If it stretches into the medium term, however, a stalemate is a disaster for Russia. If Western support for Ukraine persists, especially through the coming winter amid potential gas shortages in Europe, then Russia will face a determined, well-armed enemy who will keep fighting and fighting, regardless of the cost. Ukrainian morale, and more important, its willingness to absorb casualties, is much higher than Russia’s. Russia can win individual engagements, but Ukraine will keep coming back until it starts to win the larger war. Russia, by contrast, will suffer the widening consequences of punishing sanctions, and it cannot outproduce the Western defense industrial base.
More importantly, Ukraine would probably fight on even if Western support is reduced. Direct battlefield action would become much harder, of course, but an insurgency would likely spring up throughout occupied territories. Indeed, that may already be happening. A Ukrainian victory would take much longer and it would be bloodier. But the Afghans defeated the Red Army in the 1980s after a decade-long insurgency. Ukraine would likely try something similar, and the sanctions against Russia would probably stay in place. The result would be a classic quagmire – a militarily powerful state locked in a low-intensity conflict against an inferior opponent who simply will not quit. What Russia needs most of all is to win definitively – to end the war before it turns into a repeat of Afghanistan or Vietnam.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member