Either way, Putin may try to use the cease-fire negotiations as a way to lock in the territory Russia now controls or soon may, including the land bridge. That prospect worries some experts who want to see Putin defeated. “We’re at the next moment of significant danger around this conflict,” Frederick Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told me.
If the West pressures Ukraine to accept a cease-fire that leaves the land bridge intact, Ukraine would be a broken country, Kagan argues. It would be cut off from a large number of its citizens and from economically important coal and natural gas resources in the east. Many parts of central Ukraine would be vulnerable to Russian attacks and disruption.
“If we allow the Russians under the facade of a cease-fire to control that line, that’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Kagan added.
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