TL;DRussia Weekend Roundup

5 January 2025: The year ahead, plus texts and tunes

Vladimir Putin declares 2025 the “Year of the Defender of the Fatherland”, © Александр Гронский 2025

Happy New Year!

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the concept of self-care. Mobilization in the face of adversity does, to be sure, require that we take care of ourselves, but only to an extent. It also requires that we take risks, and that we do not allow ourselves too much shelter from the discomfort of injustice and the stress of grievance.

That said, whatever fight you’re in, it’s important to remind ourselves from time to time of the things worth fighting for, and holidays are an excellent opportunity for just that. So I hope that, in the time we’ve been apart, we’ve all been able to be together with those who matter most to us.

What I’m thinking about

Is this the year that Russia wins the war?

If 2024 was the year that hope gave way to despair—as the inconsistency in Western (and particularly American) provision of aid to Ukraine undercut the momentum of counter-offensive operations and allowed Russia to regain at least a degree of initiative, pushing ever further towards full control of the Donbas and the exhaustion of Ukraine’s defenses—there seems little reason to believe that 2025 will be any happier.

And it is not just on the front lines that things are deteriorating. The incoming Trump administration, while unlikely to abandon Ukraine entirely, is clearly not committed to the “as-long-as-it-takes” mantra of its predecessor. European resolve remains, and may well survive political upheaval in both Germany and France, but the combined defense-industrial production of the EU and the UK cannot make up for the loss of US support in the near term. As a result, while forecasting wars is a fool’s errand, I don’t know anyone who is predicting a Ukrainian breakthrough, and most of the policy conversations in which I’ve been able to take part on both sides of the Atlantic focus almost exclusively on how to prevent things from getting worse.

That, I suppose, was the reason behind the question I was asked to address this past Friday at a joint KCL-UPenn workshop in London: What happens if Russia wins?

It’s a useful question, I think, if we’re looking to get some purchase on what 2025 may hold, because answering it—if we answer it honestly and soberly—brings into focus both the dynamics analysts should be tracking, and the goals Western policymakers should be pursuing.

First things first, then: What would constitute a Russian victory? Regular readers of this newsletter will not be surprised to hear that I find it entirely unproductive to mine the many statements of Vladimir Putin and his proxies for insight into their vision of success. The Kremlin has given itself tremendous amounts of rhetorical leeway, and while I think it’s true that Moscow’s ultimate aim is the political subjugation of Ukraine and the effective removal of its sovereignty, there are multiple forms that subjugation can take, ranging from disruptive interference to the installation of a puppet regime or the incorporation of Ukraine into Russia. Moscow thus likely feels that it can be both flexible and patient. In other words, Putin can hoist the “Mission Accomplished” banner at just about any point, without fear of transgressing against his prior promises or the weight of Russian public opinion.

That said, as pessimistic as most analysts are at the moment, the consensus seems to be that the maximalist version of Russian victory is unavailable. As parlous as things are in Ukraine’s east and south, there does not appear to be a realistic prospect of Russia taking Kyiv. A more transparent and realistic definition of a Russian victory, then, is a minimalist one: the exhaustion of Ukraine’s ability and willingness to keep fighting. We are not at that point yet, and I’m not here to predict that we will reach it, but if we’re interested in the consequences of a Russian victory, that’s the prospect we must consider.

If Russia “wins” in this way, by exhausting its opponent or cowing it into suing for a ceasefire, the most immediate consequences will of course be for Ukraine. A Russian victory does not equate to peace for Ukraine. First and foremost, this means the 3-3.5 million Ukrainian citizens estimated to be living under Russian occupation, who will continue to be subject to systematic campaigns of forced de-Ukrainization and civil and human rights violations, but without the prospect of liberation.

That part of Ukraine that remains under Kyiv’s control, however, can expect other forms of aggression. There are, I think, those in Moscow who look at developments in Georgia, and potentially in Moldova, and believe that Ukraine may eventually be maneuvered back into direct political cooptation. They are almost certainly mistaken. Leaving aside Moscow’s consistent inability to understand Ukrainian social and political dynamics, the degree of trauma inflicted on Ukrainians by a decade of brutalization has created a break with Russia that will last generations. That is a source of both solace and peril. Having accepted a (hypothetical) cease-fire and called it a victory, Moscow is unlikely to sit idly by as Ukraine continues its trajectory toward Euro-Atlantic integration.

An acceptable ceasefire from a Russian perspective, then, must be one that will give it the ability to destabilize Ukraine politically, to disrupt its domestic and international policymaking, and to neuter its reconstruction and recovery. That means, among other things, the ability to control the escalatory dynamics along the front line—in other words, to violate the ceasefire without fear of consequence, and to use the threat of renewed violence to impose reflexive control over Kyiv and, equally importantly, Western capitals.

This, then, complicates the definition of victory and defeat. A ceasefire only equates to a Russian victory if it leaves Russia with the freedom to act. It is likely not within Ukraine’s own power, however, to determine whether Russia has that freedom. Given the contours of politics in Washington, that task will fall to Europe. A Russian victory, then, is not only one that exhausts Ukraine’s willingness and ability to fight: it’s one that outmatches Europe’s willingness and ability to bolster Ukraine after the fighting stops.

A Russian victory, then, would mean three things for Europe: the inability autonomously to deter further Russian aggression, the ceding to Russia of a veto to Moscow over the expansion of the European project, and the extension of insecurity to levels that will strain the ability of the EU to cope. Let me take each of these briefly in turn.

If Europe is unable to impose genuine consequence on Russia for violations of the ceasefire—to instill the certainty in Moscow of an overwhelming military response—it will be the death knell of any attempt to seek strategic autonomy. Europe will find itself squeezed between an emboldened Russia and a capricious US. European policymakers seeking stability on the continent, then, will have no choice other than to pursue conflict avoidance through self-deterrence, modulating foreign policy, trade policy and likely elements of internal EU policy in order to pacify Moscow. That approach to European policymaking on Russia has long been part of the European landscape, of course, but in the absence of a viable alternative, it will dominate and deepen.

The expansion of Europe is, of course, the casus belli that sparked Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, a war calculated to prevent Ukraine’s integration into the European Union. While many European governments have consistently seen Ukrainian NATO accession as a bridge too far, they have never accepted the concept of a Russian veto on Ukraine’s European prospect. I would not underestimate the blow that will be struck if they are forced to accept it now.

The end of European enlargement will mean more than just the end of Ukraine’s accession prospect. It will reverberate through the South Caucasus, Moldova and the Western Balkans, and further afield. Europe’s normative power—the power of its regulatory structures and the pull of the common market—are predicated in part on the prospect of association and then accession. Removing that prospect will fundamentally reshape politics throughout Europe’s periphery, greatly diminishing Europe’s influence in the process.

That loss of influence, meanwhile, will diminish Europe’s ability to cope with the instability that a Russian victory will engender. It is, after all, the European enlargement process that has enabled Brussels and member states to work with the Western Balkans, Turkey, and governments in the Middle East and North Africa to help manage Europe’s migration crisis (and even then they have largely been ineffectual). Migration pressures will only multiply as conflicts deepen and proliferate, to say nothing of the circa 4 million Ukrainian refugees who will be unlikely to return home to a defeated and destabilized country.

The result of these pressures—together with the need to provide deterrence against Russian aggression against EU member states themselves—will likely be to exacerbate tensions within the EU over fiscal policy, borders and the rule of law. Nervous populations will, as they have to date, likely turn towards national governments and away from multilateralism. In short, it’s not a pretty picture.

If that’s what’s at stake—and, while none of that is a prediction for 2025 or any other given year, but rather a set of logical consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine—it may clarify the task for Europe. Absent a step-change in US policy, Europe and Ukraine may be forced to accept a ceasefire, but that ceasefire does not have to equate to a Russian victory. Creating robust deterrence against further Russian attack, and pressing ahead on Euro-Atlantic integration in the face of Russian objections, can create a very different set of outcomes.

What I’m reading

If you’re in the market for second opinions—and more specific predictions on what 2025 may hold—I commend to you Lawry Freedman’s excellent piece in The New Statesman, Timothy Garton Ash’s evaluation of the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat for the European Council on Foreign Relations, and another take on the same by Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman in Foreign Affairs. (For even more discussion of what 2025 may have in store, you might also take a listen to my late-December conversation with Steve Gutterman.)

On other fronts:

• Republic had an excellent New Years Eve interview with veteran Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov on the prospects (and difficulties) of moving Russian society beyond its current, belligerent view of the world;

• In a similar vain, ECFR analyst Kadri Liik had an outstanding policy brief in late December on views of the West among Russia’s policy establishment and what those augur for the future;

• If you’re befuddled by energy developments with the cancellation of Russian gas transit via Ukraine, my CEPA colleague Aura Sabadus has you covered;

• The economic analysis tandem of Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr published a thorough summary of the state of the Russian economy at the dawn of 2025 in The Bell right before the end of the year; and

• On a related topic, Meduza in late December published a good rundown of the challenges facing Russian Central Bank chair Elvira Nabiullina.

What I’m listening to

Rhiannon Giddens sings with equal measures of vocal and moral clarity. She would, I feel certain, be the voice of a generation, if we lived in a world in which such a thing was still possible. Nonetheless, this song and this performance for me, at least, perfectly sum up the heartbreaks of 2024 and the hopes that nonetheless remain for 2025.