Last week was interesting to be in Europe talking to national security experts, authorities and corporate executives about Ukraine. Ukraine and its allies had just forced Russian invaders into a chaotic retreat from a large swath of territory, while the presidents of China and India seemed to make it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the food and energy inflation their war it spurred was hurting its 2.7 billion people.
On top of it all, one of Russia’s iconic pop stars told her 3.4 million Instagram followers that the war was “turning our country into a pariah and making the lives of our citizens worse.”
In short, it was the worst week for Putin since he invaded Ukraine — without wisdom, justice, mercy or a Plan B.
It could be that I was just hanging out with the wrong people, but I detected a certain undercurrent of nervousness in many of the conversations I had with Ukraine’s European allies.
I learned a long time ago, as a foreign correspondent, that sometimes the news is in the noise, in what is being said and shouted, and sometimes it is in the silence, in what is not said. And my interpretation of what wasn’t being said last week was this: Yes, it’s great that Ukraine is pushing the Russians back a little bit, but can you answer the question that’s been hanging in the air since the fighting started: How is this Will the war end with a stable outcome?
We don `t know yet. As I probed this question in my conversations, I discerned three possible outcomes, some entirely new, some familiar, but all with complex and unpredictable side effects:
1) A total Ukrainian victory, with the risk of Putin doing something crazy when defeat and humiliation face him. 2) A dirty deal with Putin that guarantees a ceasefire and stops the destruction, but risks unity with the West and infuriating the Ukrainians. 3) A less dirty deal: we’re back to the lines where we were all before Putin’s invasion. Ukraine may be willing to accept that, and maybe even the Russians are, but Putin would have to be deposed first, because he would never accept the undeniable implication that his war was completely useless.
The variance between these results is profound, and few people will be unaffected by the direction it takes. You may not be interested in the war in Ukraine, but the war in Ukraine will be interested in you, your energy and food prices, and most importantly, your humanity, as even the “neutrals” – China and India – have discovered.
So let’s look inside the three possible endings.
first scenario
No one expects the Ukrainian army to be able to immediately follow up on its substantial military gains of the past two weeks by simply pushing the rest of the Russian army back to the border. But for the first time I could hear people asking, “What if the Russian army really collapses?”
Certainly a good number of Russian soldiers, and the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who joined them, thinking they would win and stay forever, are now asking themselves John Kerry’s Vietnam War question: “How do you ask a man to be the last to die from a mistake?”
Everyone can now see the big lie that this war was. Everyone hears the stories that some of the reinforcements Putin is sending forward are convicts who traded their release from prison by agreeing to fight in Ukraine for six months. Many others are mercenaries from as far away as Syria.
Wait a minute. If Ukraine has indeed become, as Putin claimed, a state led by “Nazis” and the spearhead of a NATO plan to advance eastward towards the Russian homeland, how could Putin not ask the Russian people to mobilize to The fight? If the cause was so just and the war so necessary, why did Putin have to pay criminals and mercenaries to fight and wait for the middle classes of Moscow and Leningrad to fight back? [São Petersburgo] just shut up?
People talk, and every Russian-speaking Russian or Ukrainian soldier who sided with Putin must be thinking, “Do I stay or run? Who will protect me if the front falls?” Such an alliance is highly vulnerable to cascading collapse – first slowly and then quickly.
Heads up. Putin has mentioned several times that he is willing to contemplate using a nuclear weapon if Ukraine and its NATO allies begin to defeat his forces and he is faced with utter humiliation. I hope the CIA has a secret plan to disrupt Putin’s chain of command so that no one presses the button.
second scenario
I can’t imagine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to a ceasefire or anything close to it now, with his forces currently having so much momentum and him pledging to reclaim every inch of Ukrainian territory, Crimea included.
But keep that outcome in mind as winter approaches and Putin’s refusal to sell natural gas to Europe drives up energy prices to such an extent that it forces more factories to close and poorer Europeans to choose between heating and power.
Even if that means Putin’s war gains fall far short of his goals, he might be interested in capitalizing on that outcome, to at least have something to show for all his losses, avoiding total humiliation.
Many European leaders would accept this deal, even if they don’t say it out loud. Here’s how a retired European statesman, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, explained at a business and politics seminar I attended.
Ukraine’s objective is to win, he said. The European Union’s objective is a little different: it is to have peace, and if this comes at a price, some European leaders would be willing to pay. For the US, on the other hand, he added, it’s not the worst thing to keep the war going to weaken Russia and ensure it doesn’t have the energy for other adventures.
For this statesman, the EU is more united than before the start of the war. However, in the coming months things are going to get pretty tough. There will be a big divide in the EU – and it will get more and more difficult because the goals will become more and more different, said the former statesman.
Even though the public statements are the same, the EU is divided on how to handle the war. Not about whether Putin is right or whether he is a threat, but about how to handle the whole situation, especially where populist reactions arise when people get totally stressed out this winter.
Some European leaders will begin to ask if there is a way out through negotiations. Of course, some, like those in the Baltic countries, will support 100% Zelensky, but others won’t mind freezing Donetsk or Lugansk, he concluded.
As Michael Mandelbaum, author of “The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy” told me [As quatro eras da política externa americana], Putin can smell it and decide that his best move to salvage a shred of dignity and expose divisions in the EU is to announce that he is ready to negotiate a ceasefire and that he would resume gas shipments to Europe through an agreement. But that would certainly require providing Zelensky with the boon of permanent, mandatory security guarantees — perhaps full NATO membership.
This result is dirty because it would mean that Putin got away with both murder and theft, showing that he can change Europe’s borders by force. But you are wrong if you think that some Europeans and several republican parliamentarians from MAGA [sigla para o slogan da campanha de Donald Trump, Make America Great Again] they would not seize him if the war lasted until winter.
I would also not rule out a 2-B Outcome, in which Putin would bend over backwards to unilaterally take home at least a piece of Ukraine, trying to do more damage to Ukrainian cities he does not control and getting his puppet Parliament to pass legislation to allow that four Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions hold “referendums” on accession to Russia.
This week’s moves to hold referendums appear to have two goals: to quell panic in these regions among pro-Russian Ukrainians that they might be abandoned, and to signal to Kiev, the United States and the European Union that Russia may yet destroy the neighboring country.
third scenario
This is a less dirty deal, but with the Russian people, not Putin. In this scenario, NATO and the Ukrainians propose a ceasefire based on the Feb 24 lines where Russia and Ukrainian forces were before Putin’s invasion. Ukraine is spared further destruction, and the principle of inadmissibility to change borders by force is maintained. But Putin would have to admit to his population: “We suffered around 70,000 casualties, lost thousands of tanks and armored vehicles and suffered terrible economic sanctions – and got nothing.”
Of course, it’s impossible to imagine him saying that. But such an agreement may be in the interests of the Russian population. So, as far as I can imagine, Putin would probably have to be overthrown by a popular mass protest movement, or a palace coup. All the blame for the war could be blamed on him, and Russia could promise to be a good neighbor again if the West lifted its sanctions.
Zelensky would have to give up his dream of reclaiming the areas of Ukraine seized by Russia in 2014, but Ukraine could begin to heal and at least resume the process of joining the European Union, and perhaps even NATO.
This has always been Putin’s war. It was never the Russian people’s war. And the Russian population is wrong if until now they can think that they have not paid a high price for keeping silent.
When all the alleged massacres perpetrated by the Russians in Ukraine are documented and shared with the world, the Russian people will not be able to escape what was done by Putin in their name and against their name. When the fighting ceases and the world demands that Russia’s foreign reserves now frozen in Western banks – some $300 billion – be sent to Ukraine to rebuild its hospitals, bridges and schools destroyed by the Russian army, the Russian population will begin to understand. that this war was not free.
When documentary filmmakers gather all the testimonies of Ukrainian women who say they were raped by Russian soldiers, no Russian citizen will be able to travel the world without feeling ashamed for long.
Again, I’m not naive. If Putin were somehow replaced by Alexei Navalni, the nationalist, anti-corruption, anti-war crusader that Putin allegedly poisoned and then arrested, a ceasefire with Ukraine could still be difficult to negotiate or maintain. Furthermore, repressive laws, the ruthless secret police, the lack of leaders and the legitimate fear that Putin would do to his own people what he is doing to Ukrainians all argue against Putin’s expulsion by a popular movement.
I am also aware that, as part of this outcome, the Russian president could be replaced by someone worse, someone from his ultranationalist right who claims that Putin did not fight hard enough or was sabotaged by his generals. Or Putin could be replaced by a vacuum of power and disorder — in a country with thousands of nuclear warheads.
But consider this extraordinary example of public protest against Putin, as reported last weekend by the Times: “Alla Pugacheva, the 20th century pop star that defines Russia, declared her opposition to the invasion of Ukraine on Sunday, as the most important celebrity to speak out against the war as Putin faces increasing challenges on and off the battlefield. Pugacheva, 73, wrote in a post on Instagram, where she has 3.4 million followers, that Russians were dying in Ukraine for ‘illusory goals'”.
All this helps to explain the undercurrent I detected in Europe last week, the sense that this war could end in many different ways, some better, some worse, but none easy.
And that’s even without the “fourth scenario” – something no one can predict.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
