The myth of Vladimir Putin’s unchallengeable power has been fatally undermined by the challenge from Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner army. By surviving – for now – Prigozhin has set a dangerous precedent for others in Russia who may wish to test their strength against the Kremlin.
But the weekend’s events also showed a complete failure by Russia’s military, security and intelligence agencies – in fact, by the state as a whole – to deal with the obvious challenge of an armed group apparently heading for Moscow. The evident confusion in Moscow and inability to respond to Prigozhin’s challenge also proves Russia is not invincible in its conflict with Ukraine. That critical weakness can only be encouraging for Ukraine in its efforts to beat back the Russian invaders. Russia, it seems, may be strong on the frontline, but it is systemically fragile and the Kremlin can be frightened into paralysis.
That has obvious implications for how Russia’s war on Ukraine might be brought to an end. This week the Chatham House foreign affairs thinktank has released a major report warning of how not to end the war. It was written long before the Prigozhin affair came to a head, but the weekend’s events just confirm its key points that instead of proposals such as a ceasefire, territorial concessions or other outcomes that reward Russia, Ukraine has to be backed not just to survive but to inflict a clear and unambiguous defeat on Russia. The authors unanimously urge greater support for Ukraine – as rapidly as possible – to speed Russian defeat.
And, critically, the demonstration courtesy of Prigozhin that Russia is vulnerable and that its weakness can be exploited removes one of the biggest arguments for soft-pedalling aid to Ukraine and planning for “negotiated settlement” rather than outright victory for Kyiv. It should put an end to suggestions that Russia cannot, and indeed should not, be defeated.
Time and again throughout the conflict we have heard from western politicians that “we must not humiliate Russia” by inflicting the kind of defeat that its unprovoked aggression would deserve, because that would somehow make the situation worse not better.
This argument has achieved widespread support in public debate. On the anniversary of the full-scale invasion the archbishop of Canterbury wrote an article calling for peace with justice and explaining that Russia must never be allowed to attack again, as Germany was after 1918. But the narrative that Russia must not be “humiliated” has permeated western discussion so deeply that the same newspaper entirely misinterpreted his comments and twisted them into another warning against a repeat of the Treaty of Versailles.
The argument is that the treaty imposed such humiliating terms on Germany that it led to the rise of Hitler a decade later, and then to the second world war – and defeat of Russia would risk the same trajectory. But it’s misleading to say that defeat will nurture the seeds of future conflict; those seeds are already fully grown. And in reality, the whole war has already been a sequence of humiliations for Russia, centring on the dismal performance of its military and intelligence services and its exposure as an unreconstructed, atavistic, primitive and brutalised threat to Europe.
But consistent patterns of Russian behaviour over decades and centuries, combined with the clearly stated aims of the current leadership and the disposition of much of its population, make clear defeat for Russia essential. These patterns make it plain that an inconclusive outcome in Ukraine, if crystallised in the form of a ceasefire agreement, would constitute a victory for Moscow and a validation of its choice to embark on the path of conflict. Any perception of success – which Russia will measure by ground held, not by lives or materiel lost – will leave the Kremlin convinced that its assault on Ukraine was the correct choice.
Importantly, the presumptions of exceptionalism, entitlement and impunity that drove the assault on Ukraine are prevalent not just among leaders and active supporters of the regime but also among those notionally in opposition, including the sectors of Russian “liberal” society that fully subscribe to the notion that Ukraine has no right to independent existence. It is only a clear and unambiguous check to Russia’s ambition that will start to challenge these attitudes. Ideally, this should include setting conditions where Russians can be made to bear responsibility for war crimes, and for the damage done to Ukraine and its people. This may not be achievable in the short term, but for as long as it is not achieved, Russia will escape the process of truth and reconciliation over past crimes that it successfully avoided at the end of the cold war, laying the cornerstone for today’s war of revenge.
And it will certainly never be achievable if Ukraine is constrained from delivering the essential salutary defeat. Western planning for failure by Ukraine is Kyiv’s worst enemy. It’s a circular argument – if you assume Russia is unbeatable, then you don’t supply Ukraine with the weapons to enable it to be beaten. Some analysts appear to be looking forward to confirmation that Ukraine doesn’t really have a realistic chance of a military victory. But this ignores that success or failure is to a significant degree dependent on western aid and support.
Until now, western backers have provided Ukraine with enough to survive but not to win. So, the Chatham House report concludes, the time is now to lift restrictions on the weapons systems supplied to Ukraine, and what Ukraine can do with them, allowing Kyiv to achieve the defeat of Russia that is essential for all our safety.
Keir Giles works with the Russia and Eurasia programme of Chatham House and is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody
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