essay on russia ukraine war 2022

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Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained

Putin’s invasion in February began Europe’s first major war in decades.

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Russia is bombarding major cities in Ukraine, more than a week into a war where Moscow has faced setbacks on the battlefield — yet seems undeterred from its campaign to take Ukraine.

Get in-depth coverage about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Why Ukraine?

Learn the history behind the conflict and what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said about his war aims .

The stakes of Putin’s war

Russia’s invasion has the potential to set up a clash of nuclear world powers . It’s destabilizing the region and terrorizing Ukrainian citizens . It could also impact inflation , gas prices , and the global economy.

How other countries are responding

The US and its European allies have responded to Putin’s aggression with unprecedented sanctions , but have no plans to send troops to Ukraine , for good reason .

How to help

Where to donate if you want to assist refugees and people in Ukraine.

On March 4, Russia seized Zaporizhzhia , one of Europe’s largest nuclear power plants. Russian shelling of the southeastern Ukraine facility set off a fire , which Ukrainian officials warned could set off a nuclear disaster. It took hours, but the fire was extinguished, and international monitors said that they do not detect elevated radiation levels and that the fire did not damage “essential” equipment. US officials have said Russia now appears to be in control of the plant.

But the incident was a reminder of how dangerous this war in Ukraine is becoming, and how uncertain and confusing things still are on the ground. Russian troops were advancing toward Kyiv, and thousands and thousands are fleeing in advance of a possible siege on the city.

The Russian military has made advances in the south, and are gaining in the area of Kherson, a port city on the Black Sea whose control is reportedly contested , and Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. Russian bombardment of these cities has resulted in humanitarian issues , with bridges and roads damaged by the fighting and dwindling access to food, clean water, medicine, and electricity in certain areas. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, experienced heavy Russian fire this week, and strikes have heavily damaged residential areas .

Ukrainian and Russian officials met in early March, and tentatively agreed on the need to humanitarian corridors — basically, safe zones for civilians to flee and supplies to pass through — but did not reach agreements on a larger ceasefire. As of March 6, multiple attempts to evacuate Ukrainian civilians have been halted because of Russian shelling.

Putin’s attempt to redraw the map of Europe risks becoming the most devastating conflict on the continent since World War II. Already, it is causing an astounding humanitarian crisis: Hundreds, perhaps thousands , of civilians have died, and more than 1.5 million people have fled the violence so far, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making it the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

The battle for Ukraine began in the early morning hours, local time, on February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a “special military operation” into the country of about 40 million. He claimed the Russian military seeks “demilitarization and denazification” but not occupation; attacks shortly followed from multiple fronts and targeted toward multiple cities.

Ukraine’s resistance has complicated Russia’s efforts to seize the country. Russian forces have not made the progress they likely thought they would at the start of the campaign. The Russian military’s early strategy has perplexed some experts and observers . But the more protracted this war becomes, the more catastrophic it will be.

The United States and its allies in Europe and the United Kingdom imposed the toughest financial sanctions ever on Russia after the first incursion, and have only built on these penalties since. On February 26, the United States and European countries agreed to block some Russian banks from SWIFT, a global messaging system, which will essentially prevent those institutions from doing any global transactions, a punishment that allies had previously hesitated to pursue . Already, Russia’s economy is reeling from the impact of these penalties .

This sustained international pressure, and Ukraine’s resistance, may still not be enough to force Russia to end its military campaign. That leaves Ukraine — and the world — in a perilous and unpredictable moment.

Ukraine is under siege

After months of Putin building up tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border and a series of failed diplomatic talks, Russia is now waging a full-out war on Ukraine.

Tensions escalated quickly when, on February 21, Putin delivered an hour-long combative speech that essentially denied Ukrainian statehood . He recognized the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine where Moscow has backed a separatist rebellion since 2014 and sent so-called peacekeeping forces into the region. As experts said , that was likely just the beginning, setting the stage for a much larger conflict.

Days later, that larger conflict materialized. On February 24, Putin announced he was launching an assault “to defend people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime,” a reference to a false claim about the government in Ukraine. He demanded Ukraine lay down its weapons or be “ responsible for bloodshed .”

Soon after Putin’s speech, reports emerged of explosions around cities, including Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and the capital Kyiv . The Ukrainian foreign minister called it “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” By the afternoon in Ukraine, Russian troops and tanks had entered the country on three fronts : from Belarus in the north, from the east of Ukraine, and from the south.

The Russian military has targeted critical infrastructure, like airports, with airstrikes and has launched more than 400 missiles , as of March 1. As a senior US defense official said on February 26, “There’s no doubt in our mind that civilian infrastructure and civilian areas are being hit as a result of these barrages.”

The main battlefronts are in Kyiv’s outskirts; in southern Ukraine, including the major city of Mariupol; and in eastern Ukraine around Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.

NEW #Ukraine Conflict Update; Click the link to read the latest assessment from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats https://t.co/0Hb0nLSebU pic.twitter.com/RINKbJsJIM — ISW (@TheStudyofWar) March 4, 2022

“They had maximal war aims,” Michael Kofman, research director in the Russia studies program at CNA, said in an interview posted on Twitter on February 25. “They had a military operation that’s now in progress, first to try to achieve regime change, encircle the capital, and try to overthrow the Ukrainian government, and then a much larger set of pincer movements to encircle and envelope Ukrainian forces. Try to do this quickly and force surrender of isolated pockets.”

But the Russian army has not been able to completely roll over Ukrainian forces, and some analysts have suggested Moscow may have been surprised at Ukraine’s resistance. Pentagon officials said that, as of March 4, Russia has committed about 92 percent of its combat power so far. Ukraine’s airspace remains contested.

Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation, told a panel of reporters on February 28 that Russia’s military performance has been odd. “In other words, some of the things that I would have expected — like the air force taking a major role — have not happened.”

“Seems to me there was a lot of war optimism and a sense that the [Ukrainian] government would fall with just a little push,” Charap continued. “And that didn’t happen. I wouldn’t read too much into that about the ultimate course of the war, though. This is still a situation where the deck unfortunately is stacked against the Ukrainians, despite their bravery.”

Putin himself has called on the Ukrainian army to “take power into their own hands and overthrow” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a sign that Putin remains focused on regime change. “According to the available intelligence, the enemy marked me as a target No. 1 and my family as the target No. 2,” said Zelenskyy, speaking on the night of February 24.

Efforts to stop the fighting have so far failed. On February 28, high-level officials from Russia and Ukraine met at the Ukraine-Belarus border, and again on March 3. Russia has continued to insist that a ceasefire requires “demilitarization” and neutrality for Ukraine, but Ukraine has only continued to push for more military aid and ascension into Western bodies like the EU, even signing an EU membership application amid the fighting .

Both Ukraine and Russia have suggested they will hold another round of talks in coming days. Across conflicts, there is usually a severe escalation in fighting before ceasefires, as everyone attempts to maximize their leverage. “I think that they want to inflict maximum damage to pressure the Ukrainian government to seek some sort of ceasefire that is effectively a surrender,” said Margarita Konaev, associate director of analysis and research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

The toll of this young conflict is growing. The UN has said that, as of March 6, more than 350 civilians have been confirmed killed and hundreds more have been wounded; Ukraine’s emergency services puts the civilian death toll at 2,000 people as of March 2 . Ukrainian officials have said about 11,000 Russian troops have been killed in the fighting, as of March 6, but American and European estimates of Russian casualties have been substantially lower . The Russian government has reported nearly 500 soldier deaths . Experts said all these statistics should be treated with a great deal of caution because of the fog of war and the incentives both Russia and Ukraine have to push a particular narrative.

Ukrainian officials have also accused Russia of war crimes after reports of a shelling of an orphanage and kindergarten outside of Kyiv . Across Ukraine, thousands of civilians of all ages are enlisting to fight . Ukrainian officials called on residents to “make Molotov cocktails” to defend against the invasion. More than 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries like Poland since the conflict began, according to a United Nations estimate .

The roots of the current crisis grew from the breakup of the Soviet Union

Russia’s invasion contravenes security agreements the Soviet Union made upon its breakup in the early ’90s. At the time, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, had the third-largest atomic arsenal in the world. The US and Russia worked with Ukraine to denuclearize the country, and in a series of diplomatic agreements , Kyiv gave its hundreds of nuclear warheads back to Russia in exchange for security assurances that protected it from a potential Russian attack.

But the very premise of a post-Soviet Europe is helping to fuel today’s conflict. Putin has been fixated on reclaiming some semblance of empire, lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is central to this vision. Putin has said Ukrainians and Russians “ were one people — a single whole ,” or at least would be if not for the meddling from outside forces (as in, the West) that has created a “wall” between the two.

Last year, Russia presented the US with a list of demands , some of which were nonstarters for the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Putin demanded that NATO stop its eastward expansion and deny membership to Ukraine, and also made other demands for “security guarantees” around NATO.

The prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO has antagonized Putin at least since President George W. Bush expressed support for the idea in 2008. “That was a real mistake,” Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 was ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton, told Vox in January. “It drove the Russians nuts. It created expectations in Ukraine and Georgia, which then were never met. And so that just made that whole issue of enlargement a complicated one.”

Ukraine is the fourth-largest recipient of military funding from the US, and the intelligence cooperation between the two countries has deepened in response to threats from Russia. But Ukraine isn’t joining NATO in the near future, and President Joe Biden has said as much. Still, Moscow’s demand was largely seen as a nonstarter by the West, as NATO’s open-door policy says sovereign countries can choose their own security alliances.

Though Putin has continued to tout the threat of NATO, his speech on February 21 showed that his obsession with Ukraine goes far beyond that. He does not see the government in Ukraine as legitimate.

“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said, per the Kremlin’s official translation . “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.”

The two countries do have historical and cultural ties, but as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explained , Putin’s “basic claim — that there is no historical Ukrainian nation worthy of present-day sovereignty — is demonstrably false .”

As experts noted, it is difficult to square Putin’s speech — plus a 2021 essay he penned and other statements he’s made — with any realistic diplomatic outcome to avert conflict. It was, essentially, a confession that this wasn’t really about NATO, said Dan Baer, the acting director of the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “It was about that he doesn’t think Ukraine has a right to exist as a free country,” he said before Putin’s escalation on the night of February 23.

This is the culmination of eight years of tensions

This isn’t the first time Russia has attacked Ukraine. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, invaded eastern Ukraine, and backed Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. That conflict has killed more than 14,000 people to date .

Russia’s assault grew out of mass protests in Ukraine that toppled the country’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, which began over his abandonment of a trade agreement with the European Union. US diplomats visited the demonstrations, in symbolic gestures that further agitated Putin.

President Barack Obama, hesitant to escalate tensions with Russia any further, was slow to mobilize a diplomatic response in Europe and did not immediately provide Ukrainians with offensive weapons.

“A lot of us were really appalled that not more was done for the violation of that [post-Soviet] agreement,” said Ian Kelly, a career diplomat who served as ambassador to Georgia from 2015 to 2018. “It just basically showed that if you have nuclear weapons” — as Russia does — “you’re inoculated against strong measures by the international community.”

Since then, corruption has persisted in the Ukrainian government, and the country ranks in the bottom third of the watchdog group Transparency International ’s index.

Ukraine’s far-right presence has grown and become somewhat normalized, and there are government-aligned fascist militias in the country. But Moscow has drawn out those issues to advance false claims about genocide and other attacks on civilians as a way to legitimize the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine and to create a pretext for invasion. In his prerecorded speech shared on the eve of the bombardment of Ukraine, Putin said he sought the “ denazification ” of Ukraine.

To be clear: The Ukrainian government is not a Nazi regime and has not been co-opted by the far right. Zelenskyy is Jewish; he speaks proudly of how his Jewish grandfather fought against Hitler’s army .

Yet, days earlier, Putin used these sorts of claims as part of his explanation for recognizing as independent the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, the two territories in eastern Ukraine where he has backed separatists since 2014. “Announcing the decisions taken today, I am confident in the support of the citizens of Russia. Of all the patriotic forces of the country,” Putin said before moving troops into the regions for “peacekeeping” purposes.

At the time, most experts Vox spoke to said that looked like the beginning, not the end, of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.

“In Russia, [it] provides the political-legal basis for the formal introduction of Russian forces, which they’ve already decided to do,” Kofman, of CNA, told Vox on February 21 . “Secondarily, it provides the legal local basis for Russian use of force in defense of these independent republics’ Russian citizens there. It’s basically political theater.”

It set “the stage for the next steps,” he added. Those next steps are now clear.

How the rest of the world is responding

The United States and its allies around the world have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and have since announced increasingly tough sanctions, intended to completely isolate Russia from the international community and inflict real economic costs.

Biden announced on the afternoon of February 24 that the United States would impose sanctions on Russian financial institutions, including cutting off Russia’s largest banks from the US financial system, and on Russian elites in Putin’s inner circle. America will also implement export controls on certain technologies . The United Kingdom and Europe added their own sanctions, imposing the “ massive ” penalties the West had been warning Putin about.

The US and its allies have only amped up the pressure since then. On February 25, the EU and US imposed sanctions on Putin himself . On February 26, the US and European countries announced an agreement to cut some (but not all) Russian banks off from SWIFT, the global messaging system that enables most international transactions, which will make it very difficult for Russia to make transactions beyond its borders. (Japan also signed on to SWIFT actions on February 27.) The US and its allies have said they will target Russia’s central bank , specifically its foreign reserves that Moscow needs to help support its currency. The US has continued to add penalties, including joining other countries in closing US airspace to Russian aircraft , and sanctioning more than a dozen oligarchs.

The United States has said it will not involve troops in any Ukrainian conflict, though more US military aid to Ukraine is on its way and the US has shored up its presence on NATO’s eastern flank. On February 24, the Pentagon said it would send 7,000 additional troops to Germany , and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on February 26 that he was authorizing “up to $350 million” in additional military aid to Ukraine, including “further lethal defensive assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne, and other threats it is now facing.”

Such aid, according to a February 26 tweet by State Department spokesperson Ned Price, will be provided “immediately” and include “anti-tank and air defense capabilities.” Other European and NATO countries are also stepping up their assistance, including Germany , which reversed a long-standing policy of not sending lethal aid to conflict zones.

Russia knows that the US and its partners do not want to commit themselves militarily, and, as Putin launched his invasion, he offered an ominous warning as he touted Russia’s nuclear arsenal : “There should be no doubt that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.” On February 27, Putin escalated that threat by putting the country’s nuclear deterrent forces on high alert .

NATO has vowed to protect its members from any Russian aggression. On February 25, NATO announced that it was activating part of its NATO Response Force — a 40,000-troop unit modernized after the 2014 Crimea invasion — to protect allies on NATO’s eastern flank. “We are now deploying the NATO Response Force for the first time in a collective defense context. We speak about thousands of troops. We speak about air and maritime capabilities,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said .

Yet these are largely defensive measures, which means most of the punishment against Russia will come in the form of economic sanctions. Still, the West is starting to shift from an original hesitancy to impose the most severe costs on Russia over fears of what it might mean for Europe, the US, and the rest of the global economy — and what Russia might do to retaliate.

They’re not all the way there, however. For example, even the SWIFT action is expected to leave some carve-outs so Russia can still export gas to Europe . The tougher the sanctions on Russia, the harder it will hit the US and especially European economies, so leaders are still trying to soften the impact. But the fallout from these punishments — along with other measures, like the EU and United States barring Russia from their airspace — is being felt in Russia, as the ruble crashes and analysts warn of a deep recession .

A way out of this war is difficult to contemplate as bombs are falling on Ukraine, but the US and its allies are going to have to do careful diplomacy to isolate and put pressure on Russia in the long term — and create incentives for Moscow to stop its assault on Ukraine . The US and its allies are also likely going to have to decide how much they want, or can, support Ukraine as it battles Russia.

“The real question, I think, is going to come down to what extent the West can and will try to support and supply a long-term insurgency against Russia,” said Paul D’Anieri, an expert on Eastern European and post-Soviet politics at the University of California Riverside. “And what level of success does Russia have in fighting back against? Unfortunately, it seems like the best strategy for peace right now is when enough Russians die, that the Russians decide it’s not worth it anymore.”

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The Russia-Ukraine war and its ramifications for Russia

Subscribe to the center on the united states and europe update, steven pifer steven pifer nonresident senior fellow - foreign policy , center on the united states and europe , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology , arms control and non-proliferation initiative @steven_pifer.

December 8, 2022

24 min read

This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Nine months into Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, the outcome of the war remains unclear. The Russian military appears incapable of taking Kyiv or occupying a major portion of the country. Ukrainian forces have enjoyed three months of success on the battlefield and could well continue to make progress in regaining territory. The war also could settle into a more drawn-out conflict, with neither side capable of making a decisive breakthrough in the near term.

Projecting the ultimate outcome of the war is challenging. However, some major ramifications for Russia and its relations with Ukraine, Europe, and the United States have come into focus. While the war has been a tragedy for Ukraine and Ukrainians, it has also proven a disaster for Russia — militarily, economically, and geopolitically. The war has badly damaged Russia’s military and tarnished its reputation, disrupted the economy, and profoundly altered the geopolitical picture facing Moscow in Europe. It will make any near-term restoration of a degree of normalcy in U.S.-Russian relations difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Russia’s war against Ukraine

This latest phase in hostilities between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin directed his forces to launch a major, multi-prong invasion of Ukraine. The broad scope of the assault, which Putin termed a “special military operation,” suggested that Moscow’s objectives were to quickly seize Kyiv, presumably deposing the government, and occupy as much as the eastern half to two-thirds of the country.

The Russian army gained ground in southern Ukraine, but it failed to take Kyiv. By late March, Russian forces were in retreat in the north. Moscow proclaimed its new objective as occupying all of Donbas, consisting of the oblasts (regions) of Luhansk and Donetsk, some 35% of which had already been occupied by Russian and Russian proxy forces in 2014 and 2015. After three months of grinding battle, Russian forces captured almost all of Luhansk, but they made little progress in Donetsk, and the battlelines appeared to stabilize in August.

In September, the Ukrainian army launched two counteroffensives. One in the northeast expelled Russian forces from Kharkiv oblast and pressed assaults into Luhansk oblast. In the south, the second counteroffensive succeeded in November in driving Russian forces out of Kherson city and the neighboring region, the only area that Russian forces occupied east of the Dnipro River, which roughly bisects Ukraine.

Despite three months of battlefield setbacks, Moscow has shown no indication of readiness to negotiate seriously to end the war. Indeed, on September 30, Putin announced that Russia was annexing Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, even though Russian forces did not fully control that territory and consistently lost ground there in the following weeks. The Russian military made up for battlefield losses by increasing missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, aimed in particular at disrupting electric power and central heating.

As of late November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government insisted on conditions that included Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory (including Crimea and all of Donbas), compensation, and punishment for war crimes. While these are understandable demands given what Ukraine has gone through, achieving them would prove difficult. Still, Kyiv appeared confident that it could liberate more territory even as winter approached.

After nine months of fighting, the Russian military has shown itself incapable of seizing and holding a large part of Ukraine. While the war’s outcome is uncertain, however the conflict ends, a sovereign and independent Ukrainian state will remain on the map of Europe. Moreover, it will be larger than the rump state that the Kremlin envisaged when it launched the February invasion.

Whether the Ukrainian military can drive the Russians completely out or at least back to the lines as of February 23 is also unclear. Some military experts believe this is possible, including the full liberation of Donbas and Crimea. Others offer less optimistic projections. The U.S. intelligence community has forecast that the fighting could drag on and become a war of attrition.

Forging a hostile neighbor

Today, most Ukrainians regard Russia as an enemy.

Of all the pieces of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, no part meant more to Russians than Ukraine. The two countries’ histories, cultures, languages, and religions were closely intertwined. When the author served at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv at the end of the 1990s, most Ukrainians held either a positive or ambivalent view regarding Russia. That has changed. Today, most Ukrainians regard Russia as an enemy.

Putin’s war has been calamitous for Ukraine. The precise number of military and civilians casualties is unknown but substantial. The Office of the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that, as of the end of October, some 6,500 Ukrainian civilians had been killed and another 10,000 injured. Those numbers almost certainly understate the reality. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on November 10 put the number of civilian dead at 40,000 and indicated that some 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded (Milley gave a similar number for Russian casualties, a topic addressed later in this paper).

In addition, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees placed the number of Ukrainians who have sought refuge outside of Ukraine at more than 7.8 million as of November 8. As of mid-November, the Russian attacks had caused an estimated 6.5 million more to become internally displaced persons within Ukraine.

Besides the human losses, the war has caused immense material damage. Estimates of the costs of rebuilding Ukraine run from $349 billion to $750 billion, and those appraisals date back to the summer. Finding those funds will not be easy, particularly as the war has resulted in a significant contraction of the Ukrainian economy; the World Bank expects the country’s gross domestic product to shrink by 35% this year.

All this has understandably affected Ukrainian attitudes. It has deepened the sense of Ukrainian national identity. An August poll showed 85% self-identifying as Ukrainian citizens as opposed to people of some region or ethnic minority; only 64% did so six months earlier — before Russia’s invasion. The invasion has also imbued Ukrainians with a strongly negative view of Russia: The poll showed 92% holding a “bad” attitude regarding Russia as opposed to only 2% with a “good” attitude.

Ukrainians have made clear their resolve to resist. A September Gallup poll reported 70% of Ukrainians determined to fight until victory over Russia. A mid-October Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll had 86% supporting the war and opposing negotiations with Russia, despite Russian missile attacks against Ukrainian cities.

It will take years, if not decades, to overcome the enmity toward Russia and Russians engendered by the war. One Ukrainian journalist predicted last summer that, after the war’s end, Ukraine would witness a nationwide effort to “cancel” Russian culture, e.g., towns and cities across the country would rename their Pushkin Squares. It has already begun; Odesa intends to dismantle its statue of Catherine the Great, the Russian empress who founded the city in 1794.

Ironically for an invasion launched in part due to Kremlin concern that Ukraine was moving away from Russia and toward the West, the war has opened a previously closed path for Ukraine’s membership in the European Union (EU). For years, EU officials concluded agreements with Kyiv, including the 2014 EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. However, EU officials avoided language that would give Ukraine a membership perspective. In June, four months after Russia’s invasion, the European Council recognized Ukraine’s European perspective and gave it the status of candidate country. Kyiv will need years to meet the EU’s standards, but it now has a membership perspective that it lacked for the first 30 years of its post-Soviet independence.

As for NATO, 10 alliance members have expressed support for a membership path for Ukraine, nine in central Europe plus Canada . Other allies have generally remained silent or noncommittal, reflecting the fact that many, while prepared to provide Ukraine financial and military assistance, are not prepared to go to war with Russia to defend Ukraine. Even though Kyiv cannot expect membership or a membership action plan any time soon, it will have continued NATO support in its fight against Russia and, once the war is over, help in building a modern and robust military to deter a Russian attack in the future.

The Kremlin has sought since the end of the Soviet Union to keep Ukraine bound in a Russian sphere of influence. From that perspective, the last nine years of Russian policy have been an abysmal failure. Nothing has done more than that policy to push Ukraine away from Russia and toward the West, or to promote Ukrainian hostility toward Russia and Russians.

A disaster for Russia’s military and economy

While a tragedy for Ukraine, Putin’s decision to go to war has also proven a disaster for Russia.

While a tragedy for Ukraine, Putin’s decision to go to war has also proven a disaster for Russia. The Russian military has suffered significant personnel and military losses. Economic sanctions imposed by the EU, United States, United Kingdom, and other Western countries have pushed the Russian economy into recession and threaten longer-term impacts, including on the country’s critical energy sector.

In November, Milley put the number of dead and wounded Russian soldiers at 100,000, and that could fall on the low side. A Pentagon official said in early August Russian casualties numbered 70,000-80,000. That was more than three months ago, and those months have shown no kindness to the Russian army. Reports suggest that newly-mobilized and ill-trained Russian units have been decimated in combat.

The Russian military has lost significant amounts of equipment. The Oryx website reports 8,000 pieces of equipment destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured, including some 1,500 tanks, 700 armored fighting vehicles, and 1,700 infantry fighting vehicles. Oryx advises that its numbers significantly understate the true nature of Russian losses, as it counts only equipment for which it has unique photo or videographic evidence of its fate. Others report much heavier losses. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin commented that the Russian military had lost “staggering” numbers of tanks and other armored vehicles, adding that Western trade restrictions on microchips would inhibit production of replacements.

As a result of these losses, Russia has had to draw on reserves, including T-64 tanks first produced nearly 50 years ago. It reportedly has turned to tanks from Belarus to replenish its losses. To augment its own munitions, Russia has had to purchase attack drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea . As the Russian military has drawn down stocks of surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, it has used S-300 anti-aircraft missiles against ground targets. The Russian defense budget will need years to replace what the military has lost or otherwise expended in Ukraine.

Poor leadership, poor tactics, poor logistics, and underwhelming performance against a smaller and less well-armed foe have left Russia’s military reputation in a shambles. That will have an impact. Over the past decade, Russian weapons exporters saw their share of global arms exports drop by 26%. Countries looking to buy weapons likely will begin to turn elsewhere, given that Russia’s military failed to dominate early in the war, when its largely modernized forces faced a Ukrainian military armed mainly with aging Soviet-era equipment (that began to change only in the summer, when stocks of heavy weapons began arriving from the West).

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As Russia went to war, its economy was largely stagnant ; while it recorded a post-COVID-19 boost in 2021, average real income fell by 10% between 2013 and 2020. It will get worse. The West has applied a host of economic sanctions on the country. While the Russian Central Bank’s actions have mitigated the worst impacts, the Russian economy nevertheless contracted by 5% year-on-year compared to September 2021. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects Russia’s economy to contract by 3.9% in 2022 and 5.6% in 2023, and a confidential study supposedly done for the Kremlin projected an “inertial” case in which the economy bottomed out only in 2023 at 8.3% below 2021. One economist notes that the West’s cut-off of chips and microelectronics has devastated automobile, aircraft, and weapons production, with the output of cars falling by 90% between March and September; he expects a long run of stagnation.

In addition to coping with the loss of high-tech and other key imports, the Russian economy faces brain drain, particularly in the IT sector, that began in February as well as the departure of more than 1,000 Western companies. It also has a broader labor force challenge. The military has mobilized 300,000 men, and the September mobilization order prompted a new flood of Russians leaving the country, with more than 200,000 going to Kazakhstan. Some estimates suggest several hundred thousand others have fled to other countries. Taken together, that means something like three-quarters of a million men unavailable to work in the economy.

Russia thus far has staved off harsher economic difficulties in part because of its oil and gas exports and high energy prices. High prices have partially offset the decline in volume of oil and gas exports. That may soon change, at least for oil. The EU banned the purchase of Russian crude oil beginning on December 5, and the West is prohibiting shipping Russian oil on Western-flagged tankers or insuring tankers that move Russian oil if the oil is sold above a certain price, now set at $60 per barrel. The price cap — if it works as planned — could cut sharply into the revenues that Russian oil exports generate. The cap will require that Russian exporters discount the price of oil that they sell; the higher the discount, the less revenue that will flow to Russia.

Weaning Europe off of Russian gas poses a more difficult challenge, but EU countries have made progress by switching to imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Moreover, European companies have found ways to cut energy use; for example, 75% of German firms that use gas report that they have reduced gas consumption without having to cut production. EU countries face a much better energy picture this winter than anticipated several months ago. If Europe successfully ends its import of Russian piped natural gas, that will pose a major problem for Gazprom, Russia’s large gas exporter. Gazprom’s gas exports move largely by pipeline, and Gazprom’s gas pipeline structure is oriented primarily toward moving gas from the western Siberian and Yamal gas fields to Europe. New pipelines would be needed to switch the flow of that gas to Asia. If Europe can kick the Russian gas habit, Gazprom will see a significant decline in its export volumes, unless it can build new pipelines to Asian markets and/or greatly expand its LNG export capacity, all of which will be expensive.

A further problem facing Russia’s energy sector is that, as existing oil and gas fields are depleted, Russian energy companies must develop new fields to sustain production levels. Many of the potential new fields are in the Arctic region or off-shore and will require billions — likely, tens of billions — of dollars of investment. Russian energy companies, however, will not be able to count on Western energy companies for technical expertise, technology, or capital. That will hinder future production of oil and gas, as current fields become exhausted.

Another potential economic cost looms. The West has frozen more than $300 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves. As damages in Ukraine mount, pressure will grow to seize some or all of these assets for a Ukraine reconstruction fund. Western governments thus far show little enthusiasm for the idea. That said, it is difficult to see how they could turn to their taxpayers for money to assist Ukraine’s rebuilding while leaving the Russian Central Bank funds intact and/or releasing those funds back to Russia.

Western sanctions did not produce the quick crash in the ruble or the broader Russian economy that some expected. However, their impact could mean a stagnant economy in the longer term, and they threaten to cause particular problems in the energy sector and other sectors that depend on high-tech inputs imported from the West. Moscow does not appear to have handy answers to these problems.

Changed geopolitics in Europe

In 2021, Moscow saw a West that was divided and preoccupied with domestic politics. The United States was recovering from four years of the Trump presidency, post-Brexit politics in Britain remained tumultuous, Germany faced September elections to choose the first chancellor in 16 years not named Angela Merkel, and France had a presidential election in early 2022. That likely affected Putin’s decision to launch his February invasion. In the event, NATO and the EU responded quickly and in a unified manner, and the invasion has prompted a dramatic reordering of the geopolitical scene in Europe. European countries have come to see Russia in a threatening light, reminiscent of how they viewed the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. NATO’s June 2022 summit statement was all about deterrence and defense with regard to Russia, with none of earlier summits’ language on areas of cooperation.

Few things epitomize the change more than the Zeitenwende (turning-point) in German policy. In the days following the Russian invasion, Berlin agreed to sanctions on Russian banks that few expected the Germans to approve, reversed a long-standing ban on exporting weapons to conflict zones in order to provide arms to Ukraine, established a 100-billion-euro ($110 billion) fund for its own rearmament, and announced the purchase of American dual-capable F-35 fighters to sustain the German Air Force’s nuclear delivery role. Just days before the assault, the German government said it would stop certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Berlin’s follow-up has been bumpy and, at times, seemingly half-hearted, which has frustrated many of its partners. Still, in a few short weeks in late February and early March, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government erased five decades of German engagement with Moscow.

Other NATO members have also accelerated their defense spending. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European allies and Canada have boosted defense spending by a total of $350 billion compared to levels in 2014, when the alliance — following Russia’s seizure of Crimea — set the goal for each member of 2% of gross domestic product devoted to defense by 2024. Stoltenberg added that nine members had met the 2% goal while 10 others intended to do so by 2024. Poland plans to raise its defense spending to 3% next year, and other allies have suggested the 3% target as well.

Moscow did not like the small multinational battlegroups that NATO deployed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland beginning in 2017. Each numbered some 1,000-1,500 troops (battalion-sized) and were described as “tripwire” forces. Since February, NATO has deployed additional battlegroups in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia and decided on a more robust forward presence, including brigade-sized units, while improving capabilities for reinforcement. The U.S. military presence in Europe and European waters has grown from 80,000 service personnel to 100,000 and includes deployment of two F-35 squadrons to Britain, more destroyers to be homeported in Spain, and a permanent headquarters unit in Poland.

In addition to larger troop deployments, the Baltic Sea has seen a geopolitical earthquake. Finland and Sweden, which long pursued policies of neutrality, applied to join NATO in May and completed accession protocols in July. They have significant military capabilities. Their accession to the alliance, expected in early 2023, will make the Baltic Sea effectively a NATO lake, leaving Russia with just limited access from the end of the Gulf of Finland and its Kaliningrad exclave.

In early 2014, NATO deployed virtually no ground combat forces in countries that had joined the alliance after 1997. That began changing after Russia’s seizure of Crimea. The recent invasion has further energized NATO and resulted in its enlargement by two additional members. As Russia has drawn down forces opposite NATO countries (and Finland) in order to deploy them to Ukraine, the NATO military presence on Russia’s western flank has increased.

The Kremlin has waged a two-front war this year, fighting on the battlefield against Ukraine while seeking to undermine Western financial and military support for Kyiv. The Russians are losing on both fronts.

The Kremlin has waged a two-front war this year, fighting on the battlefield against Ukraine while seeking to undermine Western financial and military support for Kyiv. The Russians are losing on both fronts. The Russian military has been losing ground to the Ukrainian army and has carried out a campaign of missile strikes against power, heat, and water utilities in the country, which threatens a humanitarian crisis . Much will depend on how bad the winter is, but Ukrainians have shown remarkable resilience in restoring utilities, and the Russian attacks could further harden their resolve. Moreover, the brutality of the Russian missile campaign has already led Ukraine’s Western supporters to provide Kyiv more sophisticated air defenses, and pressures could grow to provide other weapons as well.

As for the second front, despite high energy prices, having to house the majority of the nearly eight million Ukrainians who have left their country, and concerns over how long the fighting might last, European support for Ukraine has not slackened. Russian hints of nuclear escalation caused concern but did not weaken European support for Ukraine, and Moscow has markedly deescalated the nuclear rhetoric in recent weeks. Given Russia’s relationship with China, the Kremlin certainly noticed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent criticism of nuclear threats.

It appears Moscow’s influence elsewhere is slipping, including among post-Soviet states. Kazakhstan has boosted its defense spending by more than 50%. In June, on a stage with Putin in St. Petersburg, its president pointedly declined to follow Russia’s lead in recognizing the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk “people’s republics” as independent states. Neither Kazakhstan nor any other member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — or any other post-Soviet state, for that matter — has recognized Russia’s claimed annexations of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. In a remarkable scene at an October Russia-Central Asia summit, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon openly challenged Putin for his lack of respect for Central Asian countries. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoiled a late November CSTO summit; he refused to sign a leaders’ declaration and noticeably moved away from Putin during the summit photo op.

More broadly, in October, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution calling for rejection — and demanding reversal — of Moscow’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian oblasts by a vote of 143-5 (35 abstaining). A recent article documented how Russia has found its candidates rejected and its participation suspended in a string of U.N. organizations, including the International Telecommunications Union, Human Rights Council, Economic and Social Council, and International Civil Aviation Organization. Putin chose not to attend the November G-20 summit in Bali, likely reflecting his expectation that other leaders would have snubbed him and refused to meet bilaterally, as well as the criticism he would have encountered in multilateral sessions. The summit produced a leaders’ declaration that, while noting “other views,” leveled a harsh critique at Moscow for its war on Ukraine.

A deep freeze with Washington

While U.S.-Russian relations had fallen to a post-Cold War low point in 2020, the June 2021 summit that U.S. President Joe Biden held with Putin gave a modest positive impulse to the relationship. U.S. and Russian officials that fall broadened bilateral diplomatic contacts and gave a positive assessment to the strategic stability dialogue, terming the exchanges “intensive and substantive.” Moreover, Washington saw a possible drop-off in malicious cyber activity originating from Russia. However, the Russian invasion prompted a deep freeze in the relationship, and Washington made clear that business as usual was off the table.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and CIA Director Bill Burns nevertheless have kept channels open to their Russian counterparts. These lines of communication seek to avoid miscalculation — particularly miscalculation that could lead to a direct U.S.-Russia or NATO-Russia clash — and reduce risk. But other channels remain largely unused. Burns’s November 14 meeting with Sergey Naryshkin, head of the Russian external intelligence service, was the most senior face-to-face meeting between U.S. and Russian officials in nine months. Biden and Putin have not spoken directly with one another since February, and that relationship seems irretrievably broken.

In a positive glimmer, Biden told the U.N. General Assembly “No matter what else is happening in the world, the United States is ready to pursue critical arms control measures.” Speaking in June, the Kremlin spokesperson said “we are interested [in such talks]… Such talks are necessary.” U.S. officials have privately indicated that, while they have prerequisites for resuming the strategic dialogue, progress on ending the Russia-Ukraine war is not one of them. This leaves room for some hope that, despite their current adversarial relationship, Washington and Moscow may still share an interest in containing their competition in nuclear arms.

Beyond that, however, it is difficult to see much prospect for movement toward a degree of normalcy in the broader U.S.-Russia relationship. With Moscow turning to Iran and North Korea for weapons, Washington cannot count on Russian help in trying to bring Tehran back into the nuclear deal (the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) or to increase pressure on North Korea to end its missile launches and not to conduct another nuclear test. Likewise, coordination on Syria is less likely. It may well be that any meaningful improvement in the overall bilateral relationship requires Putin’s departure from the Kremlin. A second requirement could be that Putin’s successor adopt policy changes to demonstrate that Russia is altering course and prepared to live in peace with its neighbors.

What happens will depend on how the Russian elite and public view his performance; while some signs of disaffection over the war have emerged, it is too early to forecast their meaning for Putin’s political longevity.

This does not mean to advocate a policy of regime change in Russia. That is beyond U.S. capabilities, especially given the opacity of today’s Kremlin. U.S. policy should remain one of seeking a change in policy, not regime. That said, the prospects for improving U.S.-Russian relations appear slim while Putin remains in charge. What happens will depend on how the Russian elite and public view his performance; while some signs of disaffection over the war have emerged , it is too early to forecast their meaning for Putin’s political longevity.

Still, while it remains difficult to predict the outcome of the war or the impact it may have on Putin’s time in the Kremlin, there is little doubt that the fighting with Ukraine and its ramifications will leave Russia diminished in significant ways. It must contend with a badly-damaged military that will take years to reconstitute; years of likely economic stagnation cut off from key high-tech imports; a potentially worsening situation with regard to energy exports and future production; an alarmed, alienated, and rearming Europe; and a growing political isolation that will leave Moscow even more dependent on its relationship with China. Putin still seems to cling to his desire of “regaining” part of Ukraine, which he considers “historic Russian land.” But the costs of that for Russia mount by the day.

The consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for international security – NATO and beyond

Robert Pszczel
07 July 2022

February 24, 2022, is likely to engrave itself on the history template of the contemporary world. Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified and barbaric invasion of Ukraine is not only a manifestation of a huge security danger that has shattered peace in Europe.

More structurally, it has broken the entire security architecture built patiently on the continent over many decades, including international commitments agreed in the last 30 years. As the top UK general recently observed, it is dangerous to assume that the war on Ukraine is a limited conflict. This could be “ our 1937 moment “, and everything possible must be done in order to stop territorial expansion by force, thereby averting a war similar to the one that ravaged Europe 80 years ago. Mobilising our resources must start today.

The magnitude of damage resulting from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is immense and still increasing. Whole cities – like Mariupol – are being razed to the ground. Pictured: City of Mariupol © CNN

This is also a war against the West

The magnitude of damage is immense and still increasing. Ukrainians (military and civilians alike) are being killed simply because they are Ukrainians. Whole cities – like Mariupol – are being razed to the ground. Evident atrocities fitting the criteria of war crimes are being perpetrated and accompanied by genocidal talk on Russian state TV. Hundreds of thousands of people, including children, have been forcefully deported to Russia. Over six million (at the time of writing) have had to flee Ukraine; many more have been internally displaced. Hospitals, infrastructure, cultural treasures, private homes and industrial centres are either destroyed or pillaged , with stolen goods being sent to Russia in an organised manner.

The suffering of Ukraine presents a moral challenge to Europe and the world. Human rights and the UN Charter have been trampled upon and our values mocked. Indifference is simply not an option. As convincingly explained by Nicholas Tenzer: this is a war against the West too.

According to its own terminology, Putin’s regime has chosen confrontation with the “collective West”, irrespective of the costs for Russia itself. All efforts comprising security and confidence-building measures, or institutional arrangements designed to preserve peace, suddenly look very fragile when faced with blunt force. After many months of Moscow engaging in sham dialogue and blatantly lying to other countries and institutions, including NATO and the OSCE, all trust has been eroded. Moreover, by creating economic shocks in the energy markets and weaponising famine as a political instrument, Russia has further globalised the consequences of its war.

Russian threats

Russia has also purposefully raised the level of risk for the possible use of nuclear weapons, the main goal primarily being to discourage Western Allies from offering military support to Ukraine and to instil fear in decision-makers. A long-held taboo that made an actual application of nuclear force unthinkable has been verbally discarded. While many experts calculate that risk to be low - not higher than five percent - Putin and his aides have chosen to abandon the rational caution exercised by the majority of his Soviet predecessors. Compared to Cold War practice, today, Kremlin propagandists and officials engage in highly irresponsible rhetoric advocating for the use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal against Ukraine, and possibly even against NATO states. This is backed by exercises (at least two this year) openly testing the Russian military’s ability to fire nuclear warheads at Western targets and protect Russia from possible counter-strikes. The Russian president has even shown his willingness to bring Belarus into the nuclear equation. Such brinkmanship has contributed to the return of nuclear arms into the power competition on a global stage.

Russia tests nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat on 20 April 2022. © Reuters

With or without a nuclear threat dimension, Russia’s neighbours already have valid reasons to fear the Russian predator. They feel that, if not stopped in and by Ukraine, Putin may entertain aggression against other territories. The historic decision by both Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership points to the gravity of this threat. Small countries, such as Moldova and Georgia, but also Moscow’s formal allies such as Kazakhstan, may fear becoming Putin’s next target. The Kremlin has not made any attempt to assuage these fears, but has instead amplified them via direct menaces, propaganda and intimidation levers. Latest examples include curtailing gas supplies for political reasons, violating the airspace of a NATO country, threatening Lithuania, and using economic blackmail against Collective Security Treaty Organization member, Kazakhstan .

International response – good and not so good news

NATO and the European Union have, to a large extent, responded effectively in the first months of the war. US leadership has once again proven essential in successfully mobilising international efforts, especially in coordinating military support to Ukraine. NATO’s response to the war, balancing increasingly strong support to Ukraine with a justified reluctance to avoid open conflict with Russia, has been more or less vindicated. The majority of European countries turned to the tried and tested protective security umbrella of NATO, backed by American military capabilities. The G7 and EU have proven agile in tightening sanctions.

But, as the aggression continues, with Russia concentrating its efforts on gaining control of eastern and southern Ukraine via a war of attrition, Western unity is being tested. Divergent interpretations over sanctions that affect the transport of prohibited goods to Kaliningrad illustrate this problem.

The United Nations and the OSCE have not been able to offer meaningful responses, mainly due to the paralysing effect of Russia’s veto. Moreover, solidarity with Ukraine is not yet universal among all UN members.

Russia's long-term prospects are dim, but the threat is present

The myth of the invincible Russian military machine has evaporated in the space of a few weeks. The initial goals of the invasion have clearly not been achieved. Russian forces had to withdraw from the vicinity of Kyiv and were beaten off in many other locations. Ukrainian bravery and excellent use of limited resources (reinforced by foreign assistance) have so far proven a strong match against the badly led, poorly motivated and organised opponent, who are also experiencing logistic and technical problems, like faulty equipment. Corruption, a disease at the heart of the Russian state, displayed itself on a grand scale in the conduct of the military operation. Russia’s human losses are enormous and, in spite of censorship, becoming known to the Russian public.

The West can attempt to facilitate the export of grain from Ukraine in order to undermine the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Picture © Euromaidan Press

After more than four months of fighting, it is Russia that is experiencing manpower shortages. Fearing protests, the Kremlin is reluctant to call for mobilisation and is forced to take extraordinary steps (e.g. extending the age limit for volunteers ready to join the war), opting for a covert form of recruitment, like through the use of reservists. Numerous cases of conscription offices being set on fire in Russia suggest strongly that many young people are opposed to being sent to the frontlines in Ukraine. Almost four million Russians have travelled away from Russia so far in 2022, many choosing not to return for the time being. It is the largest such exodus since the Bolshevik revolution and could result in an enormous country-wide brain drain; something that is already being experienced in the IT sector.

Furthermore, the war has proven costly. On 27 May, Finance Minister Siluanov admitted that “money, huge resources are needed for the special operation”. He also confirmed that 8 trillion roubles (USD $120b) were required for the stimulus budget. Sanctions are starting to bite and will set the Russian economy - which is not able to produce a huge range of goods without foreign technology or parts – back for decades. Overall, unemployment is set to rise while GDP is unlikely to grow.

Putin has turned Russia into an international pariah and the country will not recover its reputation for a long time. In spite of the totalitarian nature of the Russian political system today, some signs of dissent (even amongst high ranking diplomats ) show a growing recognition of these facts. As one astute Russian expert put it, Putin has “amputated Russia’s future”. Russia is bound to be a weaker, less influential actor for the foreseeable future.

But barring Putin’s sudden departure - which would trigger a political transformation in Moscow - Russia will still present a dangerous threat to security in Europe. The regime, led by a delusional and ageing dictator, is prone to irrational decision-making. But the ruthless conduct of the military campaign (e.g. indiscriminate use of blanket shelling) means that even incompetent Russian forces can achieve gains against the Ukrainian military , though it is being modernised at record pace.

A transformative Madrid Summit, but the clock is ticking

Ukraine’s ability to contain Russian aggression will shape the security environment for years to come. At its Summit in Madrid in June 2022, NATO recognised this and offered an upgraded package of support. The volume and speed with which more sophisticated weapons systems (including heavy artillery, missile systems, armoured vehicles, and air defence systems) are supplied to Ukraine in the coming weeks will be decisive in preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine’s defences. The onus is on individual Allies to ensure such help now.

Norwegian troops arrive to reinforce NATO Enhanced Forward Presence in Kaunas, Lithuania, on 27 February 2022. © Reuters

Special funding assistance will be required for long-term training and the modernisation of Ukrainian forces, de facto bringing them to NATO standards. This is necessary, as Ukrainian weapon stocks composed of Soviet-standards equipment are depleted, and availability of such arms outside Ukraine is limited too. Crowdfunding military equipment for Ukraine – already successful in Lithuania – shows that the general international public is sympathetic and wants to play its part in this process. To help Kyiv to counterbalance Russia’s size advantages and scorched earth tactics, Allies should consider more military exercises to show NATO’s readiness and strength. Creative solutions are also quickly needed to undermine the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, facilitating the export of grain.

While the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 – though effectively torn to shreds by Russia – was not formally revoked at the Summit, any self-restrictions which NATO took on as part of the agreement should now be considered null and void. Crucially, Allies have finally attributed responsibility where it lies, calling Russia “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security” in their new Strategic Concept.

Putin’s war has not yet tested the credibility of NATO’s Article 5 collective defence guarantees. Thus far, the very existence of Article 5, coupled with NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (which now includes more than 40 000 forces under direct NATO’s operational command), have offered sufficient deterrence. But Putin’s increasingly irrational behaviour together with Moscow’s readiness to use the most destructive missiles and weapons systems against foreign territory targets (something practiced in Syria) in the immediate vicinity of NATO territory creates a new reality. Moscow has shown its readiness to use indiscriminate force for no justifiable military reasons and to engage in war crimes, all while Putin openly discusses the reclamation of lands held by tsarist Russia. Not surprisingly, NATO Allies bordering Russia are concerned by the potential loss – even temporary - of parts of their territory, and having seen the obliteration of Mariupol and Kharkiv, have become alarmed by direct missile threats to their cities and critical infrastructure.

Sanctions are starting to impact the Russian economy. Pictured: Russians queue up to withdraw cash from an ATM in St Petersburg. © Reuters

A more ruthless form of deterrence, by denial rather than punishment, based on a beefed-up forward defence seems the only appropriate response. The new NATO Strategic Concept , which was adopted in Madrid on 29 June, explicitly takes NATO in that direction (para. 21). Substantial and persistent military presence, backed by the prepositioning of equipment and strategic pre-assigning of combat forces is now part of the new NATO Force Model. The goal of massively increasing the availability of troops at high readiness is essential for effective deterrence. But concrete pledges of national contributions, like those announced by US President Biden on 29 June, must follow quickly from all Allies.

The credibility of collective defence will also depend on the quick implementation of already-announced pledges for increased defence spending and the prioritisation of defence planning efforts based on the scenario of large-scale conflict in Europe. In this context, appropriate stockpiles of military equipment are essential. As current levels are eminently insufficient, procurement practices and defence industry production capacity must be adapted, and stocks augmented quickly.

Paragraphs 28 and 29 of the new Strategic Concept leave no ambiguity on the continued role played by nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantee of Allied security. But to disable the corrosive effect of Moscow’s nuclear blackmail against Allies, a more robust declaratory nuclear policy by NATO is in order. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Ukraine – however improbable - cannot be ruled out. Allies should thus consider, as a matter of urgency, persuasive signalling to Russia about possible conventional military responses (e.g. a disabling of Russian military targets in the Black Sea) that would come as a result of such acts. Only the certainty of retaliation can dissuade the Kremlin from seriously contemplating such an option.

Concrete decisions will matter more than any new organisational organigrams, and sophisticated plans or strategies are valuable only as long as they are made real. Russia has started to relish its role as a predator, and it is using brutal force to achieve its imperialist goals. Even weakened, Russia remains capable of inflicting heavy damage upon others. Only strong deterrence and credible force will be able to stop it. Counter-intuitively, preparing for a possible war with Russia is the best approach to prevent it.

Meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the level of Heads of State and Government – NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, 29 June 2022. © NATO

The collective West (and specifically NATO) can count on its likely ability to contain an aggressive Russia, at least in the long run. But Ukraine’s defeat of the aggressor is the indispensable goal in this context as it would severely limit Russia’s ability to attack other countries, provide time to augment collective defence and consolidate international unity against aggression. Madrid Summit decisions have supplied key elements of the required strategy. There is no time to lose in implementing them.

On February 24, 2022, the world watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, inciting the largest war in Europe since World War II. In the months prior, Western intelligence had warned that the attack was imminent, amidst a concerning build-up of military force on Ukraine’s borders. The intelligence was correct: Putin initiated a so-called “special military operation” under the pretense of securing Ukraine’s eastern territories and “liberating” Ukraine from allegedly “Nazi” leadership (the Jewish identity of Ukraine’s president notwithstanding).

Once the invasion started, Western analysts predicted Kyiv would fall in three days. This intelligence could not have been more wrong. Kyiv not only lasted those three days, but it also eventually gained an upper hand, liberating territories Russia had conquered and handing Russia humiliating defeats on the battlefield. Ukraine has endured unthinkable atrocities: mass civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, torture, kidnapping of children, and relentless shelling of residential areas. But Ukraine persists.

With support from European and US allies, Ukrainians mobilized, self-organized, and responded with bravery and agility that evoked an almost unified global response to rally to their cause and admire their tenacity. Despite the David-vs-Goliath dynamic of this war, Ukraine had gained significant experience since fighting broke out in its eastern territories following the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 . In that year, Russian-backed separatists fought for control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas, the area of Ukraine that Russia later claimed was its priority when its attack on Kyiv failed. Also in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the historical homeland of indigenous populations that became part of Ukraine in 1954. Ukraine was unprepared to resist, and international condemnation did little to affect Russia’s actions.

In the eight years between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine sustained heavy losses in the fight over eastern Ukraine: there were over 14,000 conflict-related casualties and the fighting displaced 1.5 million people . Russia encountered a very different Ukraine in 2022, one that had developed its military capabilities and fine-tuned its extensive and powerful civil society networks after nearly a decade of conflict. Thus, Ukraine, although still dwarfed in comparison with Russia’s GDP ( $536 billion vs. $4.08 trillion ), population ( 43 million vs. 142 million ), and military might ( 500,000 vs. 1,330,900 personnel ; 312 vs. 4,182 aircraft ; 1,890 vs. 12,566 tanks ; 0 vs. 5,977 nuclear warheads ), was ready to fight for its freedom and its homeland. Russia managed to control up to 22% of Ukraine’s territory at the peak of its invasion in March 2022 and still holds 17% (up from the 7% controlled by Russia and Russian-backed separatists before the full-scale invasion ), but Kyiv still stands and Ukraine as a whole has never been more unified.

The Numbers

Source: OCHA & Humanitarian Partners

Civilians Killed

Source: Oct 20, 2023 | OHCHR

Ukrainian Refugees in Europe

Source: Jul 24, 2023 | UNHCR

Internally Displaced People

Source: May 25, 2023 | IOM

As It Happened

During the prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion, HURI collated information answering key questions and tracing developments. A daily digest from the first few days of war documents reporting on the invasion as it unfolded.

Frequently Asked Questions

Russians and Ukrainians are not the same people. The territories that make up modern-day Russia and Ukraine have been contested throughout history, so in the past, parts of Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Other parts of Ukraine were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Poland, among others. During the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, policies from Moscow pushed the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, resulting in a largely bilingual country in which nearly everyone in Ukraine speaks both Ukrainian and Russian. Ukraine was tightly connected to the Russian cultural, economic, and political spheres when it was part of the Soviet Union, but the Ukrainian language, cultural, and political structures always existed in spite of Soviet efforts to repress them. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, everyone living on the territory of what is now Ukraine became a citizen of the new country (this is why Ukraine is known as a civic nation instead of an ethnic one). This included a large number of people who came from Russian ethnic backgrounds, especially living in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as well as Russian speakers living across the country.

See also: Timothy Snyder’s overview of Ukraine’s history.

Relevant Sources:

Plokhy, Serhii. “ Russia and Ukraine: Did They Reunite in 1654 ,” in The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Plokhy, Serhii. “ The Russian Question ,” in The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Ševčenko, Ihor. Ukraine between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century (2nd, revised ed.) (Toronto: CIUS Press, 2009).

“ Ukraine w/ Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon (#221).” Interview on The Road to Now with host Benjamin Sawyer. (Historian Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon joins Ben to talk about the key historical events that have shaped Ukraine and its place in the world today.) January 31, 2022.

Portnov, Andrii. “ Nothing New in the East? What the West Overlooked – Or Ignored ,” TRAFO Blog for Transregional Research. July 26, 2022. Note: The German-language version of this text was published in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte , 28–29/2022, 11 July 2022, pp. 16–20, and was republished by TRAFO Blog . Translation into English was done by Natasha Klimenko.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for the protection of its territorial sovereignty in the Budapest Memorandum.

But in 2014, Russian troops occupied the peninsula of Crimea, held an illegal referendum, and claimed the territory for the Russian Federation. The muted international response to this clear violation of sovereignty helped motivate separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk regions—with Russian support—to declare secession from Ukraine, presumably with the hopes that a similar annexation and referendum would take place. Instead, this prompted a war that continues to this day—separatist paramilitaries are backed by Russian troops, equipment, and funding, fighting against an increasingly well-armed and experienced Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian leaders (and many Ukrainian citizens) see membership in NATO as a way to protect their country’s sovereignty, continue building its democracy, and avoid another violation like the annexation of Crimea. With an aggressive, authoritarian neighbor to Ukraine’s east, and with these recurring threats of a new invasion, Ukraine does not have the choice of neutrality. Leaders have made clear that they do not want Ukraine to be subjected to Russian interference and dominance in any sphere, so they hope that entering into NATO’s protective sphere–either now or in the future–can counterbalance Russian threats.

“ Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin’s aggression now? ” Lee Feinstein and Mariana Budjeryn. The Conversation , January 21, 2022.

“ Ukraine Gave Up a Giant Nuclear Arsenal 30 Years Ago. Today There Are Regrets. ” William J. Broad. The New York Times , February 5, 2022. Includes quotes from Mariana Budjeryn (Harvard) and Steven Pifer (former Ambassador, now Stanford)

What is the role of regionalism in Ukrainian politics? Can the conflict be boiled down to antagonism between an eastern part of the country that is pro-Russia and a western part that is pro-West?

Ukraine is often viewed as a dualistic country, divided down the middle by the Dnipro river. The western part of the country is often associated with the Ukrainian language and culture, and because of this, it is often considered the heart of its nationalist movement. The eastern part of Ukraine has historically been more Russian-speaking, and its industry-based economy has been entwined with Russia. While these features are not untrue, in reality, regionalism is not definitive in predicting people’s attitudes toward Russia, Europe, and Ukraine’s future. It’s important to remember that every oblast (region) in Ukraine voted for independence in 1991, including Crimea.

Much of the current perception about eastern regions of Ukraine, including the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk that are occupied by separatists and Russian forces, is that they are pro-Russia and wish to be united with modern-day Russia. In the early post-independence period, these regions were the sites of the consolidation of power by oligarchs profiting from the privatization of Soviet industries–people like future president Viktor Yanukovych–who did see Ukraine’s future as integrated with Russia. However, the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests changed the role of people like Yanukovych. Protesters in Kyiv demanded the president’s resignation and, in February 2014, rose up against him and his Party of Regions, ultimately removing them from power. Importantly, pro-Euromaidan protests took place across Ukraine, including all over the eastern regions of the country and in Crimea.

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The United States Speaks Clearly on Russia’s Ukraine War

Seeking peace for Ukraine and a more stable world means sustaining that message globally.

By: Ambassador William B. Taylor

Publication Type: Analysis

President Biden’s essay on the Ukraine war in Tuesday’s New York Times has vitally clarified America’s interests and goals following weeks of public debate weighted with uncertainty and concern over U.S. intentions and methods in that conflict. It offers a straightforward, positive approach—one that the world’s democracies should sustain—for confronting Russia’s assault against not only Ukraine, but global peace, stability and the rule of law.

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in May. His May 31 op-ed essay in the New York Times summarized U.S. goals and methods for ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

A Clear, Positive Goal

“America’s goal is straightforward,” Biden wrote in the essay . “We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.”

That succinct, positive formulation of the U.S. objective contrasts with negative goals focused on Russia, such as weakening its geostrategic position or power. It forms a clear message, pro-Ukraine and pro-freedom rather than anti-Russia, that is vital to strengthen the necessary alliances against the Kremlin’s brutal aggression. It helps strengthen the U.S. partnership with Europe. Also, as USIP experts have noted, it’s an essential first step to building more support among nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America that have hesitated to fully oppose Russia’s effort to turn back the 75-year struggle to build an international rules-based order.

It seems no accident that Biden’s essay appeared in the Times , for it responds directly to the newspaper’s May 19 editorial seeking greater clarity on U.S. policy. That editorial was part of a broader questioning in May, among many commentators and scholars , about whether the battlefield surprises of the war’s first three months were leading to what the Times editorial called “U.S. aims and strategy in this war [that] have become harder to discern.”

“I want to be clear about the aims of the United States,” Biden wrote on Tuesday, and he was. It is the positive goals he emphasized—a restoration of Ukraine’s independence and ability to define its future, that will advance the vital U.S. and allied interests in the protection of democracy, sovereignty and rule of law .

Biden’s word choices, describing the “democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous” Ukraine that America supports, carry real meaning. A democratic Ukraine is one that will continue its tradition, in 30 years of independence, of freely elected governments. It will continue to respond to Ukrainians’ persistent demands, in the face of Russian resistance and corruption, for more transparent governance. An independent and sovereign Ukraine is one that preserves its right to choose its future course, including potential membership in the European Union or NATO. A prosperous Ukraine is one that is free of Russian strangleholds on its economy, which the Kremlin is trying to achieve by seizing Ukraine’s remaining coastline, notably the port of Odesa.

The Path to a Negotiated Peace

Biden emphasized that he “will not pressure Ukraine—in private or in public—to make any territorial concessions” as part of any eventual peace process with Russia. Rather, he said, U.S. military aid is meant to help Ukrainians defend themselves well enough to “be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

This approach is in contrast to suggestions, including by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger last week , that Ukraine cede to Russia the Crimean Peninsula and portions of Donbas that Russia seized in 2014. Zelenskyy sharply rejected the notion as redolent of the 1938 Munich Agreement in which European governments forced Czechoslovakia to cede its Sudetenland region to Nazi Germany.

U.S. as well as international policymakers should note the consistent evidence that Zelenskyy’s determination to sustain Ukraine’s fight accurately reflects Ukrainians’ attitudes. In stark contrast to Putin’s demonstrated personal isolation (illustrated graphically by his meetings with rare formal visitors across an absurdly long table), Zelenskyy seeks out steady contact with Ukraine’s citizenry. Ukraine’s independent polling organization, the Rating group , is sustaining wartime monitoring of public opinion and found this month that 94 percent of Ukrainians approve of Zelenskyy’s performance since the war began.

As Biden expressed the U.S. goal of a “Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression,” he also signaled a method for achieving it: supplying Ukraine with highly capable defensive weapons. His article announced that the United States will send Ukraine advanced, long-range rocket systems that have recently become more vital as the war has shifted to the wide, open steppe of southeastern Ukraine. The United States and its allies already have delivered 108 howitzers with a potential range up to 25 miles, and Ukraine so far has deployed 85 of them to front lines, a U.S. defense official said last week . The rocket system that Biden mentioned in his article will carry ammunition capable of a 50-mile range.

Those U.S. measures are reinforced by the European Union’s decision Tuesday to ban 90 percent of Russian oil exports to Europe by the end of the year—and by Germany’s announcement that it will send advanced, longer-range anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine.

The first step to any eventual peace process that can protect the basic rights of nations to freedom and democracy is a global rejection of Russia’s unprovoked assault and support for its victims’ self-defense. As President Biden wrote Tuesday, the savagery and criminality of Russia’s attack makes American and international support for Ukraine “a profound moral issue,” not only “the right thing to do” but also “in our vital national interests.” Sustaining that clear message for Americans, Ukrainians, other allies—and indeed, for Russians—is a step not only toward restoring a just peace in brutalized Ukraine, but in preserving hope for an end to such wars worldwide.

Related Publications

In Russia’s Hybrid War on Europe, Moldova’s Critical Next 15 Months

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

By: Donald N. Jensen, Ph.D. ; James Rupert

A rising risk in southeast Europe is Russia’s sharpening of conflicts to block Moldova’s effort to join the European Union. The Kremlin is escalating a hybrid campaign to manipulate three Moldovan elections over the next 15 months. Moscow last week hosted the formation of a political bloc around its primary Moldovan ally, a fugitive billionaire convicted of the country’s worst-ever bank fraud — and sent a startling flood of pre-election cash that police seized at Moldova’s main airport. This is a critical season for Moldova’s democratic allies to help it defeat Russian disinformation and election subversion.

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Ambassador William Taylor on the Latest U.S. Aid to Ukraine

Monday, April 29, 2024

The latest round of U.S. military aid to Ukraine will help halt Russia’s slow, grinding advance. But more long-term aid is needed to not only push back Russian forces, but to deter another future invasion, says USIP’s Ambassador William Taylor. “The only way that this war is going to end is for [Putin’s] cause … to end.”

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Ukraine’s New U.S. Lifeline: Why It’s Vital and What’s Next

Thursday, April 25, 2024

By: Katie Ruppert ; Ambassador William B. Taylor

This week’s U.S. approval of nearly $61 billion in funds for Ukraine’s defense is a lifeline in the Ukrainians’ struggle against Russia’s unprovoked invasion and the assault on peace and rule of law in Europe and beyond. Ukrainian troops have been rationing ammunition, their lack of defensive missiles has exposed Ukrainian cities to Russian aerial attacks — and many military analysts predicted a probable collapse on part of Ukraine’s eastern defensive lines. While this U.S. action boosts Ukrainians’ capacities and morale, ending this war will need further funds, forces and security measures for those fighting and suffering for their survival — and for the redemption of international peace through rule of law.

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ISIS-K’s recent attack on the Russian capital was, in part, intended to assert the organization’s growing capacity to inflict terror beyond its home base of Afghanistan. “By reaching Moscow, ISIS-K is trying to signal it has the geographic reach to hit anywhere in the world,” says USIP’s Asfandyar Mir.

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Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

Photo: iLab/CSIS

Brief by Grace B. Mueller, Benjamin Jensen , Brandon Valeriano, Ryan C. Maness, and Jose M. Macias

Published July 13, 2023

Available Downloads

Download the Brief 6926kb
Download the Supplemental Appendix 1961kb

Audio Brief

A short, spoken-word summary from CSIS’s Ben Jensen on his brief with Grace B. Mueller, Brandon Valeriano, Ryan C. Maness, and Jose M. Macias, "Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War: From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures."

In the Future . . .

Cyber operations will play a supporting rather than decisive role in major theater wars. Great powers will continue to invest in cyber capabilities but see diminishing returns on these investments outside of intelligence and deception efforts once major conflict breaks out.
War will still be a continuation of politics by other means and rely on the more tangible effects of violence than on the elusive effects of compromising information networks. During the transition to warfighting, military commanders will prefer the certainty of lethal precision strikes against high-value targets to the uncertainty of generating effects in cyberspace.
The merits of cyber operations continue to be their utility as a tool of political warfare because they facilitate an engagement short of war that leverages covert action, propaganda, and surveillance but in a manner that poses a fundamental threat to human liberties. Cyber operations will remain a limited tool of coercion. Due to their uncertain effects, military leaders will initiate fewer critical cyber operations against command and control and military targets than currently anticipated. They will also face fewer restrictions on waging information warfare to mobilize and shape discontent.

Introduction

How central are cyber operations to combined arms campaigns in the twenty-first century? Between the spring of 2021 and winter of 2022, Russian military forces began to mass combat troops along Ukraine’s eastern border. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It marked the fourth time Russia used military force against a neighbor since the end of the Cold War and the seventh time Russia used cyber operations as part of a larger campaign or independently as an instrument of coercion against a neighboring state.[1]

Pundits and academics alike came out with grand predictions about a coming cyber war.[2] Researchers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even argued during the war that “Russian cyberattacks on government and military command and control centers, logistics, emergency services . . . were entirely consistent with a so-called thunder run strategy intended to stoke chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, and ultimately avoid a costly and protracted war in Ukraine.”[3]

This edition of the On Future War series uses an empirical analysis of attributed Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate future scenarios for the use of cyber operations in major theater wars below the nuclear threshold. The best predictions about an uncertain future come from analysis of past attack patterns and trends as well as seminal cases—such as Ukraine—that are almost certain to change the character of war. Reference the Statistical Appendix for more information.

Into the war’s second year, Russia remains locked in a protracted conventional conflict that, in addition to pitched battles and missile strikes, has seen sabotage, forced displacement and kidnapping of children, systematic rape and torture, and threats to use nuclear weapons. Yet, Russia has not launched an all-out, costly cyberwar against Ukraine or its backers in the West. The so-called “thunder run” never materialized.[4] Rather, a mix of Ukrainian determination, the characteristics of the cyber domain, and a Russian preference for waging a global campaign focused more on misinformation and undermining support for Kyiv appear to have taken its place.

This installment of On Future War analyzes Russian cyber operations linked to the war in Ukraine. This study uses the publicly attributed record of Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate insights about the character of cyber operations as instruments of warfighting and coercion in the twenty-first century. The empirical evidence demonstrates that while there has been an uptick in cyberattacks during the conflict, these attacks did not demonstrate an increase in severity, a shift in targets, or a shift in methods. Despite proclamations of doom, gloom, and a revolution in warfare, Russia behaved in a manner contrary to most popular expectations during the conflict. While cyber-enabled targeting at the tactical level is almost certain to occur alongside signals intelligence—a practice first documented in Ukraine in 2016—the prevailing trends suggest cyber operations have yet to make a material impact on the battlefield.[5] Where Russian cyber operations have made a difference is in their support to information operations and propaganda in the Global South, where Moscow has successfully spread disinformation to undermine support to Ukraine. Similar to earlier academic treatments that find cyber operations play a key role in shaping intelligence, deception, and political warfare, the Ukrainian case illustrates that the digital domain plays a shaping rather than decisive role even during extensive and existential combat.[6]

In addition to casting doubt on the cyber thunder run, the empirical record, especially when compared to previous Russian cyber operations, offers a baseline prediction about the future and how states will integrate cyber operations into a spectrum of conflict ranging from crises to major wars.[7] While the system could evolve and cyber operations might prove to be decisive instruments of war in the future, the record to date suggests alternatives for how this technology will be leveraged on the battlefield. Specifically, integrating the empirical record of cyber operations in Ukraine alongside well-established findings from the quantitative study of war suggests three scenarios.

Cyber Stalemate: Russia struggles to integrate cyber and conventional effects on the battlefield and beyond due to the resilience of cyber defense as well as the power of public-private partnerships.
War Comes Home: Russia regroups and launches a wave of cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure.
Digital Lies: Russian cyber-enabled influence operations and computational propaganda degrade support for the United States and the war in Ukraine.

Looking across these scenarios suggests key policy options—each consistent with active campaigning and integrated deterrence—the Biden administration could take over the next two years to shape what will likely be a long-term competition with Russia that extends deeper into the twenty-first century. Over time it has become clear that resilience and a focus on defensive operations can forestall the potential impact of offensive cyber operations. Defense in cyberspace requires expanding public-private partnerships and collaboration alongside pooled data to identify attack patterns and trends. Last, the United States and its partners will need to develop better ways and means for countering how malign actors such as Russia use cyberspace to distort global public opinion. For every failed network intrusion, there are thousands of successful social media posts skewing how the world looks at the war in Ukraine.

Making Sense of Cyber Operations

U.S. joint doctrine defines cyberspace operations as the “employment of cyberspace capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in and through cyberspace.”[8] Cyberspace is further defined as an “interdependent network of information technology (IT) infrastructures and resident data. It includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.”[9]

From a military perspective, groups seek to defend their networks while infiltrating other networks through the different layers of cyberspace (i.e., physical, logical, and persona). As a result, network access is turned into an intelligence advantage or means of delivering effects, creating unique “use-lose” trade-offs in cyber operations.[10] Disrupting or degrading adversary networks risks losing intelligence access. In addition, the dual effort to gain and exploit access does not take place on a battlefield but often in commercial systems and networks, creating unique dilemmas as patches and updates can dislodge or distort cyber payloads. Last, many cyber operations rely on similar tactics, techniques, and procedures, meaning that compromising one operation can result in a cascading effect compromising other operations.

While cyber operations, by design, tend to be concealed, with cyber operators often masking their intrusions and identities by routing payloads through third-party servers, it is possible to analyze how state and non-state actors use cyberspace to advance their interests. Academics, governments, and threat intelligence firms have been cataloging cyber operations for over 20 years. This treatment follows academic research and employs a systematic coding standard as opposed to simple lists that avoid peer review and replication.[11] The underlying assumption about external validity is that documented cyber incidents and associated campaigns are representative of the larger universe of cyber incidents that are unseen or unreported.[12]

For many, cyber operations are a method to enable a decisive advantage, creating an easy path to victory. As Josh Rovner, associate professor at the School of International Service at American University, notes, “For policymakers and planners, cyberspace operations suggest a low-cost route to quick and decisive victories.”[13] This idea is developed most clearly in Jan Kallberg’s theory of decisive cyber operations.[14] Kallberg, a former research scientist with the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, argues that “the decisive cyber outcome is either reached by removing military capacity through cyber attacks or destabilization of the targeted society.”[15] The idea is to trigger a “dormant entropy embedded in a nation possessing weak institutions.”[16]

Many visions of decisive cyber victory emerge from the idea that cyber warfare represents a revolution in war and military affairs.[17] Amit Sharma, formerly of India’s Ministry of Defence, note, “Cyber warfare . . . is a warfare which is capable of compelling the enemy to your will by inducing strategic paralysis to achieve desired ends and this seizing of the enemy is done almost without any application of physical force.”[18]

Greg Rattray, former director of cybersecurity for the White House, offered that “successful integration of information systems in a sophisticated conventional force capability proved decisive during the spectacular U.S. military successes in the Gulf War.”[19] But he also further cautioned that challenges, including expertise for targeted attacks, the difficulty in assessing the political consequences for information disruption, and defensive coordination challenges, would hamper the ability of information warfare to be effective in generating effects.[20]

Applied to Ukraine, the vision of decisive cyber victory imagined Russian network intrusions extending beyond battlefield objectives to undermine confidence in Kyiv. Kallberg’s original theory focused on weak states where “cyber targeting can induce a sense of lack of control with citizens blaming the state for failing to safe-guard the societal structure.”[21] In many ways, this was the vision Russia had of Ukraine, seeing a quick war as sufficient to destabilize the government and lead to a general collapse, leaving Moscow in control of the country. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, noted “a cyber attack—which is relatively easy and comparatively cheap—is likely to top that list. As Russia showed during the 2008 Georgia conflict, hacking government systems as well as financial and energy sectors can cause chaos.”[22]

NATO analysts David Cattler and Daniel Black point to cyber operations as “Russia’s biggest military success to date in the war in Ukraine.”[23] Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, goes so far as to argue that conventional operations would not even be needed:

"It is hard to see how rolling tanks across the border would serve Russia’s aims when far cheaper and more controllable options exist for inflicting damage on Ukraine. . . . Stand-off strikes using missiles, or potentially a destructive cyber onslaught, could target military command and control systems or civilian critical infrastructure and pressure Kyiv into concessions and its friends aboard into meeting Russia’s demands." [24]

This logic is reminiscent of airpower theorists in the interwar period who believed bombers would destroy cities, forcing citizens to pressure their governments into surrendering.[25]

Extending the idea to Ukraine’s foreign backers, Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, notes that another SolarWinds-style attack on the United States would be a “psychological shock to the public and to decision-makers” and “might successfully coerce the United States into backing down.”[26] Fear that Russia would escalate and expand the conflict to the United States through cyber means motivated the desire for many to remain neutral, or to at least have “shields up.”[27]

Scholars working at the intersection of international security and disruptive technology generally reject the idea of a decisive victory in cyberspace.[28] Academics such as Nadiya Kostyuk and Erik Gartzke note that Russian cyber operations “have neither supplanted nor significantly supplemented conventional combat activities.”[29] Others state, “We are less convinced of effective Russian or Ukrainian battlefield cyber action.”[30] Earlier researchers noted that “despite increasingly sophisticated operations, between 2000 and 2016 cyberspace was a domain defined by political warfare and covert signaling to control escalation more than it was an arena of decisive action.”[31] Instead, cyber operations generally represent covert or deception operations seeking to coerce or signal to the adversary.[32] Often linked to intelligence, cyber operations act more like complementary activities in war than singularly decisive instruments.[33] Like combined arms, cyber operations work best when integrated with other effects to create multiple dilemmas for an adversary. This logic implies that Russian cyber operations in Ukraine were likely restrained by the character of cyberspace and its strategic logic.[34]

There is also the possibility that cyber operations are more defensive rather than offensive. The majority of code, computer equipment, and network infrastructure in the world is owned and operated by private companies. These companies spend billions of dollars monitoring their networks. A mix of nonprofits and academics constantly search for bugs and update companies about deficiencies. This unique feature of cyber competition means that even the best laid plans are often undone by the ecosystem of firms and citizens seeking to secure cyberspace. In addition, the human capital and costs required to develop high-end cyber effects can constrain their use.[35] Work by the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission highlighted this dynamic and encouraged building layers in national cyber strategy to deny easy access and change the costs adversaries expect to pay to attack U.S. interests.[36]

Russian Cyber Operations

Historical cases.

Looking at the history of Russian cyber operations, the Kremlin employs cyber means to engage in long-term competition with rivals.[37] Before 2014, Moscow’s campaigns tended to focus on political warfare and espionage. Operations in Estonia and Georgia were the most prominent. Massive denial-of-service operations sought to punish Estonia in 2007 after the country moved the Russian monument known as the Bronze Soldier.[38] During the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008, Russia leveraged cyberattacks to enable information operations (IO) against Georgia.[39] Russian’s IO operations aimed “to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision-making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting [their] own.”[40]

In a harbinger of its military campaign to destroy Ukrainian critical infrastructure, Moscow also used cyber operations to target Kyiv’s power supply. Following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, advanced persistent threat (APT) groups such as Sandworm were implicated in the 2015 BlackEnergy campaign targeting Ukrainian power generation and distribution.[41] While the attacks captured headlines, they produced limited effects.[42] In 2017, Russian-linked groups launched the NotPetya campaign, which produced effects that spilled over from the intended targets, Ukrainian companies, to affect global logistics.[43]

Russia has also used cyber operations as a form of political warfare, using a mix of propaganda to polarize societies and influence political elections. Of note, these efforts included parallel disruption campaigns seeking to deface websites and portray supporters for Ukraine as Nazis.[44] This campaign was followed by the even more audacious attempt to undermine confidence in U.S. democracy through the 2016 operations targeting the presidential election, where the effects are still debated.[45] In 2018, U.S. Cyber Command used Russia’s past behavior as well as other indicators and warnings that Moscow was about to repeat its efforts as justification for launching a preemptive operation against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian propaganda and influence operation firm, designed to forestall attacks during the midterm elections.[46]

More recently, Russian operations have combined a mix of sophisticated espionage and criminal malware campaigns. For most of 2020, the Russian hacking group APT29, or Cozy Bear, exploited a supply chain vulnerability in the SolarWinds Orion program to exfiltrate data and digital tools from an extensive list of targets.[47] The operation raised alarm bells since neither the NSA nor major firms such as Microsoft detected the intrusion and because it likely involved a combination of human intelligence and cyber operations to insert malicious code deep into servers. In 2021, criminal actors known as DarkSide, likely linked to the Russian state, were successful in deploying ransomware against Colonial Pipeline, the system that moves much of the fuel used across the United States’ East Coast.[48]

Empirical Analysis

These high-profile examples parallel the prevailing empirical pattern of Russian cyber operations between 2000 and 2020. The latest version of the Dyadic Cyber Incident and Campaign Data (DCID 2.0) extends the timeline of the dataset and adds new variables, including ransomware and information operations.[49] The dataset codes cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns and establishes a typology for strategic objectives, including disruption (causing low-cost, low-pain incidents), short-term espionage (gaining access for immediate effect), long-term espionage (leveraging information for future operations), and degrade (pursuing physical destruction and impairment). Severity is measured on an interval scale between 0 and 10. Where (0) is no cyber activity (1) and begins tracking the impact of cyber operations of passive operations to (4) widespread government, economic, military, or critical private sector network intrusion, multiple networks to (5) single/multiple critical network infiltration and physical attempted destruction, with (10) a potential outcome of massive deaths.[50] This coding methodology follows practices established in political science to study crises, disputes, and conflicts since the 1960s.[51]

Between 2000 and 2020, there were 30 recorded dyadic cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns between Russia and Ukraine. Russia was frequently the initiator but rarely the target. Of the 30 recorded cyber events between Russia and Ukraine, 28 (or 93 percent) were initiated by Russia. Over this period, the majority of Moscow’s targets (57 percent) were private, non-state actors. Only 11 percent of documented Russian cyber operations targeted government military targets. This targeting profile suggests that Moscow struggles to compromise more defended Ukrainian networks. While crucial cases such as SolarWinds suggest the possibility of more, yet-to-be-detected instances of cyber campaigns supported by human intelligence operations that are hard to detect, available data suggests that cyber defenses are holding in Ukraine.

Many of Russia’s past cyber incidents and campaigns targeting Ukraine were launched for disruption or espionage purposes rather than to degrade critical government networks. Only 29 percent of the documented cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns were degradations. The majority of Russian cyber operations were characterized by phishing attempts, distributed denial-of-service campaigns, propaganda or vandalism efforts, and single network intrusions—all of which tend to have a limited impact.

Altogether, none of the 28 recorded cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns were so severe that they resulted in lasting physical damage. On a scale from 0 to 10, with “0” representing no cyber activity and “10” representing massive death as a direct result of a cyber incident, Russia’s attacks targeting Ukraine never surpassed a “5”—single or multiple critical network infiltrations and attempted physical destruction. Furthermore, none of Russia’s past cyber operations resulted in a concessionary change in the behavior of Ukraine. Moscow appears to view using cyber operations more as a means of harassing Ukraine and supporting information operations than as a war-winning weapon indicative of the thunder run strategy.

This pattern of behavior is largely consistent with Russia’s interactions with its other rivals. According to the DCID 2.0 dataset, of the 113 total cyber incidents and larger campaigns documented that Russia initiated against its rivals between 2000 and 2020, only one (0.088 percent) resulted in a tangible political concession. Cyber operations remain a weak coercive instrument for Moscow despite their frequent use.

Analysis of Russian Cyber Operations in 2022

Turning from the DCID 2.0 dataset to the first year of the war in Ukraine, the CSIS research team identified 47 publicly attributed cyber incidents indicative of a campaign initiated by Russia between November 29, 2021, and May 9, 2022.[52] This data is culled directly from Ukrainian government sources and Microsoft reports, avoiding the biases that might be introduced by many contemporary news accounts. Because of the covert nature of cyber operations, it is likely only a small but representative sample of the larger population intrusions.

If the character of cyber operations aligns more with intelligence and shaping activities such as deception, one would expect to see this tendency in the early stages of the war in Ukraine. In other words, observations from datasets such as the DCID 2.0 should show, even if they are only a small sample of the larger population, that cyber operations increased in frequency but not severity in the initial stages of the 2022 conflict compared to prewar statistics. Since it is difficult to know exactly when a cyber campaign begins, the data should show a lag resulting in spikes around the beginning of major hostilities.

Cyber operations remain a weak coercive instrument for Moscow despite their frequent use.

This condition is exactly what emerged from reviewing the pattern of cyber intrusions captured by the DCID 2.0. There was a 75 percent increase in documented cyber intrusions—but a decline in the average severity of the attack. The severity level for the average fell after the full-scale invasion, indicating that although low-level disruption and espionage have continued, there has been a significant drop in degradation-type operations coming from Russia. The results are statistically significant and reported in the Statistical Appendix. What is unknown is whether this decline is a function of deliberate targeting or the resiliency of Ukrainian cyber defenses, issues addressed later in this study.

Contrary to speculation that Russian targets would shift to focus on supporting military operations, an analysis of the DCID shows no statistically significant change in targeting or the overall campaign type. There was no statistically significant difference in targeting before and after the invasion (see Statistical Appendix). This finding suggests that the utility of cyber operations rests in setting conditions and intelligence more than in direct application during large-scale combat operations. While cyber-enabled targeting supports combat, the data shows that larger cyber campaigns do not radically shift during wartime. What the findings cannot determine is whether or not this observation is a function of the character of cyberspace or the result of case-specific factors such as the resiliency of Ukraine’s cyber defense.

Looking at the style of Russian attacks, the research team found that Russia’s cyber activity during the war has been more disruptive than degrading, consistent with its past behavior. As seen in Figure 2, when one looks at these cyber operations by type, Moscow’s preferred cyber objectives have remained disruptive shaping activities and cyber espionage campaigns. During the first few months of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, disruption incidents comprised 57.4 percent of the total incidents, followed by espionage (21.3 percent).

Reliance on disruptive operations stands in contrast to Russia’s prewar behavior, which accentuated espionage. That said, for both the prewar sample and the 2022 war sample, degradative cyber operations were never the majority. Just as Russia’s past cyber operations failed to result in any Ukrainian concessions, no concessions were made by Ukraine during the timeframe of this analysis.

There was no statistically significant difference in targeting before and after the invasion . . . the utility of cyber operations rests in setting conditions and intelligence more than in direct application during large-scale combat operations.

During war, a state might alter its cyber targeting. Yet this analysis of Ukrainian cyber events fails to confirm this hypothesis. Looking at the targets of Russian cyber aggression in the 47 total incidents, most (59.6 percent) targeted private non-state actors, followed by attacks targeting state and local government actors (31.9 percent). Just four (or 8.5 percent) targeted government military actors. This target-type breakdown closely corresponds to Russia’s targets between 2000 and 2020: 57 percent of the targets were private non-state actors, 32 percent were government non-military actors, and 11 percent were government military actors. It is counterintuitive that military actors have not been targeted more frequently during the war.

These results cast doubt on the extent to which Russia has successfully integrated its conventional military operations with cyber effects. Coordination with conventional forces became an important talking point, with a large segment of the news media following some analysts in making the claim that there was significant coordination between cyber operations and conventional military forces.[53] This analysis fails to substantiate these claims. Russian military operations appear to struggle with integrating combined effects, especially across domains.

This seeming lack of coordination between cyber and conventional attacks is something likewise acknowledged by James Lewis, senior vice president at CSIS. To pull off a successful, coordinated attack requires both planning and intelligence support, and either because it chose not to do this or it was incapable of doing so, Russia’s cyber efforts have had a limited effect on Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine. This leads Lewis to candidly state, “Cyberattacks are overrated. While invaluable for espionage and crime, they are far from decisive in armed conflict.”[54]

These results cast doubt on the extent to which Russia has successfully integrated its conventional military operations with cyber effects.

Making Sense of the Findings

There was a dramatic increase in cyber operations during the initial stage of the war. Yet paradoxically, there was no corresponding change in severity or style, nor shifts in Russia’s target preferences. While the rate of cyber conflict increased during the war, the rate of concessions or even severe cyber operations did not. This empirical baseline, albeit based on aggregating unclassified data, demands an explanation.

The analysis offered above provides an insight into what is happening but not necessarily a clear explanation for why it is happening. Below, this study considers three different causal explanations. The first—which follows the logic of the data collected and assessed above, as well as minority reports—offers an explanation for why Russian cyber efforts have been ineffective. [55] The second considers the opposite: why the world could still witness widespread cyber campaigns in Ukraine and beyond. The third considers an alternative logic of cyberspace focused on misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, as well as larger propaganda campaigns.

1. "The Defense Is Dominant”

There is the possibility that a combination of private sector innovation, state coordination, and emerging doctrine have made the cyber domain defense dominant. While SpaceX and Starlink captured headlines from Ukraine, multiple firms raced to help the country retain the ability to access cyberspace.[56] Microsoft reported that a mix of “cyber threat intelligence and end-point protection . . . helped Ukraine withstand a high percentage of destructive Russian cyberattacks.”[57] Even where Russia coordinated wiper attacks and cruise missile strikes against data centers, Ukraine was able to “disburse its digital infrastructure into the public cloud” and survive the onslaught.[58] In November 2022, Ukrainian deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation, Mykhalio Fedorov, praised Amazon Web Services (AWS) for their role in helping Ukraine maintain continuity of government during the war.[59] During the opening stages of the conflict, AWS sent in suitcase-sized computer drives to help Ukraine back up critical data.[60] Cybersecurity firm Cloudflare extended its Project Galileo services—a full suite of protection for organizations in the arts, human rights, civil society, journalism, and democracy promotion—to key organizations across Ukraine.[61] This effort paralleled Google’s Project Shield, which similarly seeks to help at-risk organizations defend against cyber intrusions.[62] In all, the character of cyberspace, which relies on business networks and the public sector, means that a web of private actors have been enmeshed with the defense of Ukraine.[63]

Beyond new technology that increases the power of the defense, the last seven years have seen an unreported push to coordinate cybersecurity policies across states and involve the private sector.[64] The architects of Ukrainian cyber strategy participated in multiple U.S. Department of State initiatives, including meeting with the research director for the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission a year before the conflict began. Multiple federal agencies have programs supporting Ukraine’s networks and digital infrastructure that predate the war, including cybersecurity reform initiatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development and initiatives in the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice for sharing threat information.[65] These efforts paralleled similar EU initiatives.[66]

The concept of what constitutes defensive mechanisms in cyberspace has also evolved over the last 10 years. Early cyber strategies released by the U.S. Department of Defense tended to be criticized as being too defensive.[67] Following the lead of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and parallel initiatives across the Department of Defense, U.S. Cyber Command also issued a new strategy in 2018 that called for taking “action in cyberspace during day-to-day competition to preserve U.S. military advantages and defend U.S. interests.”[68]

These new concepts have been put into action as the United States and its allies deployed cyber forces to support partner defenses. In a speech at the 2022 Reagan National Defense Forum, General Paul Nakasone, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA, recounted growing his hunt-forward team by 300 percent in 2021.[69] Similarly, the European Union activated its Cyber Rapid Response Team to help Ukraine fend off Russian cyberattacks.[70] NATO went as far as to accept Ukraine as a contributing participant in its Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence.[71] U.S. defend-forward efforts have gone beyond cyber defense to covertly remove Russian malware from computer networks around the world.[72] What is unclear as of this writing is whether or not these defend-forward activities have also included spoiling attacks to disrupt Russian cyber capabilities.

2. "It’s a Matter of Time”

Russia could be regrouping following the initial success of Ukraine’s foreign-backed cyber defense or could be biding its time. The absence of a significant critical infrastructure attack using malware to date does not preclude one in the future.

First, there are indications that Russia has been working to disrupt command and control since the beginning of the war. Hours before the ground invasion began, Russia deployed malware that disrupted the Viasat satellite system and led to over 30,000 internet connections going down temporarily across Europe, including 5,000 wind turbines.[73] SpaceX’s leadership claims that the company’s Starlink network has resisted multiple Russian cyberattacks since the capability was deployed to Ukraine.[74] More recently, there are reports of Russian cyber operations trying to penetrate Delta, a unique Ukrainian military intelligence and targeting fusion software.[75]

Second, since the beginning of the war, there have been reports of malware discovered on critical infrastructure in countries supporting Ukraine with foreign military assistance. In the United States, Russian malware was discovered on critical infrastructure linked to generating and providing electricity early in the conflict, which, if not discovered, could have been used to cause blackouts and supply disruptions.[76] The United Kingdom issued a public warning for critical infrastructure organizations about Moscow’s increased efforts to target critical infrastructure since the start of the war in Ukraine.[77] Poland is a frequent target, with logistics suppliers commonly put at risk, primarily with ransomware.[78]

Russia has also been implicated in efforts to develop even more sophisticated tool kits. These measures include new classes of industrial control malware designed to disrupt, degrade, or destroy critical infrastructure, similar to the effects seen historically in the Stuxnet attack on Iranian nuclear facilities first discovered in 2010 and the BlackEnergy attacks that disrupted Ukraine’s electrical grid in 2015.[79] This activity parallels increased activity by Russian cybercriminal networks targeting critical infrastructure.[80] There are also reports that Russia is developing a new capability combining electronic warfare, signals intelligence, and cyber capabilities focused on targeting critical infrastructure and “life support systems.”[81] This focus on sabotaging critical infrastructure is a key component of Russian military theory and the concept of “strategic operation for the destruction of critically important targets,” also known as SODCIT.[82]

Yet Russian efforts to use cyberspace to degrade Western support or Ukrainian military capabilities have largely failed to meet expectations to date. Three reasons stand out. First, it may be that the defense is dominant in cyberspace. Moscow finds itself up against not just Ukraine but a global network of public and private cybersecurity professionals, limiting the extent to which it can exploit cyberspace. Second, there might be a tendency toward threat inflation in cyber reporting that makes Russian efforts look more sophisticated and robust than they actually are. Even the Viasat attack did not have a significant impact in Ukraine, according to Viktor Zhora, deputy chairman and chief digital transformation officer at the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine.[83] Third, there might be an even more simple logic: critical infrastructure in Ukraine can be degraded using cruise missile strikes, allowing Russia to reserve exquisite malware in case the war escalates to involve direct combat with the West. In other words, there might be escalation dynamics in cyberspace that restrain states from launching an all-out cyberattack campaign on a rival great power even amid a proxy war.

3. “It’s a Different War”

Russia might be waging a different kind of cyberwar focused less on taking down critical infrastructure and more on limiting the coalition supporting Ukraine. This information warfare strategy seeks to sow chaos and cause doubt and confusion in a manner consistent with legacy Soviet ideas about active measures and reflexive control.[84]

Microsoft reported Russian network intrusion efforts in over 100 organizations in over 40 countries beyond Ukraine.[85] Many of these efforts involve “Advanced Persistent Manipulator (APM) teams” linked to the Kremlin who specialize in planting false narratives across social media in a manner “similar to the pre-positioning of malware.”[86] Russian cyber operators continue to conduct low-level disruptions against targets in its near abroad, targeting Ukraine and states supporting Ukraine. A recent attack by the Sandworm group, attributed to the Russian GRU, targeted Ukinform, the national news agency of Ukraine.[87] Politico notes that Russia has sought to terrorize the Ukrainian civilian population after failing to leverage cyber operations on the battlefield.[88]

Outside of Ukraine, Russian-linked actors have used low-level attacks to disrupt websites, consistent with a cyber approach to political warfare.[89] Lithuania was targeted after placing restrictions on Russia cargo moving into Kaliningrad.[90] Many Russian-aligned threat groups have joined the chaos, targeting Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia.[91]

There might be escalation dynamics in cyberspace that restrains states from launching an all-out cyberattack campaign on a rival great power even amid a proxy war.

Globally, Russia uses cyberspace to wage what researchers at the Atlantic Council call “narrative warfare.”[92] These operations focus on eroding global confidence in Ukraine.[93] Unlike traditional cyber intrusions, the goal is either to cause chaos or to shape public attitudes toward the conflict using computational propaganda. These methods include creating fake social media accounts, using bots, and targeting content prompts to unique user groups to change public attitudes.[94]

For example, consider Moscow’s cyber-enabled information operations across Africa that accelerated after the Russian invasion in 2022. As early as 2019, researchers identified a cluster of Facebook pages tied to the Wagner Group that were active in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Mozambique.[95] The operation showed a high degree of sophistication, including using local subcontractors and native speakers, adapting messages to unique content forms such as short videos and contests, and using Google Forms to solicit feedback.[96] These operations accelerated after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with new groups such as Russosphere promoting Kremlin-linked propaganda on social media calibrated to diverse audiences across Africa.[97] These social media outreach efforts complement more traditional propaganda approaches linked to platforms such as RT, which has expanded its coverage across Africa since the start of the war.[98]

From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures

When combined with the empirical trends of Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine, these three logics provide the foundation for imagining how the cyber war in Ukraine—if not beyond—could evolve over the next 12 to 36 months.

Cyber Stalemate: In the future, the defense remains dominant, limiting offensive cyber campaigns in Ukraine.

Leaders in Russia find progress on the cyber front as stalled as the battlefield. While trench lines, rivers, and concrete-reinforced fighting positions make maneuvering difficult in the real world, a mix of private sector firms and governments thwart cyber offensives in cyberspace. Moreover, Russian efforts to expand the scope of cyberattacks beyond Ukraine yield few long-term results and make Russia an international pariah on par with North Korea. Russian criminal groups thrive, increasing ransomware campaigns and “crime-as-a-service” campaigns globally, but Moscow proves unable to align cyber operations with its political objectives of winning the war in Ukraine and establishing Russian hegemony in its near abroad.

The wave of foiled Russian cyber offenses leads to a new debate about the efficacy of cyber operations as an instrument of war. The debate pits the United States, where the military and intelligence community back expanding investments in cyber capabilities despite Russian setbacks, against partners in Europe, many of whom want to see broader prohibitions against cyber operations and to pool data on attacks and vulnerabilities to increase security. These efforts are complicated by stalled legislation and executive action in the United States seeking to incentivize the private sector to report on network intrusions. The net result is that the United States and its partners are increasingly at odds over cyberspace and that there is no unity of effort in cybersecurity efforts between the public and private sectors. State cyber is limited beyond espionage, but criminal activity rises, leading to a loss of confidence in the ability or interest of the U.S. federal government to defend cyberspace.

China watches the debates and continues to invest in a mix of domestic surveillance and cyber support for firepower strike concepts. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) focuses more on intelligence collection and targeting and refining ways of integrating cyber, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence to avoid Moscow’s fate. More troubling, Russia’s failure to integrate cyber operations with its military campaign pushes Beijing to increase its investments in weaponizing space. PLA military leaders assess that a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic effects against U.S. and partner nation satellite constellations will prove more reliable than terrestrial network intrusions and hard-to-contain malware attacks.

War Comes Home: In the future, Russia escalates and unleashes a wave of critical infrastructure attacks.

With battlefield progress stalling and Western aid continuing to flow to Kyiv, Moscow authorizes a new campaign to attack critical infrastructure in states backing Ukraine. After years of experimentation in the wild, Russian cyber operators craft tool kits that exploit industrial control systems linked to energy production and transmission, transportation systems, wastewater treatment, and a wide range of factory processes. Whereas the earlier Viasat campaign knocked out 5,000 wind turbines, the latest effort leaves millions with intermittent access to power and water across Europe and the United States for 10 days. The result is widespread panic that leaves hundreds dead in the depths of winter. The economic fallout is worse, with widespread stock market crashes and currency runs. Business leaders are angry with Western intelligence and military leaders after it is revealed that components of the Russian cyber campaign were based on malware developed by the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow repurposed.

Facing widespread public pressure, the U.S. president retaliates against Russia. U.S. cyber operations cripple critical infrastructure across Russia and create a widespread humanitarian disaster despite efforts to conduct precision targeting of facilities linked to political elites and the military. The spillover effects lead to widespread economic fallout and further stress already weak infrastructure across Russia, causing a temporary rally-around-the-flag effect. Russian citizens back retaliation.

In response to the cyberattacks, Russia places its nuclear forces on alert and deploys additional delivery systems to Belarus. Russian submarines cut key fiber-optic cables, leading to the degradation of information exchange, such as global communication and key anti-submarine early warning systems. Through back channels, Moscow signals that it intends to use nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Ukraine and will respond if the United States or any NATO member intervenes. The United States is forced to increase its nuclear alert levels, pushing the world into the most dangerous strategic crisis since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Pundits dub the standoff the “Cyber Missile Crisis.”

Digital Lies: In the future, Russian cyber efforts create a backlash against the United States’ image abroad.

Despite military setbacks in Ukraine and dissent at home, attitudes toward Russia across the Global South are increasingly positive. The use of troll farms, easy access to RT in Africa, and computational propaganda successfully create an image of Moscow as a victim of Western neo-imperialism. Putin is seen in these narratives as more of a twenty-first-century Che Guevara than an aging strongman. The barrage of global propaganda complicates U.S. development programs and leads to widespread protests outside U.S. embassies abroad. Chinese Communist Party intermediaries amplify these efforts and spread the discontent to Southeast and Central Asia as well as Latin America.

At home, the global wave of propaganda finds inroads on both the left and right of the U.S. political spectrum. Propaganda tailored to right-wing audiences stresses Russia as a defender of Christianity and a bulwark stopping a “woke West” from triggering the collapse of civilization. On the left, the social media-tailored messages speak to nonintervention and a need to divest from military power in favor of social spending at home. These messages also seek to link the framing of Washington as a neo-imperial power to historic grievances inside the United States.

The campaigns are accelerated by widespread access to generative artificial intelligence (AI), leading to a wave of deepfakes and AI-written content online. Absent public or private sector policies to moderate content, the barrage of content overwhelms social media. Public trust in governing institutions continues its long-term decline and spreads to a larger sense of cynicism in U.S. society.

Policy Implications

The empirical evidence combined with the scenarios suggests a need to expand public-private partnerships and other collective defense mechanisms in cyberspace while developing new approaches to counter-influence operations and competition in the information environment. These recommendations, though developed independently and prior to its publication, match priorities outlined in the 2023 National Cyberspace Strategy .

Recommendation 1: Increase Public-Private Partnerships Supporting Cyber Defense

It is not enough to secure critical U.S. intelligence and military networks. Modern societies live through complex networks that cross the public and private sectors. The easier it is to create pooled data and common standards, the harder it will be for adversaries to compromise security. This is equivalent to the old military adage of “moving with the terrain.” If the terrain (i.e., cyberspace) is defined by scalable networks connecting diffuse groups, then making it easier for these groups to coordinate defense will make it harder for any one actor to conduct offensive action.

In practical terms, this logic means that the more incentives the U.S. government can offer for public-private sector collaboration, the more likely cyber defense will hold against future attacks. For example, what if the companies that moved to help countries and societies under siege such as Ukraine were given tax credits or at least allowed to factor the labor hours used as a tax write-off? What if the U.S. government created a new category of grants or contract vehicles, such as indefinite delivery, and indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQs), that allowed the private sector to rapidly surge for supporting key U.S. partners and allies during a crisis? The ends and ways are clear: bolster cyber defenses through increased public-private collaboration. What is less clear is the optimal means for doing so, which will likely require a creative mix of inducements and policy changes similar to those proposed by the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Second, increasing public-private partnership should leverage clear, transparent pooled data on cyber threats. While the U.S. government is making progress on sharing threat information, the process could go much further. Just as the private sector relies on economic and weather data collected by the U.S. government, the same should apply to cyberspace, with the U.S. government maintaining a pool of credible data continually updated by data scientists. This data pool should anonymize entity names (e.g., businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies), similar to established practices with the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Reporting Program, and use a common typology, as seen in the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Without this common reference data set, the U.S. government and the private sector are as blind as financial firms were before government reporting of inflation and employment statistics.

Pooled data is a public good that can help public-private sector collaboration. Understanding attack trends over time will help cybersecurity professionals determine when to update networks and the best mix of defenses to ensure continuity of operations. With this information, the U.S. government can then determine where and how best to defend forward, prioritizing more exquisite cyber operations against threats yet to be mitigated by increased public-private sector coordination.

Recommendation 2: Increase Diplomatic Engagement around Cyber Defense and Shared Intelligence

Similar to working with the private sector, the U.S. government should expand efforts to coordinate with partners and allies to secure cyberspace. Recommendations like this are easy to say but hard to implement, requiring coordination across multiple agencies by, with, and through multiple partners. While the Department of State will play the leading role, it must work with other departments, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and multiple elements within the military and intelligence community, to coordinate partner outreach activities.

The resiliency of Ukrainian networks has been in part related to actions taken prior to the conflict to support developing and implementing a national cyber strategy. Ukraine’s strength in cyber defense has illustrated the critical role played by not just the private sector but also foreign governments in helping Kyiv prepare for the increase in cyber intrusions during the opening stages of the war.[99]

There are two primary areas to focus on with diplomatic outreach in support of cybersecurity: information sharing and interoperability. With respect to information sharing, the U.S. government should accelerate efforts to share knowledge of vulnerabilities with its partners. Too often, governments withhold information out of a desire to protect sources and methods used to gain the insight or, more insidiously, because the vulnerability data is linked to exploits currently in use by said government. These limitations, while valid, tend to prevent sharing of timely information on cyber vulnerabilities with partners and allies. They also create bureaucratic barriers and a culture of “no” that limits trust among key partners, often leading to delayed collection and imbalanced understanding of the cyber operational environment that discourages collective defense and coordination. It is also worth pointing out that without a central data repository, there is no single, verified repository tracking cyberattacks using a common framework. Even if it exists on classified networks, which these authors doubt, the bureaucratic barriers to sharing limit timely access or updates, often leaving even the intelligence community dependent on third-party vendors, such as threat intelligence firms.

Second, diplomatic outreach should build interoperability with key partners and allies by increasing the number of crisis simulations and cyber games used to develop a common understanding of how best to respond to coordinate cyber defenses, including incident response and consequence mitigation. Organizations such as the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) have a proven track record of developing and running major cyber exercises for federal, state, and local agencies. These efforts should be expanded to include international programs facilitated by the Department of State. These games would explore critical infrastructure attacks occurring simultaneously in multiple countries and how best to coordinate cyber defenses and incident response. These games would respond to the most dangerous course of action: that a rogue state such as Russia successfully degrades critical infrastructure globally. Given the targeting data seen above, this campaign would likely target private sector systems and seek to hold a state hostage through the suffering of its people (i.e., deterrence by punishment) as part of an escalating crisis. Given recent revelations about China’s probing of critical infrastructure networks globally, this finding extends well beyond coordinating defense against Russia.[100]

Recommendation 3: Reassess How to Counter Cyber-Enabled Information Operations

Observations of the first year of the war in Ukraine suggest that it is easier to defend against malware than lies. However, the U.S. government has yet to develop a credible, dynamic response to cyber-enabled information operations and computational propaganda. Efforts such as the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center are a step in the right direction but are underfunded and lack the authorities to counter misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation at machine speed.

The challenges of countering global propaganda are so large that no single agency or approach is likely to address them. Therefore, the U.S. Congress should charter a new congressional commission to study how best to combat misinformation as it relates to the larger U.S. national security strategy and challenge of existing legislated authorities. Prior commissions such as the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission are an example of how to catalyze change as it relates to securing cyberspace and can serve as a model.

The use of cyberspace to connect battle networks, support intelligence, and exchange information is here to stay. Of note, it took less time for the communication technology to become ubiquitous in war than it did for the printing press to give way to written military orders. Yet the shape of modern war is reinforcing previous academic work skeptical of the term “cyberwar” and the extent to which states have successfully integrated the use of malware, which may be better suited for espionage than battlefield tool kits. Combined arms warfare is hard. Cyber combined effects are even more difficult and prone to uneven results, opportunity costs, and the perennial fog and friction that hang over the use of violence in pursuit of political objectives.

It is dangerous to use any one case to generalize the character of war. Yet the scale and stakes of the war in Ukraine make it a crucial case for understanding the future of war. Because it is hard to imagine any future conflict where cyberspace does not play some supporting role across the levels of war, failing to analyze how great powers such as Russia apply cyber power risks missing key trends.

The mix of empirical assessment and alternative futures reviewed here suggest that cyber operations will likely prove better suited for shaping strategic interactions—whether through espionage or propaganda campaigns—than determining tactical outcomes. As with electronic warfare and signals intelligence, even when cyber operations support the art of battle, it will be indirectly and through altering the balance of information between opposing forces. Even here, the decision to employ exquisite cyber capabilities will be subject to intelligence and technical gain/loss analysis as commanders at different levels in the chain of command seek to preserve capability and balance exploitation with access. Put simply, the rush to use cyber access for a battlefield effect risks losing operational and strategic access. There is a commitment problem hanging over cyber operations: fear of future loss limits current use. This makes the idea of “cyber call for fire” at the battalion and company level a prospect that will always be subject to restrictions based on rules of engagement, authorities, and gain/loss considerations in a manner that structurally limits its responsiveness. This logic adds to preference for substituting easier-to-measure physical effects such as artillery and missile strikes. Why hack what you can destroy?

The strategic logic of cyberspace is harder to gauge. There still is the prospect that Moscow has held back significant cyber capabilities to hold Western critical infrastructure at risk as a strategic deterrent. Even if this is true, a cursory look at Ukraine shows that previous efforts to use cyber operations to degrade critical infrastructure have produced only limited, temporary results. The prospect is further questionable given the balance of offense and defense in cyberspace as multiple countries and firms race to search for intrusions. Last, even though cyberspace is critical to modern political warfare and propaganda campaigns, the extent to which the population continues to be captured by subtle lies and deepfakes is unknown. The future could prove that distracted citizens around the world prove as susceptible to cyber-enabled influence campaigns as they are to data-driven marketing. Alternatively, people will begin to adapt, making them more resilient to the flood of lies that accompanies all war, but also likely more cynical and prone to mistrust.

Grace B. Mueller , PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at the Army Cyber Institute. Benjamin Jensen , PhD is the senior fellow for future war, gaming, and strategy in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a professor in the Marine Corps University, School of Advanced Warfighting. Brandon Valeriano , PhD is a distinguished senior fellow at the Krulak Center for Innovation in the Marine Corps University . He previously served as a senior adviser to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and is currently a senior adviser to Solarium 2.0. Ryan C. Maness , PhD is an assistant professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). He is also the director of the DOD Information Strategy Research Center at NPS. Jose M. Macias is a research assistant with the International Security Program at CSIS.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not represent the policies of the U.S. government, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Marine Corps.

This report was made possible by support provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Please consult the PDF for references.

This report is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

Grace B. Mueller

Benjamin Jensen

Brandon valeriano, ryan c. maness, jose m. macias, programs & projects.

Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee crossing the Irpin river in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, 5 March

Two weeks of war in Ukraine – photo essay

Powerful photojournalism has illustrated the brutal conflict in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began two weeks ago, forcing more than 2 million people to flee. As destruction rains down, the invaders are being met by strong resistance from the Ukrainian armed forces and volunteer fighters

Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

A fter the deployments, the denials and the diplomacy came the invasion and, with it, a war that was thoroughly foretold and yet still shocking in its savagery. A war with no rules, no limits and no quarter.

The first two weeks of the conflict – a fortnight for observers but a cold eternity for the people of Ukraine – have already yielded countless disturbing images even as Europe, a continent with a short memory, pinches itself raw to make sure that what should not, and could not, ever happen here again really is happening here again.

Ukrainian firefighters try to extinguish a fire after an airstrike hit a block of flats in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv Oblast. Photograph: Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency

For all their dreadful novelty, the photographs from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Irpin and Mariupol stir memories of Guernica in 1937, of London in the blitz, and of Sarajevo under siege.

Fresher still are the memories of Russia’s dress rehearsal in Syria.

At dawn on 24 February, Vladimir Putin announced his long-dreaded invasion, or, as he put it in a phrase destined for the annals of martial euphemism, “a special military operation”.

A wounded woman with a bandage around her head

A wounded woman outside a block of flats damaged by airstrikes near Kharkiv on 24 February. Above right: Ukrainian security forces help a man hurt in an airstrike on a block of flats in Chuhuiv. Photographs: Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency

Military helicopters apparently Russian, fly over the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine

Military helicopters, thought to be Russian, fly over the outskirts of Kyiv on 24 February.

Less than an hour after the Russian president vowed to bring about what he described as “the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine”, the country found itself under full-scale attack. Sirens sounded as explosions rippled through Ukraine’s cities, tanks rolled into its territories and helicopters strafed homes outside the capital.

People rest in the Kyiv subway, using it as a bomb shelter, 24 February

A mother and child try to sleep in the Kyiv subway, being used as a bomb shelter, on 24 February. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

Missiles and shells, apparently targeting infrastructure near major cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Dnipro and Odesa, killed hundreds of civilians and transformed blocks of flats into shattered and smoking ruins.

People grabbed blankets and sleeping bags – as well as toys and colouring books to distract their children – and hurried into shelters or underground stations.

When they emerged, many found their homes gone, damaged beyond repair, or hidden by curtains of flame and smoke.

The scale, swiftness and mercilessness of the first stage of the destruction were captured in two pictures that were used around the world.

Natali Sevriukova in distress next to her house after a rocket attack the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, 25 February

Natali Sevriukova pauses next to her home in Kyiv, damaged in a rocket attack on 25 February. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

In one, a woman stands before a block of flats and stares, dazed, into the camera. There is blood on the bandage wrapped around her bruised head and blood on her teeth.

In the other, a woman called Natali Sevriukova holds a carefully manicured hand to her face and cries. Behind her is the rocket-destroyed block that was her home 24 hours earlier.

A Ukrainian Territorial Defence fighter examines a destroyed Russian infantry mobility vehicle Gaz Tigr after an attack in Kharkiv, 27 February

A Ukrainian territorial defence fighter examines a destroyed Russian infantry mobility vehicle GAZ Tigr after fighting in Kharkiv on 27 February. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP

A woman in distress as paramedics perform CPR on a girl who was injured during shelling, at city hospital of Mariupol. 27 February The girl did not survive.

A distressed woman waits while paramedics perform CPR on a girl injured during shelling, at city hospital in Mariupol, on 27 February. The child did not survive. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

People wait in a hall at Kyiv main railway station as they try to flee, February 28.

People hoping to flee gather at Kyiv main railway station on 28 February. Photograph: Roman Pilipey/EPA

The deliberate targeting of civilian areas, a tactic widely employed to sow fear and despair in Syria, soon became one of the hallmarks of the Russian offensive.

Military convoy along a highway, north of Ivankiv, Ukraine, approaching Kyiv, 28 February

A military convoy is strung along the highway, north of Ivankiv, on the approach to Kyiv, on 28 February. Satellite Image: Maxar Tech

A member of the Ukrainian emergency services looks at the City Hall building in the central square after shelling in Kharkiv

A member of the Ukrainian emergency services looks up at the Kharkiv city hall after shelling on 1 March. Photograph: Pavel Dorogoy/AP

On 1 March, videos showed the orange flashes and grey smoke puffs of Grad missiles hitting residential buildings in the centre of Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv.

Emergency personnel carry a body out of the damaged local city hall of Kharkiv on March 1, destroyed as a result of Russian troop shelling

Emergency workers carry a body out of Kharkiv city hall after the Russian shelling on 1 March. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP

The city’s mayor said nine people had been killed and 37 injured on what he described as “a very difficult day”. He added that four of those killed died when they emerged from a shelter to find water. A family of five, including three children, were burned alive in their car.

A residential building destroyed by shelling in Borodyanka, in the Kyiv region, after shelling on 3 March

A residential building in Borodyanka, in the Kyiv region, smoulders after shelling on 3 March. Photograph: Maksim Levin/Reuters

Damage after the shelling of buildings in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine, 3 March

Damage after the shelling of buildings in downtown Kharkiv on 3 March. Photograph: Sergey Kozlov/EPA

People remove personal belongings from a burning house after being shelled in the city of Irpin

People retrieve what they can from a burning house shelled in the city of Irpin, north-west of Kyiv, on 4 March. Right: Residents evacuate Irpin during heavy shelling and bombing on 5 March. Photographs: Aris Messinis/AFP

Residents evacuate the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, during heavy shelling and bombing on 5 March

By Thursday 10 March, the port city of Mariupol had been under sustained bombardment for nine days, its buildings, parks and shops pummelled by Grad and Smerch rockets and Tochka-U missiles, and its inhabitants reduced to drinking the snow that had settled on the rubble.

Ukrainian serviceman stands next to the vertical tail fin of a Russian Su-34 bomber lying in a damaged building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 8

A Ukrainian serviceman surveys the vertical tail fin of a Russian Su-34 bomber in a damaged building in Kharkiv on 8 March. Photograph: Andrew Marienko/AP

A day earlier, in an attack that plumbed fresh depths of depravity, a Russian warplane dropped a bomb on Mariupol’s maternity hospital number nine. Three people, among them a girl, died. Seventeen patients and members of staff were injured.

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, 9 March

A injured pregnant woman is stretchered from a children hospital in Mariupol, evacuated after a Russia army bombardment on 9 March. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

One of the pictures taken that day shows a heavily pregnant woman being stretchered through the smoke and snow past the shell of the hospital. Another shows a young and bloody expectant mother navigating a debris-strewn stairwell carrying blankets and a plastic bag.

The regional military administration estimates 1,207 people have been killed, with many more likely to lie under the debris. On Wednesday alone, 47 people were buried in a mass grave.

Mariupol’s deputy mayor, Sergei Orlov, said the words “bombardment” and “cruelty” did not come close to describing what was going on in the city, whose residents are trying to flee at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day.

An injured pregnant woman walks downstairs in the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9

An injured pregnant woman picks her way downstairs in the damaged maternity hospital in Mariupol on 9 March. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

“They have used aviation, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, Grads and other types of weapons we don’t even know about,” he told foreign reporters. “This isn’t simply treacherous. It’s a war crime and pure genocide.”

Ukrainian refugees queue to file for residency permits at Prague’s foreigner police headquarters on March 2

Ukrainian refugees queue to apply for residency permits at Prague’s foreigner police headquarters on 2 March. Photograph: Michal Čížek/AFP/Getty Images

Newly arrived refugees seek assistance from Polish army soldiers after crossing the border from Ukraine into Poland at the Medyka border crossing, eastern Poland, 9 March

Newly arrived refugees file past Polish army soldiers after crossing from Ukraine into Poland at the Medyka border, eastern Poland, on 9 March. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

A girl fleeing the conflict in Ukraine looks on from inside of a bus heading to the Moldovan capital Chisinau, after crossing the Moldova-Ukraine border checkpoint near the town of Palanca, on March 2

A girl fleeing the conflict looks out from a bus heading to the Moldovan capital, Chișinău, after crossing the Moldova-Ukraine border. Above right: Kyryl, a nine-year-old refugee from Kyiv, and his dog, Hugo, arrive at the Hungarian border town of Zahony on 2 March. Photographs: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP, Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Although Ukraine has dismissed the “humanitarian corridors” offered by Russia as “completely immoral”, as they allow fleeing civilians escape only to Russia or its ally Belarus, the exodus so far has been gargantuan.

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, arrived in Medyka the crossing border between Poland from Ukraine.

Thousands of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, arrive in Medyka, the crossing between Poland from Ukraine, on 7 March. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Friday’s figures from the UN’s refugee agency show that 2,504,893 people have fled Ukraine since dawn broke on 24 February, bringing with it the start of Putin’s “special military operation”.

Ukraine’s neighbours have borne the brunt of the evacuation, with Poland alone taking in more than 1.5 million refugees. The UK, apparently bedevilled by consular issues, had issued 850 visas by Wednesday this week.

A destroyed tank is seen after battles between Ukrainian and Russian forces on a main road near Brovary, north of Kyiv, 10 March.

A destroyed tank lies at the roadside after fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces on a main approach near Brovary, north of Kyiv, on 10 March. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

The past two weeks have tested not only the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the supposed might of the Russian military, but also the determination, unity and compassion of the west and the wider world.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy , has been clear from day one about what is at stake.

“What we have heard today are not just missile blasts, fighting and the rumble of aircraft,” he said on the day of the invasion.

Blasts a few meters away during civilians’ evacuation while ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine, in Irpin, 6 March

Civilians and press run for their lives during a Russian attack while they were being evacuated from Irpin on 6 March. Photograph: Emin Sansar/Anadolu Agency

“This is the sound of a new iron curtain, which has come down and is closing Russia off from the civilised world. Our national task is to make sure this curtain does not fall across our land.”

The Guardian picture essay
Vladimir Putin
Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Latest Developments in Russia – Ukraine Conflict

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine . Know more about this in the link given. This page gives a background of the issue with an analysis of the developments before the invasion.

The tensions on Ukraine’s border with Russia are at their highest in years. Fearing a potential invasion by Russia, the US and NATO are stepping up support for Ukraine. In this article, we explain the reason for tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the latest developments, the stand of various stakeholders in the region, and the way forward for the UPSC exam IR segment.

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union , Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it disintegrated, and Russia has tried to maintain the country in its orbit since then.
In 2014, a separatist insurgency started in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donetsk Basin, also known as,
Russia further gained a maritime advantage in the region due to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
As a result, both the US and the EU have pledged to safeguard the integrity of Ukraine’s borders.

Image Source: Al Jazeera

Importance of Ukraine to Russia

Ukraine and Russia have shared cultural and linguistic ties for hundreds of years.
Ukraine was the most powerful country in the Soviet Union after Russia.
Ukraine has been a hub for commercial industries, factories and defence manufacturing.
Ukraine also provides Russia with access to the Black Sea and crucial connectivity to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reasons for Russian Aggression

The chief reasons for Russian aggression are discussed below.

Russia, considering the economic significance of Ukraine, sought Ukraine’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), which is a free trade agreement that came into being in 2015.
With its huge market and advanced agriculture and industrial output, Ukraine was supposed to play an important role. But Ukraine refused to join the agreement.
Russia claims that the eastward expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which they call “ enlargement ”, has threatened Russia’s interests and has asked for written security guarantees from NATO.
NATO, led by the U.S., has planned to install missile defence systems in eastern Europe in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to counter Russia’s intercontinental-range missiles.

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia has been indulging in military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an aspiring NATO member. Russia has stated that its troop deployment is in response to NATO’s steady eastward expansion. Russia argues that its moves are aimed at protecting its own security considerations.

Russia has mobilised around 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
Russia seeks assurance from the US that Ukraine shall not be inducted into NATO.
This has resulted in tensions between Russia and the West which have been supportive of Ukraine. The U.S. has assured Ukraine that it will “respond decisively” in case of an invasion by Russia.

Image Source: The Hindu

Russia’s demands

Russia has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO that includes countries like Ukraine and Georgia that share Russia’s borders.
Russia asked NATO to pull back its military deployments to the 1990s level and prohibit the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the bordering areas.
Further, Russia asked NATO to curb its military cooperation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

The response from the West

The U.S. has ruled out changing NATO’s “open-door policy” which means, NATO would continue to induct more members.
The U.S. also says it would continue to offer training and weapons to Ukraine.
The U.S. is said to be open to a discussion regarding missile deployment and a mutual reduction in military exercises in Eastern Europe.
Germany has also warned Russia that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be stopped if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
The U.S. threatens Russia by imposing new economic sanctions in case of attempts of invasion against Ukraine.

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

What implications does the Russia – Ukraine crisis have on India? This is discussed in this section.

Maintaining strong relations with Russia serves India’s national interests. India has to retain a strong strategic alliance with Russia as a result, India cannot join any Western strategy aimed at isolating Russia.
There is a possibility of CAATSA sanctions on India by the U.S. as a result of the S-400
A pact between the US and Russia might affect Russia’s relations with China. This might allow India to expand on its efforts to re-establish ties with Russia.
The issue with Ukraine is that the world is becoming increasingly economically and geopolitically interconnected. Any improvement in Russia-China ties has ramifications for India.
There is also an impact on the strong Indian diaspora present in the region, threatening the lives of thousands of Indian students.

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

What is the relation between russia and ukraine.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until its disintegration in 1991. Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and Russia has tried to maintain its influence on the country in its orbit since then.

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

Although Ukraine has no membership offer from NATO, it has been closer to the alliance since its establishment in 1997. Plans for NATO membership were dropped by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned.

Is Crimea a part of Russia?

The majority of the world considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea that has been battled over for ages due to its strategic importance. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea which was a part of Ukraine due to its declining influence over the region and emerging insecurities.

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White House Worries Russia’s Momentum Is Changing Trajectory of Ukraine War

Multiple factors are helping Russia’s military advance, including a delay in American weaponry and Moscow’s technological innovations on the battlefield.

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Men in black uniforms stand at attention, with green military vehicles in the background.

By David E. Sanger , Julian E. Barnes and Kim Barker

Reporting from Washington

Just 18 months ago, White House and Pentagon officials debated whether Russia’s forces in Ukraine might collapse and be pushed out of the country entirely.

Now, after months of slow Russian ground advances and technological leaps in countering American-provided arms, the Biden administration is increasingly concerned that President Vladimir V. Putin is gathering enough momentum to change the trajectory of the war, and perhaps reverse his once-bleak prospects.

In recent days, Moscow’s troops have opened a new push near the country’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, forcing Ukraine to divert its already thinned-out troops to defend an area that it took back from Russian forces in a stunning victory in the fall of 2022.

Artillery and drones provided by the United States and NATO have been taken out by Russian electronic warfare techniques, which came to the battlefield late but have proven surprisingly effective. And a monthslong debate in Washington about whether to send Ukraine a $61 billion package of arms and ammunition created an opening that Russia has clearly exploited, even though Congress ultimately passed the legislation.

In interviews, American officials express confidence that many of these Russian gains are reversible once the spigot of new arms is fully opened, most likely sometime in July, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine finds ways to bring more — and younger — troops to the front lines. But they are hesitant to offer predictions of where the battle lines may stand even a few months from now, or whether Mr. Zelensky will be able to mount his long-delayed counteroffensive next year, after one last spring fizzled.

American and allied officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity, in order to discuss intelligence reports and sensitive battlefield assessments. But some of the concerns have spilled out in public comments.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said with some understatement on Sunday that “ there’s no doubt there’s been a cost ” to the long delays in sending arms. He insisted, in his appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” that “we’re doing everything we can to rush this assistance out there.” But American officials say President Biden continues to reject the suggestion from President Emmanuel Macron of France that deployment of Western troops in Ukraine may be necessary, an assessment that Mr. Macron’s office said recently he “stands by absolutely.”

In private, some of Mr. Biden’s aides worry that just as the United States has learned key lessons from the war — about technologies that work and those that do not — so has Mr. Putin. And their biggest concern is that as Russia replaces weaponry wiped out in the first 27 months of the war, Mr. Putin may be regaining ground just as Mr. Biden prepares to meet his closest allies at a Group of 7 meeting in Italy next month. It is unclear whether Mr. Biden will be able to repeat the claim he made in Finland last summer, that Mr. Putin “has already lost that war.”

Some veterans of dealing with Mr. Putin’s serial confrontations are unsurprised at this turn in events.

“Russia oftentimes starts its wars poorly and finishes strong,” Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser under President George W. Bush, said at a Harvard conference on Friday. Now, he said, Russia has “brought its mass” — a far larger population to draw troops from, and a “huge military infrastructure” — to mount a comeback.

As Mr. Hadley suggested, there is no single reason for Moscow’s battlefield advantage. Instead, multiple factors are helping Russia’s military advance.

Because of the delay in U.S. funding, Russia has been able to achieve a huge artillery advantage over Ukraine. The lack of air defense ammunition has also allowed Russia to use its air power with more impunity, attacking Ukrainian lines with glide bombs. With more air defense ammunition, Ukraine would be able to force those planes farther back, making it more difficult for Russia to attack from the air.

The delay in American supplies has been matched by a similarly long delay by Ukraine in approving a mobilization law to bring more, and younger, soldiers into its military. Ukraine is suffering acute shortages of soldiers, and is struggling to provide adequate training to those it brings into the military.

But all those Russian advantages will not last indefinitely, and Russian forces are likely to make a push this summer, said Michael Kofman, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

“In 2024, the Russian military enjoys a material advantage, and the strategic initiative, though it may not prove decisive,” Mr. Kofman said. “This year represents a window of opportunity for Russia. But if the Russian military is not able to turn these advantages into battlefield gains and generate momentum, there’s a fair chance that this window will begin to close as we enter 2025.”

Whether it is temporary or not, Russia’s new momentum is most evident in Kharkiv, scene of one of the biggest tank battles of World War II. In 2022, it was at the center of fighting in the first year of the war, with the city coming under artillery fire from advancing Russian troops.

In a surprise counteroffensive that fall, Ukrainian troops fought off the drive to the city, then pushed Russian forces out of the region, reclaiming a huge swath of land. The Russian humiliation, there and in the southern city Kherson, was so extensive that it led to one of the biggest fears of that period in the conflict: that the Russians would make use of a battlefield nuclear weapon against the Ukrainian troops as a last resort .

Since then, Ukraine has been able to use that recaptured territory near Kharkiv to conduct harassing attacks into Russia. Those attacks have prompted the Russians to retake land in recent weeks to create a buffer zone that Mr. Putin has said will make cross-border attacks harder for Ukraine to carry out. Recently, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has called the Russian advance near Kharkiv “critical.”

Some outside experts caution that Russia’s real strategic aim in taking territory around Kharkiv is to force Ukraine’s troops to move to reinforce the city, weakening the front lines elsewhere. That could set up an opportunity for another Russian drive in June, in the Donbas, the part of eastern Ukraine that the Kremlin has illegally annexed and is trying to capture.

“The Russian offensive aim is likely to draw Ukrainian reserves and elite units, then pin them in Kharkiv, thereby weakening the rest of the front,” Mr. Kofman said. “The primary Russian objective still remains recapturing the rest of the Donbas.”

Whether they are able to do so may depend in part on how successful Mr. Zelensky is in his effort to find new troops to relieve a weary, often demoralized force. He has moved the age of Ukrainians subject to the draft to 25 from 27, despite considerable resistance within the Ukrainian public.

The United States is also trying to bolster technical advice to Kyiv, hoping to counter Russian technological advances. In some cases, Russia has successfully deceived GPS receivers, throwing off the targeting of Ukrainian arms, including a variety of missiles shot from HIMARS launchers , which Mr. Biden began providing to Ukraine last year.

Those launchers are scarce, but the Russians have grown more successful in tracing their movements, and in some cases destroying them even when they are well camouflaged.

These battlefield advantages are ephemeral, of course, and the war may look as different 18 months from now as it does from 18 months ago. But there is a growing sense inside the Biden administration that the next few months could prove critical, because at some moment the two sides may finally move to a negotiated cease-fire, an armistice similar to the one that ended the active fighting in Korea in 1953 — or simply a frozen conflict.

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about national issues. More about Kim Barker

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law a bill allowing some Ukrainian convicts to serve in the country’s military in exchange for the possibility of parole at the end of their service, a move that highlights Kyiv’s desperate attempts to replenish its forces.

NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces . The move would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war.

With his army making advances in Ukraine and his political grip tightened at home, President Vladimir Putin of Russia arrived in Beijing in search of another win: more support from his “dear friend,” Xi Jinping .

World’s Nuclear Inspector: Rafael Grossi took over the International Atomic Energy Agency five years ago at what now seems like a far less fraught moment. With atomic fears everywhere, the inspector is edging toward mediator .

Frozen Russian Assets: As much as $300 billion in frozen Russian assets is piling up profits and interest income by the day. Now, Ukraine’s allies are considering how to use those gains to aid Kyiv .

Rebuilding Ukrainian Villages: The people of the Kherson region have slowly rebuilt their livelihoods since Ukraine’s military forced out Russian troops. Now they are bracing for another Russian attack .

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

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The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War

By Timothy Snyder

When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves. As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.

Empire’s story divides subjects from objects. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon argued, colonizers see themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago. In 2012, he described Russia as a “state-civilization,” which by its nature absorbed smaller cultures such as Ukraine’s. The next year, he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were joined in “spiritual unity.” In a long essay on “historical unity,” published last July, he argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. His vision is of a broken world that must be restored through violence. Russia becomes itself only by annihilating Ukraine.

As the objects of this rhetoric, and of the war of destruction that it sanctions, Ukrainians grasp all of this. Ukraine does have a history, of course, and Ukrainians do constitute a nation. But empire enforces objectification on the periphery and amnesia at the center. Thus modern Russian imperialism includes memory laws that forbid serious discussion of the Soviet past. It is illegal for Russians to apply the word “war” to the invasion of Ukraine. It is also illegal to say that Stalin began the Second World War as Hitler’s ally, and used much the same justification to attack Poland as Putin is using to attack Ukraine. When the invasion began, in February, Russian publishers were ordered to purge mentions of Ukraine from textbooks.

Faced with the Kremlin’s official mixture of fantasy and taboo, the temptation is to prove the opposite: that it is Ukraine rather than Russia that is eternal, that it is Ukrainians, not Russians, who are always right, and so on. Yet Ukrainian history gives us something more interesting than a mere counter-narrative to empire. We can find Ukrainian national feeling at a very early date. In contemporary Ukraine, though, the nation is not so much anti-colonial, a rejection of a particular imperial power, as post-colonial, the creation of something new.

Southern Ukraine, where Russian troops are now besieging cities and bombing hospitals , was well known to the ancients. In the founding myth of Athens, the goddess Athena gives the city the gift of the olive tree. In fact, the city could grow olives only because it imported grain from ports on the Black Sea coast. The Greeks knew the coast, but not the hinterland, where they imagined mythical creatures guarding fields of gold and ambrosia. Here already was a colonial view of Ukraine: a land of fantasy, where those who take have the right to dream.

The city of Kyiv did not exist in ancient times, but it is very old—about half a millennium older than Moscow. It was probably founded in the sixth or seventh century, north of any territory seen by Greeks or controlled by Romans. Islam was advancing, and Christianity was becoming European. The Western Roman Empire had fallen, leaving a form of Christianity subordinate to a pope. The Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained, directing what we now call the Orthodox Church. As Rome and Constantinople competed for converts, peoples east of Kyiv converted to Islam. Kyivans spoke a Slavic language that had no writing system, and practiced a paganism without idols or temples.

Putin’s vision of “unity” relates to a baptism that took place in this setting. In the ninth century, a group of Vikings known as the Rus arrived in Kyiv. Seeking a southbound route for their slave trade, they found the Dnipro River, which runs through the city. Their chieftains then fought over a patchwork of territories in what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and the northeast of Russia—with Kyiv always as the prize. In the late tenth century, a Viking named Valdemar took the city, with the help of a Scandinavian army. He initially governed as a pagan. But, around 987, when the Byzantines faced an internal revolt, he sensed an opportunity. He came to the emperor’s aid, and received his sister’s hand in marriage. In the process, Valdemar converted to Christianity.

Putin claims that this messy sequence of events reveals the will of God to bind Russia and Ukraine forever. The will of God is easy to misunderstand; in any case, modern nations did not exist at the time, and the words “Russia” and “Ukraine” had no meaning. Valdemar was typical of the pagan Eastern European rulers of his day, considering multiple monotheistic options before choosing the one that made the most strategic sense. The word “Rus” no longer meant Viking slavers but a Christian polity. Its ruling family now intermarried with others, and the local people were treated as subjects to be taxed rather than as bodies to be sold.

Yet no rule defined who would take power after a Kyivan ruler’s death. Valdemar took a Byzantine princess as his wife, but he had a half a dozen others, not to mention a harem of hundreds of women. When he died in 1015, he had imprisoned one of his sons, Sviatopolk, and was making war upon another, Yaroslav. Sviatopolk was freed after his father’s death, and killed three of his brothers, but he was defeated on the battlefield by Yaroslav. Other sons entered the fray, and Yaroslav didn’t rule alone until 1036. The succession had taken twenty-one years. At least ten other sons of Valdemar had died in the meantime.

These events do not reveal a timeless empire, as Putin claims. But they do suggest the importance of a succession principle, a theme very important in Ukrainian-Russian relations today. The Ukrainian transliteration of “Valdemar” is “Volodymyr,” the name of Ukraine’s President. In Ukraine, power is transferred through democratic elections: when Volodymyr Zelensky won the 2019 Presidential election , the sitting President accepted defeat. The Russian transliteration of the same name is “Vladimir.” Russia is brittle: it has no succession principle , and it’s unclear what will happen when Vladimir Putin dies or is forced from power. The pressure of mortality confirms the imperial thinking. An aging tyrant, obsessed by his legacy, seizes upon a lofty illusion that seems to confer immortality: the “unity” of Russia and Ukraine.

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In the Icelandic sagas, Yaroslav is remembered as the Lame; in Eastern Europe, he is the Wise, the giver of laws. Yet he did not solve the problem of succession. Following his reign, the lands around Kyiv fragmented again and again. In 1240, the city fell to the Mongols; later, most of old Rus was claimed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest state in Europe. Lithuania borrowed from Kyiv a grammar of politics, as well as a good deal of law. For a couple of centuries, its grand dukes also ruled Poland. But, in 1569, after the Lithuanian dynasty died out, a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was formalized, and the territories of Ukraine were placed under Polish jurisdiction.

This was a crucial change. After 1569, Kyiv was no longer a source of law but an object of it—the archetypal colonial situation. It was colonization that set off Ukraine from the former territories of Rus, and its manner generated qualities still visible today: suspicion of the central state, organization in crisis, and the notion of freedom as self-expression, despite a powerful neighbor.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all the forces of Europe’s globalization seemed to bear down on Ukraine. Polish colonization resembled and in some measure enabled the European colonization of the wider world. Polish nobles introduced land-management practices—along with land managers, most of whom were Jewish—that allowed the establishment of profitable plantations. Local Ukrainian warlords rushed to imitate the system, and adopted elements of Polish culture, including Western Christianity and the Polish language. In an age of discovery, enserfed peasants labored for a world market.

Ukraine’s colonization coincided with the Renaissance, and with a spectacular flowering of Polish culture. Like other Renaissance thinkers, Polish scholars in Ukraine resuscitated ancient knowledge, and sometimes overturned it. It was a Pole, Copernicus, who undid the legacy of Ptolemy’s “ Almagest ” and confirmed that the Earth orbits the sun. It was another Pole, Maciej of Miechów, who corrected Ptolemy’s “ Geography ,” clearing Ukrainian maps of gold and ambrosia. As in ancient times, however, the tilling of the black earth enabled tremendous wealth, raising the question of why those who labored and those who profited experienced such different fates.

The Renaissance considered questions of identity through language. Across Europe, there was a debate as to whether Latin, now revived, was sufficient for the culture, or whether vernacular spoken languages should be elevated for the task. In the early fourteenth century, Dante answered this question in favor of Italian; English, French, Spanish, and Polish writers created other literary languages by codifying local vernaculars. In Ukraine, literary Polish emerged victorious over the Ukrainian vernacular, becoming the language of the commercial and intellectual élite. In a way, this was typical: Polish was a modern language, like English or Italian. But it was not the local language in Ukraine. Ukraine’s answer to the language question was deeply colonial, whereas in the rest of Europe it could be seen as broadly democratic.

The Reformation brought a similar result: local élites converted to Protestantism and then to Roman Catholicism, alienating them further from an Orthodox population. The convergence of colonization, the Renaissance, and the Reformation was specific to Ukraine. By the sixteen-forties, the few large landholders generally spoke Polish and were Catholic, and those who worked for them spoke Ukrainian and were Orthodox. Globalization had generated differences and inequalities that pushed the people to rebellion.

Ukrainians on the battlefield today rely on no fantasy of the past to counter Putin’s. If there is a precursor that matters to them, it is the Cossacks, a group of free people who lived on the far reaches of the Ukrainian steppe, making their fortress on an island in the middle of the Dnipro. Having escaped the Polish system of landowners and peasants, they could choose to be “registered Cossacks,” paid for their service in the Polish Army. Still, they were not citizens, and more of them wished to be registered than the Polish-Lithuanian parliament would allow.

The rebellion began in 1648, when an influential Cossack, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, saw his lands seized and his son attacked by a Polish noble. Finding himself beyond the protection of the law, Khmelnytsky turned his fellow-Cossacks toward revolt against the Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic magnates who dominated Ukraine. The accumulated cultural, religious, and economic grievances of the people quickly transformed the revolt into something very much like an anti-colonial uprising, with violence directed not only against the private armies of the magnates but against Poles and Jews generally. The magnates carried out reprisals against peasants and Cossacks, impaling them on stakes. The Polish-Lithuanian cavalry fought what had been their own Cossack infantry. Each side knew the other very well.

In 1651, the Cossacks, realizing that they needed help, turned to an Eastern power, Muscovy, about which they knew little. When Kyivan Rus had collapsed, most of its lands had been absorbed by Lithuania, but some of its northeastern territories remained under the dominion of a Mongol successor state. There, in a new city called Moscow, leaders known as tsars had begun an extraordinary period of territorial expansion, extending their realm into northern Asia. In 1648, the year that the Cossack uprising began, a Muscovite explorer reached the Pacific Ocean.

The war in Ukraine allowed Muscovy to turn its attention to Europe. In 1654, the Cossacks signed an agreement with representatives of the tsar. The Muscovite armies invaded Poland-Lithuania from the east; soon after, Sweden invaded from the north, setting off the crisis that Polish history remembers as “the Deluge.” Peace was eventually made between Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, in 1667, and Ukraine was divided more or less down the middle, along the Dnipro. After a thousand years of existence, Kyiv was politically connected to Moscow for the first time.

The Cossacks were something like an early national movement. The problem was that their struggle against one colonial power enabled another. In 1721, Muscovy was renamed the Russian Empire, in reference to old Rus. Poland-Lithuania never really recovered from the Deluge, and was partitioned out of existence between 1772 and 1795. Russia thereby claimed the rest of Ukraine—everything but a western district known as Galicia, which went to the Habsburgs. Around the same time, in 1775, the Cossacks lost their status. They did not gain the political rights they had wanted, nor did the peasants who supported them gain control of the black earth. Polish landowners remained in Ukraine, even as state power became Russian.

Whereas Putin’s story of Ukraine is about destiny, the Ukrainian recollection of the Cossacks is about unfulfilled aspirations. The country’s national anthem, written in 1862, speaks of a young people upon whom fate has yet to smile, but who will one day prove worthy of the “Cossack nation.”

The nineteenth century was the age of national revivals. When the Ukrainian movement began in imperial Russian Kharkov—today Kharkiv , and largely in ruins—the focus was on the Cossack legacy. The next move was to locate history in the people, as an account of continuous culture. At first, such efforts did not seem threatening to imperial rule. But, after the Russian defeat in the Crimean War, in 1856, and the insult of the Polish uprising of 1863 and 1864, Ukrainian culture was declared not to exist. It was often deemed an invention of Polish élites—an idea that Putin endorsed in his essay on “historical unity.” Leading Ukrainian thinkers emigrated to Galicia, where they could speak freely.

The First World War brought the principle of self-determination, which promised a release from imperial rule. In practice, it was often used to rescue old empires, or to build new ones. A Ukrainian National Republic was established in 1917, as the Russian Empire collapsed into revolution. In 1918, in return for a promise of foodstuffs, the country was recognized by Austria and Germany . Woodrow Wilson championed self-determination, but his victorious entente ignored Ukraine, recognizing Polish claims instead. Vladimir Lenin invoked the principle as well, though he meant only that the exploitation of national questions could advance class revolution. Ukraine soon found itself at the center of the Russian civil war, in which the Red Army, led by the Bolsheviks, and the White Army, fighting for the defunct empire, both denied Ukraine’s right to sovereignty. In this dreadful conflict, which followed four years of war, millions of people died, among them tens of thousands of Jews.

Though the Red Army ultimately prevailed, Bolshevik leaders knew that the Ukrainian question had to be addressed. Putin claims that the Bolsheviks created Ukraine, but the truth is close to the opposite. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Ukrainian National Republic. Aware that Ukrainian identity was real and widespread, they designed their new state to account for it. It was largely thanks to Ukraine that the Soviet Union took the form it did, as a federation of units with national names.

The failure of self-determination in Ukraine was hardly unique. Almost all of the new states created after the First World War were destroyed, within about two decades, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both. In the political imaginations of both regimes, Ukraine was the territory whose possession would allow them to break the postwar order, and to transform the world in their own image. As in the sixteenth century, it was as if all the forces of world history were concentrated on a single country.

Stalin spoke of an internal colonization, in which peasants would be exploited so that the Soviet economy could imitate—and then overtake—capitalism. His policy of collective agriculture, in which land was seized from farmers, was particularly unwelcome in Ukraine, where the revolution had finally got rid of the (still largely Polish) landholders. Yet the black earth of Ukraine was central to Stalin’s plans, and he moved to subdue it. In 1932 and 1933, he enforced a series of policies that led to around four million people dying of hunger or related disease. Soviet propaganda blamed the Ukrainians, claiming that they were killing themselves to discredit Soviet rule—a tactic echoed, today, by Putin. Europeans who tried to organize famine relief were dismissed as Nazis.

The actual Nazis saw Stalin’s famine as a sign that Ukrainian agriculture could be exploited for another imperial project: their own. Hitler wanted Soviet power overthrown, Soviet cities depopulated, and the whole western part of the country colonized. His vision of Ukrainians was intensely colonial : he imagined that he could deport and starve them by the millions, and exploit the labor of whoever remained. It was Hitler’s desire for Ukrainian land that brought millions of Jews under German control. In this sense, colonial logic about Ukraine was a necessary condition for the Holocaust .

Between 1933 and 1945, Soviet and Nazi colonialism made Ukraine the most dangerous place in the world . More civilians were killed in Ukraine, in acts of atrocity, than anywhere else. That reckoning doesn’t even include soldiers: more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans, in the Second World War, than French, American, and British troops combined.

The major conflict of the war in Europe was the German-Soviet struggle for Ukraine, which took place between 1941 and 1945. But, when the war began, in 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany were de-facto allies, and jointly invaded Poland. At the time, what is now western Ukraine was southeastern Poland. A small group of Ukrainian nationalists there joined the Germans, understanding that they would seek to destroy the U.S.S.R. When it became clear that the Germans would fail, the nationalists left their service, ethnically cleansed Poles in 1943 and 1944, and then resisted the Soviets. In Putin’s texts, they figure as timeless villains, responsible for Ukrainian difference generally. The irony, of course, is that they emerged thanks to Stalin’s much grander collaboration with Hitler. They were crushed by Soviet power, in a brutal counter-insurgency, and today Ukraine’s far right polls at one to two per cent. Meanwhile, the Poles, whose ancestors were the chief victims of Ukrainian nationalism, have admitted nearly three million Ukrainian refugees , reminding us that there are other ways to handle history than stories of eternal victimhood.

After the war, western Ukraine was added to Soviet Ukraine, and the republic was placed under suspicion precisely because it had been under German occupation. New restrictions on Ukrainian culture were justified by a manufactured allocation of guilt. This circular logic—we punish you, therefore you must be guilty—informs Kremlin propaganda today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has argued that Russia had to invade Ukraine because Ukraine might have started a war. Putin, who has said the same, is clearly drawing on Stalin’s rhetoric. We are to understand that the Soviet victory in the Second World War left Russians forever pure and Ukrainians eternally guilty. At the funerals of Russian soldiers, grieving parents are told that their sons were fighting Nazis.

The history of the colonization of Ukraine, like the history of troubling and divisive subjects in general, can help us get free of myths. The past delivers to Putin several strands of colonial rhetoric, which he has combined and intensified. It also leaves us vulnerable to a language of exploitation: whenever we speak of “the Ukraine” instead of “Ukraine,” or pronounce the capital city in the Russian style , or act as if Americans can tell Ukrainians when and how to make peace, we are continuing imperial rhetoric by partaking in it.

Ukrainian national rhetoric is less coherent than Putin’s imperialism, and, therefore, more credible, and more human. Independence arrived in 1991, when the U.S.S.R was dissolved. Since then, the country’s politics have been marked by corruption and inequality, but also by a democratic spirit that has grown in tandem with national self-awareness. In 2004, an attempt to rig an election was defeated by a mass movement. In 2014, millions of Ukrainians protested a President who retreated from the E.U. The protesters were massacred, the President fled, and Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time. Again and again, Ukrainians have elected Presidents who seek reconciliation with Russia; again and again, this has failed. Zelensky is an extreme case: he ran on a platform of peace, only to be greeted with an invasion.

Ukraine is a post-colonial country, one that does not define itself against exploitation so much as accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the complications of emerging from it. Its people are bilingual, and its soldiers speak the language of the invader as well as their own. The war is fought in a decentralized way , dependent on the solidarity of local communities. These communities are diverse, but together they defend the notion of Ukraine as a political nation. There is something heartening in this. The model of the nation as a mini-empire, replicating inequalities on a smaller scale, and aiming for a homogeneity that is confused with identity, has worn itself out. If we are going to have democratic states in the twenty-first century, they will have to accept some of the complexity that is taken for granted in Ukraine.

The contrast between an aging empire and a new kind of nation is captured by Zelensky, whose simple presence makes Kremlin ideology seem senseless. Born in 1978, he is a child of the U.S.S.R., and speaks Russian with his family. A Jew, he reminds us that democracy can be multicultural. He does not so much answer Russian imperialism as exist alongside it, as though hailing from some wiser dimension. He does not need to mirror Putin; he just needs to show up. Every day, he affirms his nation by what he says and what he does.

Ukrainians assert their nation’s existence through simple acts of solidarity. They are not resisting Russia because of some absence or some difference, because they are not Russians or opposed to Russians. What is to be resisted is elemental: the threat of national extinction represented by Russian colonialism, a war of destruction expressly designed to resolve “the Ukrainian question.” Ukrainians know that there is not a question to be answered, only a life to be lived and, if need be, to be risked. They resist because they know who they are. In one of his very first videos after the invasion, when Russian propaganda claimed that he had fled Kyiv, Zelensky pointed the camera at himself and said, “The President is here.” That is it. Ukraine is here.

More on the War in Ukraine

How Ukrainians saved their capital .

A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West .

How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war .

The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv .

The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war .

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Did Mike Johnson Just Get Religion on Ukraine?

By Susan B. Glasser

By Michael Schulman

By The New Yorker

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 812

As the war enters its 812th day, these are the main developments.

Ukrainian soldiers firing a multiple rocket launcher towards Russian positions in the Kharkiv region. It's quite dark. Flames can be seen coming from the missile. It is silhouetted against the sky.

Here is the situation on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

Intense fighting raged in Vovchansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region about 5km (3 miles) from the border with Russia. Oleksiy Kharkivskyi, the town’s police chief, said the situation was “extremely difficult”, while Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian troops managed to “partially” push back some Russian infantry groups but “defensive actions” were ongoing on the town’s northern and northwestern fringes.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed Russian forces had taken control of the settlements of Hlyboke and Lukyantsi in the northeastern Kharkiv region, and Robotyne in the southern Zaporizhia region.

Regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said a Russian air attack on Ukraine’s city of Dnipro killed two people and injured several more.

At least 25 people were injured, three of them seriously, after Russian missiles and guided bombs struck Ukraine’s southern cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv. The attack also damaged apartment blocks, homes, schools and a medical facility, local officials said.

At least two people were injured in Russian shelling of a central district of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the injured were being treated in hospital.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its air force destroyed 10 long-range Ukrainian missiles launched at Sevastopol in Crimea, which Moscow invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It did not say whether there was any damage.

Sri Lanka said at least 16 of its citizens had been killed fighting as mercenaries in the war in Ukraine, mostly on the Russian side.

An apartment block damaged in a Russian attack on Kherson. Windows are missing and balconies mangled, There is major damage to the facade.

Politics and diplomacy

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cancelled visits to Spain and Portugal that were scheduled to take place this week.
Swiss President Viola Amherd said delegations from more than 50 countries, including in South America, Africa and the Middle East, had so far signed up for next month’s Ukraine peace summit. Switzerland is trying to persuade more countries to join, including China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in China on Thursday for a two-day visit where he will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua ahead of the visit, he backed China’s peace proposals for Ukraine.

European Union ambassadors agreed to expand sanctions on Russian media to four more outlets, accusing them of publishing propaganda. EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova said Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestija and Rossiyskaya Gazeta would be added to the list, which already includes Sputnik and RT. Jourova said Russian funding of EU media, nongovernmental organisations and political parties would also be banned.

Nadezhda Buyanova, a 68-year-old Moscow paediatrician, went on trial for spreading “fake” information on the army after the ex-wife of a soldier killed in Ukraine lodged a complaint about an alleged comment Buyanova made during a consultation.

Paediatrician Nadezhda Buyanova in court. She is in a glass walled dock and speaking to her lawyer. She has thick, white hair and is wearing a pink checked shirt.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $2bn in additional military aid for Ukraine and said Washington was rushing ammunition, armoured vehicles, missiles and air defences to the country to ensure their speedy delivery to the front line.
Putin said Russia’s total defence and security spending may reach a little more than 8.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024

IMAGES

Here's how Russia's invasion of Ukraine unfolded
February 26, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news
Understanding Putin’s Russia and the Struggle over Ukraine
Russia-Ukraine conflict explained in four maps
Six maps explaining the conflict in Ukraine
Charts, Graphs, & Maps

VIDEO

Easy 10 lines English essay on Russia & Ukraine war
English Essay
Европейский ответ на российскую войну в Украине
Essay on Russia Ukraine Conflict
Russia Ukraine War Essay in English |2022
VLADIMIR PUTIN'S ESSAY WRITTEN THE SUMMER OF 2021

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