3 days ago
Putin has cemented Russia's status as a great power. Europe should be terrified
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met as equals on American soil this week, not because Mr Trump is in thrall to Putin but because his advances into Ukraine have been unstoppable despite over three years of Western effort. Ukrainian forces have fought hard and with tremendous courage, skill and sacrifice.
They prevented the intended Russian blitzkrieg at the beginning of the war and have pushed Russia back in places. They even conducted audacious assaults into Russian territory and inflicted unexpected damage on Moscow's forces including in the Black Sea and as far away as eastern Siberia.
But Putin still believes he can absorb whatever blows Kyiv throws at him and win even more territory as his forces push hard and continue to make progress in the Donbas. This region, rich in mineral wealth, is Russia's main military focus. Pushing against well-prepared Ukrainian defences here has proven costly in men and munitions and has made slow progress.
Putin would prefer not to continue fighting for it if he can get it by other means and he told Mr Trump at Anchorage that the war could end if Ukraine withdraws from the 30 per cent of Donetsk that his forces have not yet conquered.
Volodymyr Zelensky will be reluctant to agree to that and has said that voluntarily ceding any Ukrainian territory would require constitutional change. He will have to balance that with his judgment on whether Ukrainian forces will be able to hold on to it if the war continues, and what the price of that might be.
That assessment will have to include the extent to which the West, eyeing the potential for peace, will continue to enable his defensive efforts and how effective Ukraine can be on its own. On top of that, Mr Zelensky will be mindful that at this stage in this extremely costly war, polling suggests that the majority of the population want to see its end, with significant proportions reluctantly willing to give up land.
What is Putin offering in return? Virtually nothing. Russia has taken small areas of territory in the north-east, around Kharkiv and Sumy, and has said he will be willing to withdraw from there in exchange for Donetsk. He has also agreed to freeze the front lines in the south, in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, of which Russia currently holds around three quarters of the total.
A ceasefire prior to Putin's 'deal' is of no interest to him and it seems any such thing, which had been a Western priority, was not seriously entertained in Anchorage. Despite serious military flaws that became only too evident since the start of the war, Russia has shown that its forces are no paper tiger. The much-vaunted Western hardware, technical sophistication and military doctrines are not enough to beat it. Indeed Russia has learnt the lessons of modern warfare, adapting its forces and strategies to deal with drones and other battlefield innovations in a way that the West has not.
Russia is maintaining astonishing levels of arms production and has been supplementing its own output with supplies from Iran, North Korea and China. In this form of attritional warfare the West has been unable or unwilling to keep up.
Putin has reoriented his economy away from Europe especially towards the Brics nations. Although Russian finances are in difficulties, the West has not yet been willing to administer the level of shock that might lead to anything approaching collapse. Instead, dependent on Russian energy, European countries have continued to play their part in fuelling the war machine. Western sanctions have been severe but insufficient, and the additional sanctions President Trump threatened, as well as secondary tariffs, seem to have evaporated since Putin agreed to the Alaska summit.
The net result of all this is that it seems the war will continue to grind on unless President Zelensky accedes to Putin's maximalist demands which, as the summit showed, have not changed since the day he launched his special military operation. Meanwhile, the Europeans have reduced themselves to spectators to Ukraine's fate – and their own.
European leaders don't even seem to recognise that the cause of this entire situation, and whatever develops from it, largely falls at their own doorstep. Putin claims that a reason for invading Ukraine was Nato aggression towards the east. Yet it was the opposite. He noted that there was no price to be paid for his 2014 invasion of Crimea, notwithstanding Western guarantees that Ukraine would not be threatened by its agreement to give up its nuclear arsenal. Putin read the situation exactly right: it was Nato that was the paper tiger.
Mr Trump has been discussing security guarantees with the Europeans as part of a final settlement. That would not include membership of Nato, which in any case would not be acceptable to Putin were he to agree any peace deal. It is unlikely to be any internationally binding treaty but rather a Nato 'article 5' type arrangement whereby participating states would agree to come to Ukraine's defence if it were to be attacked. That would amount to no more than political promises along the lines of previous guarantees given to Kyiv which were not subsequently honoured.
Geography alone dictates that European countries should, theoretically, have greater investment in Ukraine's future than the US, and it is they who ought to be looking to bear the burden of security guarantees rather than always looking across the Atlantic. We keep hearing about the 'coalition of the willing', with European forces led by Britain and France to send in forces to guarantee a ceasefire or perhaps a peace agreement. Yet always this is accompanied by the caveat of a US backstop if it is to work.
We also hear from European leaders how, if Putin gets his way in Ukraine, it will encourage him to further aggression. Well, it now looks likely that he may well get his way, or at least much of it. So rather than lamenting a dire situation that their own negligence has helped bring about, these European leaders need to get serious about defence – and fast.
That means more than just promises to increase defence spending to repair their destitute armed services sometime in the future. It means hardening political thinking away from decades of flabby compromise, appeasement and accommodation and bringing about societal change so that when the Russian bear comes back for more there will be sufficient patriots ready and willing to get into the trenches rather than the hope that Uncle Sam will come to their rescue.
