What is Russia's plan for victory?

Hello,

In this video I discuss how Russia can achieve their war aims through peace negotiations. Many people in the West have a simplistic idea of what the war is about, and therefore they focus on the wrong issues in discussions about possible peace plans. This is a weakness that Russia can use to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the West in the negotiations that will probably be coming in the early months of 2025.

As always, you can watch the video here or read a transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

I've made videos about Ukraine's plans for victory and how they envision the war ending in a way that's positive for them, but it's been a while since I've talked about it from the Russian perspective. So, in this video, I want to talk about how we should understand the Russian war effort and what their goals are. And it's an important conversation because many people in the West have misconceptions about what the Russians are fighting for, and therefore, they also have incorrect ideas about what a peace deal could look like. So, let's talk about it.

The most important thing to understand about the war in Ukraine is that it's not a war about territory. It is by far the biggest misconception about the war that it's a conflict over who gets to keep the most territory once the war is over. If you look at the Western media, almost all the articles will be discussing the war in this way. That's why I keep stressing this point whenever I make these videos: it is simply wrong to understand it as primarily a war about territory.

What the war is really about is political influence over all of Ukraine, and that's the key to understanding Russia's war aims as well. What it is they're fighting for. When Putin launched the invasion in 2022, he didn't have the ambition to conquer all of Ukraine and to make it a part of Russia. The goal was to achieve regime change in Ukraine and to insert a government that would be more favorable to Russia and that would be under Putin's control. So Ukraine would still formally be an independent country, but it would be a part of Russia's sphere of influence. It would be a part of what the Russians like to call the near abroad, where they have extended political influence and they can dictate the politics in the areas where they see a need to do so.

And then it didn't work out as the Russians had hoped and it turned into this war of attrition that's now going on with a front line in Eastern Ukraine. But it's important to understand that the basic motivation and the primary goal of the war, they remain the same. It's still about political influence over all of Ukraine. The fighting is a means to achieve that goal. It's a way they put pressure on Ukraine. It's a way they put pressure on the international community because that way they can realize their ambitions for gaining that influence over all of Ukraine.

This is the perspective you need to have to understand what the Russians are trying to achieve. It means that there are a couple of things we can say about Russia's war aims if we have this perspective. The first point is that the Russians will never be satisfied with a peace element that merely allows them to keep the occupied territories because that addresses the wrong issues. If Russia gets to keep the territories that they have occupied, but the rest of Ukraine becomes a part of the Western community and it turns into a prosperous European country with strong security guarantees against Russian influence, then from a Russian perspective, that means they lost the war. So that is the first point: that Putin can never be satisfied with a settlement that just means that he gets to keep the occupied territories.

The second point is that Russia doesn't need to occupy the rest of Ukraine to achieve its goals. It was never the point that Ukraine would stop existing as a formally independent country. And that's still not the goal. Instead, what Russia needs to achieve is a peace settlement that will destabilize Ukraine to the extent that it becomes vulnerable to Russian influence over Ukrainian politics in the future. So, formally, Ukraine would still be an independent country, but in practice, it would not be sovereign because it would just be impossible for Ukrainian politicians to govern independently of Russia. So, eventually, Ukraine will end up with a pro-Russian government because that's the only government in Ukraine that has any chance of achieving any political results.

And this is where things get tricky because right now, there is a lot of talk about possible upcoming peace talks when Donald Trump takes office and there are lots of ideas that are being floated about what a peace deal might look like. The important thing to understand is that to achieve victory in the war, all Russia has to do is to persuade the Western countries to push Ukraine into a peace deal that, in practice, gives Russia the influence they want. And this is something the Western countries might be willing to do because they don't understand the dynamics of what's going on. Many Western leaders and commentators still have this idea that it's mostly a war about territory and that the peace negotiations will have to solve this problem of territory and then all the rest is of secondary importance.

But the reality is that it's all these other factors that will ultimately decide whether it's Ukraine that can say that they won the war or if Russia did. So we can imagine two different deals that look exactly the same regarding the occupied territories. In the first scenario, Russia keeps control over the occupied territories and the rest of Ukraine has conditions that allow for a prosperous future as a part of the West. And Ukraine will have strong guarantees that Russia cannot start a new war in the future. This way, Ukraine remains politically independent of Moscow. But in the second scenario, Russia also keeps control over the occupied territories in exactly the same fashion. However, the terms here are that the rest of Ukraine will always be vulnerable to new Russian attacks and Ukraine will be politically destabilized in a way that eventually will give Russia control over Ukrainian politics.

So when it comes to peace negotiations, the devil is in the details. And because most people in the West don't understand these dynamics, there is a good likelihood that Russia can achieve its goals in the war by simply persuading the West to give them what they want. Because the Western negotiators will assume that these are the unimportant details as long as the fighting just stops.

The reality is that many of the ideas that are now being floated in the West about possible peace plans, they more or less give Russia everything they want because it will mean that Ukraine will be politically destabilized and left in an unsustainable position. And that means that Russia is much closer to winning the war than many people in the West realize.

And here, I just want to interject that Russia is actually also much closer to losing the war than many people in the West realize. One of the biggest obstacles to the West creating a sustainable strategy to help Ukraine win the war is this pervasive idea that Russia has endless resources and can continue fighting forever. And that's absolutely not true. I think 2025 is going to be the year when it becomes obvious that Russia is running out of resources and that they can't sustain the war at the current level. That's just important to keep in mind when we talk about these things that things can actually go both ways right now. And it looks like 2025 is going to be a more decisive year than 2024 has been.

But Russia is closer to winning the war than people in the West realize because they're going to win it in a way where we don't notice that they're winning. Because they're going to achieve their goals at the negotiating table. And then after a deal has been reached, then the Western politicians are going to go around waving this paper and saying that, "Well, it's a good deal because now finally there is peace." And then in reality, the Western politicians did not achieve anything, but they sold out Ukraine's future and they gave Russia the permanent control over Ukrainian politics that they wanted.

So essentially, that's Russia's plan for victory. Let me give a couple of examples of what that might look like. The first question is whether Russia can force Ukraine into a deal where Ukraine does not receive robust security guarantees from the Western countries. If Ukraine does not become a member of NATO and it also does not get other types of arrangements that provide similar degrees of security guarantees, then Ukraine is basically left on its own. And it will be unsustainable for Ukraine to maintain a standing army of its current size after the war. So they will have to reduce the size of the military to a level that is sustainable for the country, but that will leave them vulnerable to a new Russian invasion. And if the Ukrainian politicians believe that it's unacceptable and they want to maintain a large military, then it will significantly damage the Ukrainian economy and it will make it impossible for the country to prosper. So not providing security guarantees will present Ukrainian politicians with an impossible dilemma. And eventually it will mean that over time, Ukraine will have to approach Russia to somehow make it work.

Russia might also try to create conditions for a peace deal that will destabilize Ukraine politically in the immediate short term. For example, it will be almost impossible for Ukrainian politicians to accept that the occupied territories are formally a part of Russia. It's written into the Ukrainian constitution that it's not possible to cede territory like that. So as things stand now, it's not a concession that Ukrainian politicians can make. I mentioned in my video about security guarantees for Ukraine and about the Ukrainian plan for victory, that it would be possible for Ukrainian politicians today to accept a situation where in practice they don't control these territories, at least for the foreseeable future, but formally they will maintain the position that these territories rightfully belong to Ukraine.

If the Russians can persuade Donald Trump and other Western politicians that this is just a silly semantic discussion about it – that it doesn't have any real life significance – then it's possible that Ukraine could be forced into making a formal concession about these questions to end the war. And it will create a deep political crisis in Ukraine today. Either there will have to be a process to change the Ukrainian constitution or the Ukrainian parliament will have to override the constitution. And both of these scenarios would create a massive crisis of political legitimacy in Ukraine.

I think another issue that can have maybe a similar effect is the question of war crimes. It's something that is not discussed a lot in the West. If Ukraine is forced into a deal that means that the prosecution of war crimes has to stop and there will be no justice for the war crimes that have been committed against Ukrainians, then that will also destabilize Ukraine politically because it will be so controversial.

So depending on the conditions that Russia can secure in a peace deal, they could potentially destabilize Ukraine politically and they could make it militarily vulnerable to a new Russian attack at any time. And if Ukraine is politically destabilized and it is under threat of a new Russian invasion, then it will be very difficult to create a sustainable and prosperous economy. It would be nearly impossible to attract foreign investments under those circumstances. And if Russia, as a part of the negotiation, could get concessions that Ukraine will also not become a member of the European Union, then it would be even harder for Ukraine to build a sustainable economy.

The reality is that these things that I mentioned, they are actually part of the ideas that are being floated around about what a peace deal in Ukraine could look like or what Donald Trump's plan for Ukraine might entail. The people who say this in the West probably don't quite understand the dynamics of what's going on. They just look at the war in terms of territory in eastern Ukraine. But then inadvertently, they actually describe something that is more or less a Russian plan for victory. And they talk about it as a good solution. But it will create conditions where it will be impossible for Ukraine to achieve security or prosperity without submitting to Russian demands and constantly considering the Russian position when they make political choices. So it will give Russia the political influence over all of Ukraine, which was the motivation to start the war in the first place.

So that's why I say that Russia is actually a lot closer to winning the war and achieving its original war aims than most people in the West assume. Many people still think that Ukraine has basically already won because they have managed to fend off the initial Russian invasion. But that's very far from the case because the Russian war aims are much more sophisticated than just conquering the territory. And many people don't understand that it's actually possible to achieve their goals through the negotiations that might be coming in the early months of 2025.

That's why I think we should expect the Russians to probably enter negotiations when Donald Trump takes office and at least appear to be negotiating in good faith. And in fact, I would not be totally shocked if Russia declares a ceasefire on January 20th as a kind of good faith token and present to Donald Trump. That way, Donald Trump can say that he actually achieved his goal of creating peace in Ukraine in less than 24 hours. And then if Ukraine continues fighting, then it will be on the Ukrainians that the ceasefire didn't hold.

I don't know, of course, if that will happen. But it's these types of things that I think we should expect from Russia in the coming months. And negotiations at this point are actually a quite promising chance for them to achieve their war goals of forcing Ukraine into political submission and preventing Ukraine from becoming a strong part of the Western community. And I think it might be difficult for Ukraine to explain to the West why it's not necessarily a good idea to accept a deal that is on the table because many Westerners have a wrong idea about what the war is about.

Okay, I will end it here. If you found this video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And also remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I upload new videos. If you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you again next time.