rationale for the Western reaction to Putin’s Ukrainian venture is that if he is not stopped it will embolden him to risk similar undertakings against Poland or the Baltic states and thus will represent a direct threat to Western Europe. In this perspective, Putin had to be stopped, and Ukraine was the place to do it.

Whether he had the demographics to move farther West, the economy to sustain an open conflict or the army to manage it are questions that either were not raised or were left unanswered.

If Ukraine had not resisted the Russian incursion, there would have been no scope for the West to intervene as it did. However, once it did, the nature of the conflict changed.

What initially started as a clash within the Russian ecosphere between the likes of Muscovy and Kiev morphed into a confrontation between Washington-plus-allies and Russia. And while the military and humane dimensions of the confrontation are still confined to the Russian-Ukrainian border region, its political and economic dimensions have become global.

Not counting the human cost of the conflict – which is estimated at some 400,000 casualties in addition to some 3.7 million internally displaced and some 6.3 million refugees who fled the country – the collateral damages have been colossal.

In economic terms, the combination of sanctions, embargoes and disruption is estimated to have cost a total of some $1.5 trillion, equivalent to 1% of the global GDP. This includes, among other things, the price of petroleum, which in turn has impacted prices in the fertilizer and petrochemical industries, as well as the global supply of grain. From that perspective, the war in Ukraine is nothing less than a global economic disaster.

If the international order is a matter of balance, the disruptive effect of the conflict in Ukraine is difficult to under-rate. Before Putin’s “special military operation,” NATO, which was conceived as an anti-Soviet alliance, has, over the years, drifted into a state of semi-irrelevance.

Literarily overnight, Putin succeeded in panicking the likes of Finland and Sweden into joining the alliance, which was resuscitated as a bulwark against a potential Russian imperial expansion.

On a more global scale, Washington’s taking on both Russia and China inevitably ensured that the two would find a common ground in confronting a common enemy. However, while it is not in China’s interest to see Russia excessively weakened – as this would strengthen Washington’s global standing – it is also not in Beijing’s interest to have to confront on its northern border a resurgent Russian imperial power.

Ultimately, Beijing’s Russia policy entails providing some support to Putin without provoking an excessive American reaction.

As for the West in general and more specifically for Washington, the future is, to say the least, uncertain. While the temptation to use Ukraine to bring Putin to his knees is real, it is also fraught with danger.

Russia is, after all, a major nuclear power, and were the country to drift into a state of semi-anarchy, nothing could guarantee that part of its nuclear arsenal would not fall into the wrong hands. So, the real question is whether Putin can be contained without bringing down the Russian state.

Much will hinge on how long the Putin establishment can survive the regimen that the West has currently imposed upon it. While sanctions are certainly having some effect, one should not discount the fact that, in terms of social resilience, the degree of hardship that the Russian people can endure is without parallel in the West.

In socioeconomic terms, Russian society is neither entrepreneurial nor industrial and all the country produces is raw materials, grain and energy. Just by hunkering down, Russia is ultimately far less vulnerable to outside forces than the likes of China.

As of today, Putin’s “special military operation” has reinvigorated NATO, illustrated the shortcomings of the Russian armed forces and massively boosted Ukrainian nationalism. As for the reactions to Putin’s venture, they have yet to demonstrate that they are even close to reining him in.

That makes the current situation a lose-lose proposition for all concerned.

Alexander Casella PhD has taught and worked as a journalist for Le Monde, The Times, The New York Times, Die Zeit, The Guardian and Swiss radio and TV, writing primarily on China and Vietnam. In 1973, he joined the UNHCR, serving, among other postings, as head of the East Asia Section and director for Asia and Oceania. He then served as representative in Geneva of the International Center for Migration Policy Development.