“If we take into account the situation until February 2022, it is Russia that will suffer a strategic defeat as a result of the war.”, — write: www.unian.ua
If we take into account the situation until February 2022, it is Russia that will suffer a strategic defeat as a result of the war.
Putin not only failed to achieve his goals, but also drove the Russian Federation into a worse situation than before the war / photo REUTERSRegardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, strategically, Russia has already been defeated. In the long run, its internal and external situation will be worse than it was before the war. Rajan Menon, a senior researcher at the Defense Priorities analytical center and Columbia University (USA), writes about this in an author’s article for Foreign Policy.In his opinion, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had two goals. First, to annex directly to Russia as much of the territory of Ukraine as possible, ideally most of the right bank, and also to install a pro-Russian puppet government in Kyiv. A second, larger goal of the invasion was to use these gains to shift the European balance of power in Moscow’s favor.
The analyst is convinced that despite the successes of the Russian army in 2024, Putin will not be able to achieve at least one strategic goal. Menon does not consider the occupation of already captured territories to be a strategic success for Russia.
According to the analyst, with this invasion, Russia finally pushed Ukraine away from itself, and it will never again engage in any close cooperation with its northern neighbor. “Ukrainian identity is now determined by the desire to have as little as possible in common with Russia,” Menon notes.
The analyst is convinced that the door to NATO will be closed to Kyiv as a result of the war. However, Ukraine will still deepen military-technical ties with the West, just in other formats.
“Together, these events indicate that regardless of the outcome of the war, Putin will not be able to achieve his main goal – to keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence. The conflict will also not leave Russia in a better position in other aspects,” the expert emphasizes.
Menon emphasizes that Ukraine’s membership in NATO in 2022 was no closer than in 2008. So, with his invasion, Putin did not fundamentally change anything here. Instead, he provoked the entry into NATO of Sweden and Finland, which until then had shown no interest in the alliance. And the rest of Europe significantly increased their own defense spending.
At the same time, Russia itself lost not only 700,000 soldiers, of whom more than 100,000 died, but also practically all usable stocks of military equipment. It will take many years to restore them.
Among Russia’s economic losses, the most significant is the loss of the European market for Russian oil and gas, which accounted for three quarters of Russian natural gas exports. The analyst believes that Russia will not be able to return to this market in the near future.
Against this background, cooperation with China is forced and vitally necessary for Moscow, but not for Beijing. So, in fact, Russia turns into a dependent junior partner in this duo.
Summing up, Rajan Menon admits that the realities of the battlefield do not leave favorable conditions for the end of the war for Ukraine. But Russia, in his opinion, will by no means be the winner here.
“Putin’s war failed to secure a dominant influence in Ukraine and a stronger long-term position in Europe, leaving Russia in a worse position in the long term. Both internally and externally,” the analyst writes.
The war in Ukraine: further prospectsAs UNIAN wrote, Russia spends twice as much to finance the war against Ukraine than everyone thinks. In addition to the official expenditures of the federal budget, the financing of the defense industry is carried out through preferential lending to military factories. And the scale of this phenomenon is such that Russia is already on the verge of financial collapse. If the war drags on, the financial and banking sector of the Russian Federation may simply crumble.
We also reported that Trump’s team considers the scenario in which Russian soldiers will completely leave the entire territory of Ukraine to be unrealistic.
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