Historian predicts how Russia’s war in Ukraine could end

 Joining me now, Hein Goemans is a war historian at the University of Rochester in New York. Professor Goemans a very warm welcome. You study War and how wars end as Ukraine marks this grim anniversary of Russia’s full scale war. What were you most struck by and did you imagine it could go on for as long as it is, as it has This is several things that were quite striking. But let me begin that I already predicted in early March last year that this war would go on for a long time. Yes, indeed. And this is the first anniversary, but probably not the last anniversary of ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Based on on your field of study, war termination how wars and how do you see this war evolving? And crucially, what will it take to bring this war to an end? Well, if you permit me, I’ll take a step back to give a kind of an overview of how I think about these issues. So very few wars end in total, utter defeat of one set of the other and not the First World War. And this war is not going to end in the defeat of the Russians in Moscow, nor is it going to end in the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Kiev. So it must enter into some form of negotiated settlement. The question you got to ask yourself then is what does war do that make? What was a disagreement turn into agreement? And the answer is very straightforward and simple. War provides information. You learn things on the battlefield that you cannot learn in any other way. And we are still in the midst of this process of that of both sides trying to learn how strong the other is and how and how committed they are to fight for the long run. So Putin is trying to targets the civilian population. The strategy has been used in many other wars, always failed. Putin is trying to target the support for the Ukrainians in the West. And if that fails, of course, the fighting becomes much too difficult for the Ukrainians. So he’s you know, he’s trying to try to suss out how long support is in order to find out more or less how the war is going to end. But there are a couple of problems in this case. We all say loud and clear that this war will go on for a long time. One, no deal is tenable that the Russians can offer. And, you know, the irony of this case is that any deal that leaves Russia in some control of some territory, Ukraine will only be accepted by Ukraine if Ukraine gets guarantees for its brutal future security. And the only group of countries that can do that is Naito. Of course, that’s the very reason why Putin supposedly went to war for Ukraine being supported or joining Naito. So that’s one reason Putin cannot credibly promise to stick by any any any demands or any settlement he makes now. He didn’t do it in 2014. He won’t do it now. Second, there is the problem and there’s a bit of a debate over this, whether Putin can actually domestically survive a loss in the war, because if he can’t, then he can anticipate that if he loses, he will be punished for his performance he will be jailed and help or most likely fall from a window in the third story of some building in the Kremlin. He will get killed. I assume that is most like now. He can anticipate this as leaders have done throughout history. The most prominent example is the First World War. You can anticipate that if he signs a losing peace or a war, that an agreement that is not worth the cost of the that the Russians have suffered, that he will be removed from office and subsequently killed. So he’s not going to sign any agreement like that. He’s going to fight in what we call a gamble for a resurrection. He has nothing to lose. No, he cannot die more than once. A whole month. I mean, it’s a daunting prospect, too, to think that this war will drag on specifically, of course, for Ukrainians who are suffering so dearly. But what does this mean from a global perspective? In a few words, what are the chances that this war could spread beyond Ukraine? In the next couple of months or years? Well, this ties into the point I made earlier in a nice way, right? I mean, if Putin thinks that he cannot get what he needs, he may go for Moldova to say like, okay, not only did we liberate the four provinces of Ukraine, we also liberated the Russian population in Moldova and tried to sell that as a victory back home. He might try to do that.