Boldness may be way to end war

Agap has emerged between Ukraine and its leading supporters over what an outcome to the war with Russia could look like. It comes as Kyiv and Western countries wait for signs of shifts, including possible escalation, from the Kremlin today as Russia marks Victory Day over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Russia is still focused on capturing and holding land in Ukraine’s east and south.

United States CIA Director William Burns said yesterday Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he cannot afford to lose. He’s convinced . . . doubling down still will enable him to make progress.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says a Russian withdrawal to preinvasion positions will be required for new peace talks. That’s at odds with statements from Western backers which pointed to more open-ended and wider goals.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has said Washington wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”.

Britain’s Defence Secretary Liz Truss has said Russia would have to get out of Ukraine entirely, including Crimea.

At the weekend US intelligence leaks boasted the US had helped Ukraine target top officers and sink Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea.

US President Joe Biden has authorised another US$150 million in military hardware for Ukraine, bringing the total US aid to US$3.8 billion. He also asked Congress to approve US$33b-plus in spending to keep things going until October.

If Putin thinks he “cannot afford to lose” then the US and others are providing that blowtorch of pressure with no obvious negotiated way out.

This could be the right approach: Provide Ukraine with the resources to engineer a clear defeat that means Russia has to withdraw. Boldness and risktaking could make progress.

The more quickly Ukraine can gain an advantage, the faster economic fallout in the West could ease.

Yesterday Ukraine said Russian forces had been pushed back from Kharkiv, a major city near the Russian border.

Former Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “The mistake we made in the past was to underestimate the ambitions of Vladimir Putin, to underestimate his brutality . . . We overestimated the strength of the Russian military.”

However, piling humiliations on a leader who needs to save face to survive could backfire. And how likely is it Putin would surrender?

The old rules of a military conflict needing a political endgame still apply.