Photograph Source: The Presidential Office of Ukraine – CC BY 4.0
While the world has understandably been focused on the Israeli-Hamas War in Gaza and its spillover effects across the Middle East, many people have lost interest in the Russo-Ukrainian War that continues in a grueling battle of attrition nearly two and a half years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Without going into the multitudes of details regarding the war—discussed at length on here in the ‘Russia-Ukraine’ highlight folder—this is a conflict between the most expansive empire in history (America) and the declining power (Russia) it’s infringing on. The US tried shoving NATO expansion to Ukraine down Russian throats, well known to be a red line for Moscow, and got the predictable result. Russia, for its part, intervened in Ukraine to secure its interests—primary control of the Black Sea and the resource-rich lands in Eastern Ukraine.
While Ukrainian support from the West will continue in the near term, there have been noticeable chinks in the armor of American defenses within the last year. Mainly when US Congress was stalled (more like held up by far-right fascists who wanted increased militarization on the southern border, which the neoliberals in Washington were glad to hand over) on Ukraine war aid for several months—leaving the Ukrainians high and dry on the front lines while the Russians advanced—and when the right-wing Polish regime stopped sending weapons to Ukraine the latter half of last year before resuming with a new liberal government in charge now. These were only previews of what’s to come the longer this war drags on.
There have been reports that top officials in Kyiv are privately expressing concern about having to cede territory to the Russians if Trump wins this Fall, with Ukrainian war aid a sore spot for fascists all over the world but especially in the US with Trump and his Republican voter base. All the escalations and increase in American militarism across Ukraine—from sending Ukrainian forces F16s, modern tanks, cluster munitions, and ATACMS to allowing them to target Russian territory with longer-range US weapons—is being done because Washington’s support is crucial, and it will not be there forever. Without US weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic support, Ukraine would have been defeated by this point. Despite knowing how to defend their homeland and being fierce fighters, they would have run out of weapons and government funding absent American aid. US assistance also plays a crucial role in their ability to strike Russia in the Black Sea and Crimea, carrying out key logistical operations, maintaining supply routes, etc. US intelligence has even directly aided Kyiv in taking out top Russian commanders in Ukraine. A fact Moscow won’t simply forget.
But the US Government knows it cannot support Ukraine “as long as it takes” because those orchestrating the war against Russia—via Ukrainian proxies—understand the longer this conflict and the sanctions drag on, the more allies (colonies) in Europe will continue to decrease their aid. The further Europe slides into recession and deindustrialization, the more the domestic economies will take precedence over supporting Ukraine against Russia. Not to mention the possibility of domestic American politics (i.e., far-right fascists) hijacking policy and abandoning Ukraine, much to the chagrin of Pentagon officials and the foreign policy establishment. So I think the US has been trying to get as much lethal support as they possibly can to Ukraine without poking the bear so hard in Moscow that it results in an increased military confrontation. You can thank the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling for the fact that though there have been escalations throughout and redlines crossed, they’ve been exercised with a sense of caution. US planners don’t want WWIII in Europe because they need to be ready for the potential excellent power clash in Asia with the Chinese. If nuclear war happens, it surely won’t be over Ukraine against the Russians.
The primary goal for Washington in Ukraine, in my opinion, is to prolong the conflict long enough that the sanctions really start hurting the Russian economy while not allowing the conflict to spill beyond Ukraine or for American troops to become involved directly. They want Russia weakened to the point that they’re no longer a threat to their interests in Europe, just as they wanted to help prolong the Soviet-Afghan War long enough to hurt the Soviets to the point that Moscow could no longer threaten American control of the wider Middle East. This is exactly what they did, and the longer this war drags on, the more Russia will rely on the Chinese economy to sustain their war efforts.
Moscow is really being rolled into Beijing’s sphere of influence, along with its colonies in Central/West Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Given the economic blitzkrieg of the West, Russia—the 11th largest economy, just ahead of Mexico and behind Canada—is relying primarily on the power of China’s economic might to project force, and diplomatic/military ties will only strengthen in future years. America will have defeated Russia in the sense that it is no longer a great power on the global stage but a weakened and former great power taking orders from China. After Russia greatly integrated itself into Western and Central Europe in the post-Cold War period via energy expansion, this has now been completely reversed with the sanctions and destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
Other goals include the rebuilding of Western-aligned Ukraine. A two-state solution will likely be what happens, as in Korea with a demilitarized zone, but where the Kremlin-controlled territory is annexed into the Russian Federation, while Ukraine remains under the de facto control of the US/EU/IMF/World Bank and potentially rolled into NATO. It will be a neocolonial protectorate of the American empire even more than it already is. Ordinary Ukrainians will face the same austerity, imperial practices, etc. For Washington they will have thwarted Russian advances into Eastern Europe, containing them to the Black Sea, while likely hemming them in further from the Caucasus region with increasing US and Western influence in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Russia understands this is the best they can hope for in Ukraine. Russia won’t be taking the rest of Ukraine or reducing it to a colony, as it was before the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution (soft US coup), unless US aid stops altogether, which is unlikely to happen unless there is a negotiated settlement to the conflict. Something that, ironically, is more likely to come from a Republican fascist than a neoliberal warhawk like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken, etc. Support for Ukraine is a bipartisan endeavor, but due to domestic political considerations (Republican voters largely do not want to support Ukraine), it’s an issue in American politics. Therefore, Trump, or another GOP fascist like him, would likely waste little time forcing the Ukrainians to cede territory in exchange for peace while taking the public credit for it. This would score dividends with American voters and international goodwill for the empire at same time. It’s honestly is a win-win for any Republican leader. If this occurs next year after a Trump win in November, as is feared in Kyiv, then it would appear as though America stood up to Russia to help the Ukrainians, maintaining imperial credibility but ultimately achieving peace through diplomacy instead of WWIII, and would be a huge domestic political win for the GOP with their voter base. They can sell themselves as the “peace” party while supposedly only the Democrats wanted to continue the war.
In the meantime, however, both centers of power in America are content to press forward to weaken the Neo-Russian empire. This war was even more important to the American empire than arming the Mujahideen against the Soviets because it was an aligned and European country under the direct control of the US that was being attacked. Not to mention this attack largely being seen in Washington as a joint Chinese-Russian challenge to the “rules-based order” (i.e., American empire) that’s dominated the globe since 1945. The US Government can’t afford to be weak here, in their view, because, though Ukraine isn’t as vital as Taiwan (hence no US troops being sent to fight), it is part of corporate America’s core interests—control of the greater European continent.
You can bet Russia understands that they’re not going to take back all of Ukraine, as Putin and his band of kleptocrats likely believed was at least possible when they pulled the trigger on the full-scale invasion and sent their elite Spetsnaz forces in to take out Zelenskyy. They can’t physically occupy Kyiv and take out the regime with US support. So what’s Russia’s goal at this point? I think the Kremlin still believes they can take the rest of the Donbas, as well as potentially reconquer Kherson and Kharkiv, which is certainly possible but something that’ll require sustaining the war effort another couple years at least. Other objectives include taking Odesa and severing Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. This would likely require at minimum a few more years of fighting. But it’s a clear geo-strategic goal that’ll give Russia (and their bigger friend in China) more significant control of the region.
Russia also has a separatist enclave in Moldova—Transnistria—with troops stationed there securing its autonomous status separate from Chișinău who seeks closer relations with the West, highlighting another potential land grab for the Kremlin in the future. If Russia can actually manage to take Odesa and push far enough into South-Central Ukraine near the Moldovan border, they could create a direct land bridge to these pro-Russian separatists. This is part of the Putin doctrine—defending pro or ethnic Russians in breakaway regions of the former USSR and bringing them into Moscow’s direct orbit again, or reconquering former strongholds of the Soviet empire that the we/NATO doesn’t defend.
I think, at this point, that could be a realistic long-term goal for Kremlin planners in this war because they’re indeed not taking all of Ukraine. This leaves Russia’s current goal in the war effort—bomb the ever-loving hell out of Ukraine and reduce it into a defacto-Trump state that will be a weak and ineffective contributor to the American empire. Part of why they want to take Ukraine’s land in the East and South of the country where the most vital resources and strategic interests are. “Let the US/EU have the western part of the country with little value and we’ll take what really matters”—the grain and mineral resources and control of the Black Sea. So now that they’re in it full bore. In contrast, from 2014-2022 when Moscow was simply arming their friends in the Donbas and providing special forces, it’s in Russian imperial interests to keep this war going as long as it can to achieve these ends and, not unlike America’s long term goal of leveling Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia and setting them back decades in their Indochina Wars, to reduce Ukrainian development so the country is destroyed, setback and drastically weakened. Moscow is likely okay with giving up Western Ukraine but the West will have to pay a cost, which means many more Ukrainian/Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians paying the ultimate costs.
What needs to happen is a ceasefire before the increasing tensions stumble beyond the point of no return or inadvertently lead to a full-blown Russo-American war. Ultimately, I fear it’s not in either Moscow’s or Kyiv’s interests to entertain a ceasefire until one is in an overwhelmingly favorable position in the war, which I don’t see as possible anytime soon unless something changes drastically on the battlefield. That kind of thing must come from outside forces who have a vested interest in the outcome and can exert leverage over their mercenaries to end hostilities.
What’s interesting to me is the exterior powers using the war to consolidate control over each country. Moscow now firmly sits in Beijing’s sphere of influence and is becoming a defacto colony but one with complete autonomy in its domestic affairs, given existing Russian military power and its strength domestically as a major oil and energy producer. It’s not that Moscow will do whatever Beijing says, but that they’ll support them on every issue now and further expand their integration and reliance on one another. But, as the small partner, Russia needs China more than China needs Russia. It’s that simple. China is getting favorable access to Russian resources, not to mention their military assistance and capabilities in Africa/Europe/Asia, while Moscow remains able to keep its war effort steady and stay a true regional power.
Russia needed a more prominent Chinese economy, like the declining British, and a much larger American economy post-WWI to remain a true power. Over time, all this meant was further subordination to US interests, which is all China cares about in this case long term—control of Russia’s resources and it’s geopolitical allegiances. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, but China uses the war to bring Russia into its empire. The US is essentially doing the same by consolidating its power in Western, Central, and Nordic Europe with more troops, severing European ties to Russian energy, and expanding NATO into Finland and Sweden to create a “NATO Lake” in the Baltic Sea. Though Europe was already in the US government’s pocket, American power had expanded across the continent with the war and further surrounded the Russians. Putin’s gift to the West.
If China were a truly neutral actor in this conflict, you’d see them sending copious amounts of non-lethal aid to Ukraine too but you don’t. They haven’t stopped trading with Ukraine or providing Chinese drones. Still, conversely, they haven’t been propping up Kyiv’s economy to help sustain their war effort, and they have provided crucial diplomatic support to the Russians as they waged their war on Ukraine. You never hear Chinese officials or state media referring to Russia’s actions as a criminal invasion, war crimes, etc.
Even China’s supposed Ukrainian “peace” plan says nothing about Russia illegally occupying nearly 20% of Ukraine. But why? Because it’s a “Russian peace plan” and Beijing is supporting their partner. The most exciting questions of the war at this stage are how far US/Western military involvement gets, how real the fears in Kyiv are of Republicans abandoning Ukrainians and whether or not the Chinese eventually cross the lethal aid red line set by the West, which would surely increase tensions in Europe & the Indo-Pacific but would be entirely welcomed by Moscow who, according to many experts, cannot sustain the current war effort beyond 2025.
