To repurpose a great quote by William Goldman, regarding Putin and Ukraine, no one knows anything. We’re guessing and if we’re lucky, it’s an educated one. Here are two highly educated guesses. They seem to jibe with how I understand the situation.
Fiona Hill is an expert on Putin; you may remember her from the first Trump impeachment trial, for her remarkably brave and articulate testimony. In Politico, she provides a detailed, stark, and worrisome assessment. The entire interview is essential reading. This struck me as especially helpful for providing context:
…people are saying Ukraine is the largest military operation in Europe since World War II. The first largest military action in Europe since World War II was actually in Chechnya, because Chechnya is part of Russia. This was a devastating conflict that dragged on for years, with two rounds of war after a brief truce, and tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties. The regional capital of Grozny was leveled. The casualties were predominantly ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. The Chechens fought back, and this became a military debacle on Russia’s own soil. Analysts called it “the nadir of the Russian army.” After NATO’s intervention in the Balkan wars in the same timeframe in the 1990s, Moscow even worried that NATO might intervene.
In other words, Hill’s saying that we’ve seen what fate lies ahead for Ukraine — and for Russia. The suffering for everyone was immense, the risk terrifying, but it is a risk Putin has already taken — and believes is worth it.
Then there is, even more ominously, this:
…what President Putin has said quite explicitly in recent days is that if anybody interferes in Ukraine, they will be met with a response that they’ve “never had in [their] history.” And he has put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. So he’s making it very clear that nuclear is on the table.
Putin tried to warn Trump about this, but I don’t think Trump figured out what he was saying. In one of the last meetings between Putin and Trump when I was there, Putin was making the point that: “Well you know, Donald, we have these hypersonic missiles.” And Trump was saying, “Well, we will get them too.” Putin was saying, “Well, yes, you will get them eventually, but we’ve got them first.” There was a menace in this exchange. Putin was putting us on notice that if push came to shove in some confrontational environment that the nuclear option would be on the table.Reynolds: Do you really think he’ll use a nuclear weapon?
Hill: The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t? He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects. Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited. He died a horrible death as a result.
The Russians have already used a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok. They’ve used it possibly several times, but for certain twice. Once in Salisbury, England, where it was rubbed all over the doorknob of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who actually didn’t die; but the nerve agent contaminated the city of Salisbury, and anybody else who came into contact with it got sickened. Novichok killed a British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, because the assassins stored it in a perfume bottle which was discarded into a charity donation box where it was found by Sturgess and her partner. There was enough nerve agent in that bottle to kill several thousand people. The second time was in Alexander Navalny’s underpants.
So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again.
Not only does Putin want to use exceedingly cruel means, he will use them. That includes nuclear weapons of all kinds. The world needs to factor this into account when considering responses.
Jonathan Littel is a novelist. While he doesn’t have the deep knowledge and experience Hill does, his Guardian article provides excellent insight into at least some of Putin’s reasoning for the invasions (he is not saying that Putin’s reasoning is correct, of course):
Putin must have rejoiced when the west, eager to freeze the active conflict in Donbas, quietly allowed Crimea off the discussion table, effectively conceding the illegal annexation to Russia. He saw that while sanctions hurt, they didn’t bite deep, and would allow him to continue building his military and extending his power. He saw that Germany, the greatest economic power in Europe, was unwilling to wean itself off his gas and his markets. He saw that he could buy European politicians, including former German and French prime ministers, and install them on the boards of his state-controlled companies. He saw that even the countries that nominally opposed his moves still kept repeating the mantras of “diplomacy”, “reset”, “the need to normalize relations”. He saw that each time he pushed, the west would roll over and then come fawning, hoping for an ever-elusive “deal”: Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump – the list is long.
Putin began murdering his opponents, at home and abroad. When it happened, we squeaked, but it never went further. When Obama, in 2013, callously ignored his own “red line” in Syria, refusing to intervene after Bashar al-Assad’s poison gassing of a civilian neighborhood in Damascus, Putin paid attention. In 2015, he sent his own forces into Syria, developing his naval base in Tartus and gaining a new air base in Khmeimin. Over the next seven years, he used Syria as a testing ground for his military, granting invaluable field experience to his officer corps and honing their tactics, coordination and equipment, all the while bombing and slaughtering thousands of Syrians, and helping Assad to regain control of large swaths of the country.
In January 2018, he began confronting western powers directly in the Central African Republic, sending his Wagner mercenaries there. The same process is now under way in Mali, where the military junta, with Russian support, has just forced the French anti-Isis mission out of the country. Russia is also actively involved in Libya, foiling western attempts to bring peace to the country, and deploying forces along the southern flank of the Mediterranean, in a position to directly threaten European interests. Every time, we protested, flailed, and did exactly nothing. And every time, he took good note.
Ukraine represents the moment when he finally decided to put his cards on the table. He clearly believes he is strong enough to openly defy the west by launching the first land war in Europe since 1945. And he believes it because everything we have done, or rather failed to do over the last 22 years, has taught him that we are weak.
Littell is saying that Putin perceived a failure to follow through on responses. Putin’s aggression was caused as much by a long history of inept, ineffective responses as it was by the cruel, sadistic streak that Hill mentions.
Now what? Both analysts know that unless Putin attacks NATO, a concerted military response is off the table. They insist that only the strongest economic and cultural sanctions will work — a total isolation from the world economy, one that will wreak utter havoc but one that will be existential for Putin.
This proposal is problematic — and both HIll and Littell surely know it. Seizing an oligarch’s yacht or kicking their kids out of Harvard may be emotionally satisfying but hardships they are not. They also know that the kind of sacrifice required to existentially damage Russia is something that the extremely spoiled US and Europe will never tolerate. Also, given the cronyism and corrupt interdependence between Russia and the West (Littell: “He saw that he could buy European politicians, including former German and French prime ministers, and install them on the boards of his state-controlled companies”) existential sanctions aren’t possible.
These analyses point to a nearly unmistakable conclusion. Unless NATO is attacked, in which case all bets are off, Ukrainians need only look to Chechnya to get a sense of what the future holds.
One major difference, of course, is that Ukraine is immensely larger. This will provide more opportunity for an underground resistance movement to grow. This is nothing to celebrate; the people in historical resistance movements suffered horribly before (sometimes) achieving their goals. But it is realistic to assume that Ukrainians will be fighting a guerilla war once the cities fall. Unless, that is, Putin is able to find an excuse to use his nukes. And, as Hill makes clear, he really doesn’t need an excuse.
There is nothing that would make me happier than to re-read this a year from now and learn that the conclusions I’ve drawn from these articles were completely wrong and too pessimistic. It is my sincere hope that Putin will make fools of Hill, Littell, and so many others (including yours truly) by stopping this ghastly war now.