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Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

Photo: iLab/CSIS

Table of Contents

Brief by Grace B. Mueller, Benjamin Jensen , Brandon Valeriano, Ryan C. Maness, and Jose M. Macias

Published July 13, 2023

Available Downloads

• Download the Brief 6926kb
• Download the Supplemental Appendix 1961kb

Audio Brief

A short, spoken-word summary from CSIS’s Ben Jensen on his brief with Grace B. Mueller, Brandon Valeriano, Ryan C. Maness, and Jose M. Macias, "Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War: From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures."

In the Future . . .

• Cyber operations will play a supporting rather than decisive role in major theater wars. Great powers will continue to invest in cyber capabilities but see diminishing returns on these investments outside of intelligence and deception efforts once major conflict breaks out.
• War will still be a continuation of politics by other means and rely on the more tangible effects of violence than on the elusive effects of compromising information networks. During the transition to warfighting, military commanders will prefer the certainty of lethal precision strikes against high-value targets to the uncertainty of generating effects in cyberspace.
• The merits of cyber operations continue to be their utility as a tool of political warfare because they facilitate an engagement short of war that leverages covert action, propaganda, and surveillance but in a manner that poses a fundamental threat to human liberties. Cyber operations will remain a limited tool of coercion. Due to their uncertain effects, military leaders will initiate fewer critical cyber operations against command and control and military targets than currently anticipated. They will also face fewer restrictions on waging information warfare to mobilize and shape discontent.

Introduction

How central are cyber operations to combined arms campaigns in the twenty-first century? Between the spring of 2021 and winter of 2022, Russian military forces began to mass combat troops along Ukraine’s eastern border. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It marked the fourth time Russia used military force against a neighbor since the end of the Cold War and the seventh time Russia used cyber operations as part of a larger campaign or independently as an instrument of coercion against a neighboring state.[1]

Pundits and academics alike came out with grand predictions about a coming cyber war.[2] Researchers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even argued during the war that “Russian cyberattacks on government and military command and control centers, logistics, emergency services . . . were entirely consistent with a so-called thunder run strategy intended to stoke chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, and ultimately avoid a costly and protracted war in Ukraine.”[3]

This edition of the On Future War series uses an empirical analysis of attributed Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate future scenarios for the use of cyber operations in major theater wars below the nuclear threshold. The best predictions about an uncertain future come from analysis of past attack patterns and trends as well as seminal cases—such as Ukraine—that are almost certain to change the character of war. Reference the Statistical Appendix for more information. 

Into the war’s second year, Russia remains locked in a protracted conventional conflict that, in addition to pitched battles and missile strikes, has seen sabotage, forced displacement and kidnapping of children, systematic rape and torture, and threats to use nuclear weapons. Yet, Russia has not launched an all-out, costly cyberwar against Ukraine or its backers in the West. The so-called “thunder run” never materialized.[4] Rather, a mix of Ukrainian determination, the characteristics of the cyber domain, and a Russian preference for waging a global campaign focused more on misinformation and undermining support for Kyiv appear to have taken its place.

This installment of On Future War analyzes Russian cyber operations linked to the war in Ukraine. This study uses the publicly attributed record of Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate insights about the character of cyber operations as instruments of warfighting and coercion in the twenty-first century. The empirical evidence demonstrates that while there has been an uptick in cyberattacks during the conflict, these attacks did not demonstrate an increase in severity, a shift in targets, or a shift in methods. Despite proclamations of doom, gloom, and a revolution in warfare, Russia behaved in a manner contrary to most popular expectations during the conflict. While cyber-enabled targeting at the tactical level is almost certain to occur alongside signals intelligence—a practice first documented in Ukraine in 2016—the prevailing trends suggest cyber operations have yet to make a material impact on the battlefield.[5] Where Russian cyber operations have made a difference is in their support to information operations and propaganda in the Global South, where Moscow has successfully spread disinformation to undermine support to Ukraine. Similar to earlier academic treatments that find cyber operations play a key role in shaping intelligence, deception, and political warfare, the Ukrainian case illustrates that the digital domain plays a shaping rather than decisive role even during extensive and existential combat.[6]

In addition to casting doubt on the cyber thunder run, the empirical record, especially when compared to previous Russian cyber operations, offers a baseline prediction about the future and how states will integrate cyber operations into a spectrum of conflict ranging from crises to major wars.[7] While the system could evolve and cyber operations might prove to be decisive instruments of war in the future, the record to date suggests alternatives for how this technology will be leveraged on the battlefield. Specifically, integrating the empirical record of cyber operations in Ukraine alongside well-established findings from the quantitative study of war suggests three scenarios.

• Cyber Stalemate: Russia struggles to integrate cyber and conventional effects on the battlefield and beyond due to the resilience of cyber defense as well as the power of public-private partnerships.
• War Comes Home: Russia regroups and launches a wave of cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure.
• Digital Lies: Russian cyber-enabled influence operations and computational propaganda degrade support for the United States and the war in Ukraine.

Looking across these scenarios suggests key policy options—each consistent with active campaigning and integrated deterrence—the Biden administration could take over the next two years to shape what will likely be a long-term competition with Russia that extends deeper into the twenty-first century. Over time it has become clear that resilience and a focus on defensive operations can forestall the potential impact of offensive cyber operations. Defense in cyberspace requires expanding public-private partnerships and collaboration alongside pooled data to identify attack patterns and trends. Last, the United States and its partners will need to develop better ways and means for countering how malign actors such as Russia use cyberspace to distort global public opinion. For every failed network intrusion, there are thousands of successful social media posts skewing how the world looks at the war in Ukraine.

Making Sense of Cyber Operations

U.S. joint doctrine defines cyberspace operations as the “employment of cyberspace capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in and through cyberspace.”[8] Cyberspace is further defined as an “interdependent network of information technology (IT) infrastructures and resident data. It includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers.”[9]

From a military perspective, groups seek to defend their networks while infiltrating other networks through the different layers of cyberspace (i.e., physical, logical, and persona). As a result, network access is turned into an intelligence advantage or means of delivering effects, creating unique “use-lose” trade-offs in cyber operations.[10] Disrupting or degrading adversary networks risks losing intelligence access. In addition, the dual effort to gain and exploit access does not take place on a battlefield but often in commercial systems and networks, creating unique dilemmas as patches and updates can dislodge or distort cyber payloads. Last, many cyber operations rely on similar tactics, techniques, and procedures, meaning that compromising one operation can result in a cascading effect compromising other operations.

While cyber operations, by design, tend to be concealed, with cyber operators often masking their intrusions and identities by routing payloads through third-party servers, it is possible to analyze how state and non-state actors use cyberspace to advance their interests. Academics, governments, and threat intelligence firms have been cataloging cyber operations for over 20 years. This treatment follows academic research and employs a systematic coding standard as opposed to simple lists that avoid peer review and replication.[11] The underlying assumption about external validity is that documented cyber incidents and associated campaigns are representative of the larger universe of cyber incidents that are unseen or unreported.[12] 

For many, cyber operations are a method to enable a decisive advantage, creating an easy path to victory. As Josh Rovner, associate professor at the School of International Service at American University, notes, “For policymakers and planners, cyberspace operations suggest a low-cost route to quick and decisive victories.”[13] This idea is developed most clearly in Jan Kallberg’s theory of decisive cyber operations.[14] Kallberg, a former research scientist with the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, argues that “the decisive cyber outcome is either reached by removing military capacity through cyber attacks or destabilization of the targeted society.”[15] The idea is to trigger a “dormant entropy embedded in a nation possessing weak institutions.”[16]

Many visions of decisive cyber victory emerge from the idea that cyber warfare represents a revolution in war and military affairs.[17] Amit Sharma, formerly of India’s Ministry of Defence, note, “Cyber warfare . . . is a warfare which is capable of compelling the enemy to your will by inducing strategic paralysis to achieve desired ends and this seizing of the enemy is done almost without any application of physical force.”[18]

Greg Rattray, former director of cybersecurity for the White House, offered that “successful integration of information systems in a sophisticated conventional force capability proved decisive during the spectacular U.S. military successes in the Gulf War.”[19] But he also further cautioned that challenges, including expertise for targeted attacks, the difficulty in assessing the political consequences for information disruption, and defensive coordination challenges, would hamper the ability of information warfare to be effective in generating effects.[20] 

Applied to Ukraine, the vision of decisive cyber victory imagined Russian network intrusions extending beyond battlefield objectives to undermine confidence in Kyiv. Kallberg’s original theory focused on weak states where “cyber targeting can induce a sense of lack of control with citizens blaming the state for failing to safe-guard the societal structure.”[21] In many ways, this was the vision Russia had of Ukraine, seeing a quick war as sufficient to destabilize the government and lead to a general collapse, leaving Moscow in control of the country. Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, noted “a cyber attack—which is relatively easy and comparatively cheap—is likely to top that list. As Russia showed during the 2008 Georgia conflict, hacking government systems as well as financial and energy sectors can cause chaos.”[22]

NATO analysts David Cattler and Daniel Black point to cyber operations as “Russia’s biggest military success to date in the war in Ukraine.”[23] Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, goes so far as to argue that conventional operations would not even be needed:

"It is hard to see how rolling tanks across the border would serve Russia’s aims when far cheaper and more controllable options exist for inflicting damage on Ukraine. . . . Stand-off strikes using missiles, or potentially a destructive cyber onslaught, could target military command and control systems or civilian critical infrastructure and pressure Kyiv into concessions and its friends aboard into meeting Russia’s demands." [24]

This logic is reminiscent of airpower theorists in the interwar period who believed bombers would destroy cities, forcing citizens to pressure their governments into surrendering.[25]

Extending the idea to Ukraine’s foreign backers, Jason Healey, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, notes that another SolarWinds-style attack on the United States would be a “psychological shock to the public and to decision-makers” and “might successfully coerce the United States into backing down.”[26] Fear that Russia would escalate and expand the conflict to the United States through cyber means motivated the desire for many to remain neutral, or to at least have “shields up.”[27] 

Scholars working at the intersection of international security and disruptive technology generally reject the idea of a decisive victory in cyberspace.[28] Academics such as Nadiya Kostyuk and Erik Gartzke note that Russian cyber operations “have neither supplanted nor significantly supplemented conventional combat activities.”[29] Others state, “We are less convinced of effective Russian or Ukrainian battlefield cyber action.”[30] Earlier researchers noted that “despite increasingly sophisticated operations, between 2000 and 2016 cyberspace was a domain defined by political warfare and covert signaling to control escalation more than it was an arena of decisive action.”[31] Instead, cyber operations generally represent covert or deception operations seeking to coerce or signal to the adversary.[32] Often linked to intelligence, cyber operations act more like complementary activities in war than singularly decisive instruments.[33] Like combined arms, cyber operations work best when integrated with other effects to create multiple dilemmas for an adversary. This logic implies that Russian cyber operations in Ukraine were likely restrained by the character of cyberspace and its strategic logic.[34]

There is also the possibility that cyber operations are more defensive rather than offensive. The majority of code, computer equipment, and network infrastructure in the world is owned and operated by private companies. These companies spend billions of dollars monitoring their networks. A mix of nonprofits and academics constantly search for bugs and update companies about deficiencies. This unique feature of cyber competition means that even the best laid plans are often undone by the ecosystem of firms and citizens seeking to secure cyberspace. In addition, the human capital and costs required to develop high-end cyber effects can constrain their use.[35] Work by the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission highlighted this dynamic and encouraged building layers in national cyber strategy to deny easy access and change the costs adversaries expect to pay to attack U.S. interests.[36]

Russian Cyber Operations

Historical cases.

Looking at the history of Russian cyber operations, the Kremlin employs cyber means to engage in long-term competition with rivals.[37] Before 2014, Moscow’s campaigns tended to focus on political warfare and espionage. Operations in Estonia and Georgia were the most prominent. Massive denial-of-service operations sought to punish Estonia in 2007 after the country moved the Russian monument known as the Bronze Soldier.[38] During the Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008, Russia leveraged cyberattacks to enable information operations (IO) against Georgia.[39] Russian’s IO operations aimed “to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision-making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting [their] own.”[40]

In a harbinger of its military campaign to destroy Ukrainian critical infrastructure, Moscow also used cyber operations to target Kyiv’s power supply. Following the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, advanced persistent threat (APT) groups such as Sandworm were implicated in the 2015 BlackEnergy campaign targeting Ukrainian power generation and distribution.[41] While the attacks captured headlines, they produced limited effects.[42] In 2017, Russian-linked groups launched the NotPetya campaign, which produced effects that spilled over from the intended targets, Ukrainian companies, to affect global logistics.[43]

Russia has also used cyber operations as a form of political warfare, using a mix of propaganda to polarize societies and influence political elections. Of note, these efforts included parallel disruption campaigns seeking to deface websites and portray supporters for Ukraine as Nazis.[44] This campaign was followed by the even more audacious attempt to undermine confidence in U.S. democracy through the 2016 operations targeting the presidential election, where the effects are still debated.[45] In 2018, U.S. Cyber Command used Russia’s past behavior as well as other indicators and warnings that Moscow was about to repeat its efforts as justification for launching a preemptive operation against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian propaganda and influence operation firm, designed to forestall attacks during the midterm elections.[46]

More recently, Russian operations have combined a mix of sophisticated espionage and criminal malware campaigns. For most of 2020, the Russian hacking group APT29, or Cozy Bear, exploited a supply chain vulnerability in the SolarWinds Orion program to exfiltrate data and digital tools from an extensive list of targets.[47] The operation raised alarm bells since neither the NSA nor major firms such as Microsoft detected the intrusion and because it likely involved a combination of human intelligence and cyber operations to insert malicious code deep into servers. In 2021, criminal actors known as DarkSide, likely linked to the Russian state, were successful in deploying ransomware against Colonial Pipeline, the system that moves much of the fuel used across the United States’ East Coast.[48]

Empirical Analysis

These high-profile examples parallel the prevailing empirical pattern of Russian cyber operations between 2000 and 2020. The latest version of the Dyadic Cyber Incident and Campaign Data (DCID 2.0) extends the timeline of the dataset and adds new variables, including ransomware and information operations.[49] The dataset codes cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns and establishes a typology for strategic objectives, including disruption (causing low-cost, low-pain incidents), short-term espionage (gaining access for immediate effect), long-term espionage (leveraging information for future operations), and degrade (pursuing physical destruction and impairment). Severity is measured on an interval scale between 0 and 10. Where (0) is no cyber activity (1) and begins tracking the impact of cyber operations of passive operations to (4) widespread government, economic, military, or critical private sector network intrusion, multiple networks to (5) single/multiple critical network infiltration and physical attempted destruction, with (10) a potential outcome of massive deaths.[50] This coding methodology follows practices established in political science to study crises, disputes, and conflicts since the 1960s.[51]

Between 2000 and 2020, there were 30 recorded dyadic cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns between Russia and Ukraine. Russia was frequently the initiator but rarely the target. Of the 30 recorded cyber events between Russia and Ukraine, 28 (or 93 percent) were initiated by Russia. Over this period, the majority of Moscow’s targets (57 percent) were private, non-state actors. Only 11 percent of documented Russian cyber operations targeted government military targets. This targeting profile suggests that Moscow struggles to compromise more defended Ukrainian networks. While crucial cases such as SolarWinds suggest the possibility of more, yet-to-be-detected instances of cyber campaigns supported by human intelligence operations that are hard to detect, available data suggests that cyber defenses are holding in Ukraine.

Many of Russia’s past cyber incidents and campaigns targeting Ukraine were launched for disruption or espionage purposes rather than to degrade critical government networks. Only 29 percent of the documented cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns were degradations. The majority of Russian cyber operations were characterized by phishing attempts, distributed denial-of-service campaigns, propaganda or vandalism efforts, and single network intrusions—all of which tend to have a limited impact.

Altogether, none of the 28 recorded cyber incidents indicative of larger campaigns were so severe that they resulted in lasting physical damage. On a scale from 0 to 10, with “0” representing no cyber activity and “10” representing massive death as a direct result of a cyber incident, Russia’s attacks targeting Ukraine never surpassed a “5”—single or multiple critical network infiltrations and attempted physical destruction. Furthermore, none of Russia’s past cyber operations resulted in a concessionary change in the behavior of Ukraine. Moscow appears to view using cyber operations more as a means of harassing Ukraine and supporting information operations than as a war-winning weapon indicative of the thunder run strategy.

This pattern of behavior is largely consistent with Russia’s interactions with its other rivals. According to the DCID 2.0 dataset, of the 113 total cyber incidents and larger campaigns documented that Russia initiated against its rivals between 2000 and 2020, only one (0.088 percent) resulted in a tangible political concession. Cyber operations remain a weak coercive instrument for Moscow despite their frequent use.

Analysis of Russian Cyber Operations in 2022

Turning from the DCID 2.0 dataset to the first year of the war in Ukraine, the CSIS research team identified 47 publicly attributed cyber incidents indicative of a campaign initiated by Russia between November 29, 2021, and May 9, 2022.[52] This data is culled directly from Ukrainian government sources and Microsoft reports, avoiding the biases that might be introduced by many contemporary news accounts. Because of the covert nature of cyber operations, it is likely only a small but representative sample of the larger population intrusions.

If the character of cyber operations aligns more with intelligence and shaping activities such as deception, one would expect to see this tendency in the early stages of the war in Ukraine. In other words, observations from datasets such as the DCID 2.0 should show, even if they are only a small sample of the larger population, that cyber operations increased in frequency but not severity in the initial stages of the 2022 conflict compared to prewar statistics. Since it is difficult to know exactly when a cyber campaign begins, the data should show a lag resulting in spikes around the beginning of major hostilities. 

Cyber operations remain a weak coercive instrument for Moscow despite their frequent use.

This condition is exactly what emerged from reviewing the pattern of cyber intrusions captured by the DCID 2.0. There was a 75 percent increase in documented cyber intrusions—but a decline in the average severity of the attack. The severity level for the average fell after the full-scale invasion, indicating that although low-level disruption and espionage have continued, there has been a significant drop in degradation-type operations coming from Russia. The results are statistically significant and reported in the Statistical Appendix. What is unknown is whether this decline is a function of deliberate targeting or the resiliency of Ukrainian cyber defenses, issues addressed later in this study.

Contrary to speculation that Russian targets would shift to focus on supporting military operations, an analysis of the DCID shows no statistically significant change in targeting or the overall campaign type. There was no statistically significant difference in targeting before and after the invasion (see Statistical Appendix). This finding suggests that the utility of cyber operations rests in setting conditions and intelligence more than in direct application during large-scale combat operations. While cyber-enabled targeting supports combat, the data shows that larger cyber campaigns do not radically shift during wartime. What the findings cannot determine is whether or not this observation is a function of the character of cyberspace or the result of case-specific factors such as the resiliency of Ukraine’s cyber defense.

Looking at the style of Russian attacks, the research team found that Russia’s cyber activity during the war has been more disruptive than degrading, consistent with its past behavior. As seen in Figure 2, when one looks at these cyber operations by type, Moscow’s preferred cyber objectives have remained disruptive shaping activities and cyber espionage campaigns. During the first few months of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, disruption incidents comprised 57.4 percent of the total incidents, followed by espionage (21.3 percent).

Reliance on disruptive operations stands in contrast to Russia’s prewar behavior, which accentuated espionage. That said, for both the prewar sample and the 2022 war sample, degradative cyber operations were never the majority. Just as Russia’s past cyber operations failed to result in any Ukrainian concessions, no concessions were made by Ukraine during the timeframe of this analysis.

There was no statistically significant difference in targeting before and after the invasion . . . the utility of cyber operations rests in setting conditions and intelligence more than in direct application during large-scale combat operations.

During war, a state might alter its cyber targeting. Yet this analysis of Ukrainian cyber events fails to confirm this hypothesis. Looking at the targets of Russian cyber aggression in the 47 total incidents, most (59.6 percent) targeted private non-state actors, followed by attacks targeting state and local government actors (31.9 percent). Just four (or 8.5 percent) targeted government military actors. This target-type breakdown closely corresponds to Russia’s targets between 2000 and 2020: 57 percent of the targets were private non-state actors, 32 percent were government non-military actors, and 11 percent were government military actors. It is counterintuitive that military actors have not been targeted more frequently during the war.

These results cast doubt on the extent to which Russia has successfully integrated its conventional military operations with cyber effects. Coordination with conventional forces became an important talking point, with a large segment of the news media following some analysts in making the claim that there was significant coordination between cyber operations and conventional military forces.[53] This analysis fails to substantiate these claims. Russian military operations appear to struggle with integrating combined effects, especially across domains.

This seeming lack of coordination between cyber and conventional attacks is something likewise acknowledged by James Lewis, senior vice president at CSIS. To pull off a successful, coordinated attack requires both planning and intelligence support, and either because it chose not to do this or it was incapable of doing so, Russia’s cyber efforts have had a limited effect on Russia’s military efforts in Ukraine. This leads Lewis to candidly state, “Cyberattacks are overrated. While invaluable for espionage and crime, they are far from decisive in armed conflict.”[54]

These results cast doubt on the extent to which Russia has successfully integrated its conventional military operations with cyber effects.

Making Sense of the Findings

There was a dramatic increase in cyber operations during the initial stage of the war. Yet paradoxically, there was no corresponding change in severity or style, nor shifts in Russia’s target preferences. While the rate of cyber conflict increased during the war, the rate of concessions or even severe cyber operations did not. This empirical baseline, albeit based on aggregating unclassified data, demands an explanation.

The analysis offered above provides an insight into what is happening but not necessarily a clear explanation for why it is happening. Below, this study considers three different causal explanations. The first—which follows the logic of the data collected and assessed above, as well as minority reports—offers an explanation for why Russian cyber efforts have been ineffective. [55] The second considers the opposite: why the world could still witness widespread cyber campaigns in Ukraine and beyond. The third considers an alternative logic of cyberspace focused on misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, as well as larger propaganda campaigns.

1. "The Defense Is Dominant”

There is the possibility that a combination of private sector innovation, state coordination, and emerging doctrine have made the cyber domain defense dominant. While SpaceX and Starlink captured headlines from Ukraine, multiple firms raced to help the country retain the ability to access cyberspace.[56] Microsoft reported that a mix of “cyber threat intelligence and end-point protection . . . helped Ukraine withstand a high percentage of destructive Russian cyberattacks.”[57] Even where Russia coordinated wiper attacks and cruise missile strikes against data centers, Ukraine was able to “disburse its digital infrastructure into the public cloud” and survive the onslaught.[58] In November 2022, Ukrainian deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation, Mykhalio Fedorov, praised Amazon Web Services (AWS) for their role in helping Ukraine maintain continuity of government during the war.[59] During the opening stages of the conflict, AWS sent in suitcase-sized computer drives to help Ukraine back up critical data.[60] Cybersecurity firm Cloudflare extended its Project Galileo services—a full suite of protection for organizations in the arts, human rights, civil society, journalism, and democracy promotion—to key organizations across Ukraine.[61] This effort paralleled Google’s Project Shield, which similarly seeks to help at-risk organizations defend against cyber intrusions.[62] In all, the character of cyberspace, which relies on business networks and the public sector, means that a web of private actors have been enmeshed with the defense of Ukraine.[63]

Beyond new technology that increases the power of the defense, the last seven years have seen an unreported push to coordinate cybersecurity policies across states and involve the private sector.[64] The architects of Ukrainian cyber strategy participated in multiple U.S. Department of State initiatives, including meeting with the research director for the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission a year before the conflict began. Multiple federal agencies have programs supporting Ukraine’s networks and digital infrastructure that predate the war, including cybersecurity reform initiatives from the U.S. Agency for International Development and initiatives in the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice for sharing threat information.[65] These efforts paralleled similar EU initiatives.[66]

The concept of what constitutes defensive mechanisms in cyberspace has also evolved over the last 10 years. Early cyber strategies released by the U.S. Department of Defense tended to be criticized as being too defensive.[67] Following the lead of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and parallel initiatives across the Department of Defense, U.S. Cyber Command also issued a new strategy in 2018 that called for taking “action in cyberspace during day-to-day competition to preserve U.S. military advantages and defend U.S. interests.”[68]

These new concepts have been put into action as the United States and its allies deployed cyber forces to support partner defenses. In a speech at the 2022 Reagan National Defense Forum, General Paul Nakasone, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA, recounted growing his hunt-forward team by 300 percent in 2021.[69] Similarly, the European Union activated its Cyber Rapid Response Team to help Ukraine fend off Russian cyberattacks.[70] NATO went as far as to accept Ukraine as a contributing participant in its Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence.[71] U.S. defend-forward efforts have gone beyond cyber defense to covertly remove Russian malware from computer networks around the world.[72] What is unclear as of this writing is whether or not these defend-forward activities have also included spoiling attacks to disrupt Russian cyber capabilities.

2. "It’s a Matter of Time”

Russia could be regrouping following the initial success of Ukraine’s foreign-backed cyber defense or could be biding its time. The absence of a significant critical infrastructure attack using malware to date does not preclude one in the future.

First, there are indications that Russia has been working to disrupt command and control since the beginning of the war. Hours before the ground invasion began, Russia deployed malware that disrupted the Viasat satellite system and led to over 30,000 internet connections going down temporarily across Europe, including 5,000 wind turbines.[73] SpaceX’s leadership claims that the company’s Starlink network has resisted multiple Russian cyberattacks since the capability was deployed to Ukraine.[74] More recently, there are reports of Russian cyber operations trying to penetrate Delta, a unique Ukrainian military intelligence and targeting fusion software.[75]

Second, since the beginning of the war, there have been reports of malware discovered on critical infrastructure in countries supporting Ukraine with foreign military assistance. In the United States, Russian malware was discovered on critical infrastructure linked to generating and providing electricity early in the conflict, which, if not discovered, could have been used to cause blackouts and supply disruptions.[76] The United Kingdom issued a public warning for critical infrastructure organizations about Moscow’s increased efforts to target critical infrastructure since the start of the war in Ukraine.[77] Poland is a frequent target, with logistics suppliers commonly put at risk, primarily with ransomware.[78]

Russia has also been implicated in efforts to develop even more sophisticated tool kits. These measures include new classes of industrial control malware designed to disrupt, degrade, or destroy critical infrastructure, similar to the effects seen historically in the Stuxnet attack on Iranian nuclear facilities first discovered in 2010 and the BlackEnergy attacks that disrupted Ukraine’s electrical grid in 2015.[79] This activity parallels increased activity by Russian cybercriminal networks targeting critical infrastructure.[80] There are also reports that Russia is developing a new capability combining electronic warfare, signals intelligence, and cyber capabilities focused on targeting critical infrastructure and “life support systems.”[81] This focus on sabotaging critical infrastructure is a key component of Russian military theory and the concept of “strategic operation for the destruction of critically important targets,” also known as SODCIT.[82]

Yet Russian efforts to use cyberspace to degrade Western support or Ukrainian military capabilities have largely failed to meet expectations to date. Three reasons stand out. First, it may be that the defense is dominant in cyberspace. Moscow finds itself up against not just Ukraine but a global network of public and private cybersecurity professionals, limiting the extent to which it can exploit cyberspace. Second, there might be a tendency toward threat inflation in cyber reporting that makes Russian efforts look more sophisticated and robust than they actually are. Even the Viasat attack did not have a significant impact in Ukraine, according to Viktor Zhora, deputy chairman and chief digital transformation officer at the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP) of Ukraine.[83] Third, there might be an even more simple logic: critical infrastructure in Ukraine can be degraded using cruise missile strikes, allowing Russia to reserve exquisite malware in case the war escalates to involve direct combat with the West. In other words, there might be escalation dynamics in cyberspace that restrain states from launching an all-out cyberattack campaign on a rival great power even amid a proxy war.

3. “It’s a Different War”

Russia might be waging a different kind of cyberwar focused less on taking down critical infrastructure and more on limiting the coalition supporting Ukraine. This information warfare strategy seeks to sow chaos and cause doubt and confusion in a manner consistent with legacy Soviet ideas about active measures and reflexive control.[84]

Microsoft reported Russian network intrusion efforts in over 100 organizations in over 40 countries beyond Ukraine.[85] Many of these efforts involve “Advanced Persistent Manipulator (APM) teams” linked to the Kremlin who specialize in planting false narratives across social media in a manner “similar to the pre-positioning of malware.”[86] Russian cyber operators continue to conduct low-level disruptions against targets in its near abroad, targeting Ukraine and states supporting Ukraine. A recent attack by the Sandworm group, attributed to the Russian GRU, targeted Ukinform, the national news agency of Ukraine.[87] Politico notes that Russia has sought to terrorize the Ukrainian civilian population after failing to leverage cyber operations on the battlefield.[88] 

Outside of Ukraine, Russian-linked actors have used low-level attacks to disrupt websites, consistent with a cyber approach to political warfare.[89] Lithuania was targeted after placing restrictions on Russia cargo moving into Kaliningrad.[90] Many Russian-aligned threat groups have joined the chaos, targeting Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia.[91] 

There might be escalation dynamics in cyberspace that restrains states from launching an all-out cyberattack campaign on a rival great power even amid a proxy war.

Globally, Russia uses cyberspace to wage what researchers at the Atlantic Council call “narrative warfare.”[92] These operations focus on eroding global confidence in Ukraine.[93] Unlike traditional cyber intrusions, the goal is either to cause chaos or to shape public attitudes toward the conflict using computational propaganda. These methods include creating fake social media accounts, using bots, and targeting content prompts to unique user groups to change public attitudes.[94]

For example, consider Moscow’s cyber-enabled information operations across Africa that accelerated after the Russian invasion in 2022. As early as 2019, researchers identified a cluster of Facebook pages tied to the Wagner Group that were active in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Mozambique.[95] The operation showed a high degree of sophistication, including using local subcontractors and native speakers, adapting messages to unique content forms such as short videos and contests, and using Google Forms to solicit feedback.[96] These operations accelerated after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with new groups such as Russosphere promoting Kremlin-linked propaganda on social media calibrated to diverse audiences across Africa.[97] These social media outreach efforts complement more traditional propaganda approaches linked to platforms such as RT, which has expanded its coverage across Africa since the start of the war.[98]

From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures

When combined with the empirical trends of Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine, these three logics provide the foundation for imagining how the cyber war in Ukraine—if not beyond—could evolve over the next 12 to 36 months.

Cyber Stalemate: In the future, the defense remains dominant, limiting offensive cyber campaigns in Ukraine.

Leaders in Russia find progress on the cyber front as stalled as the battlefield. While trench lines, rivers, and concrete-reinforced fighting positions make maneuvering difficult in the real world, a mix of private sector firms and governments thwart cyber offensives in cyberspace. Moreover, Russian efforts to expand the scope of cyberattacks beyond Ukraine yield few long-term results and make Russia an international pariah on par with North Korea. Russian criminal groups thrive, increasing ransomware campaigns and “crime-as-a-service” campaigns globally, but Moscow proves unable to align cyber operations with its political objectives of winning the war in Ukraine and establishing Russian hegemony in its near abroad.

The wave of foiled Russian cyber offenses leads to a new debate about the efficacy of cyber operations as an instrument of war. The debate pits the United States, where the military and intelligence community back expanding investments in cyber capabilities despite Russian setbacks, against partners in Europe, many of whom want to see broader prohibitions against cyber operations and to pool data on attacks and vulnerabilities to increase security. These efforts are complicated by stalled legislation and executive action in the United States seeking to incentivize the private sector to report on network intrusions. The net result is that the United States and its partners are increasingly at odds over cyberspace and that there is no unity of effort in cybersecurity efforts between the public and private sectors. State cyber is limited beyond espionage, but criminal activity rises, leading to a loss of confidence in the ability or interest of the U.S. federal government to defend cyberspace.

China watches the debates and continues to invest in a mix of domestic surveillance and cyber support for firepower strike concepts. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) focuses more on intelligence collection and targeting and refining ways of integrating cyber, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence to avoid Moscow’s fate. More troubling, Russia’s failure to integrate cyber operations with its military campaign pushes Beijing to increase its investments in weaponizing space. PLA military leaders assess that a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic effects against U.S. and partner nation satellite constellations will prove more reliable than terrestrial network intrusions and hard-to-contain malware attacks.

War Comes Home: In the future, Russia escalates and unleashes a wave of critical infrastructure attacks.

With battlefield progress stalling and Western aid continuing to flow to Kyiv, Moscow authorizes a new campaign to attack critical infrastructure in states backing Ukraine. After years of experimentation in the wild, Russian cyber operators craft tool kits that exploit industrial control systems linked to energy production and transmission, transportation systems, wastewater treatment, and a wide range of factory processes. Whereas the earlier Viasat campaign knocked out 5,000 wind turbines, the latest effort leaves millions with intermittent access to power and water across Europe and the United States for 10 days. The result is widespread panic that leaves hundreds dead in the depths of winter. The economic fallout is worse, with widespread stock market crashes and currency runs. Business leaders are angry with Western intelligence and military leaders after it is revealed that components of the Russian cyber campaign were based on malware developed by the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow repurposed.

Facing widespread public pressure, the U.S. president retaliates against Russia. U.S. cyber operations cripple critical infrastructure across Russia and create a widespread humanitarian disaster despite efforts to conduct precision targeting of facilities linked to political elites and the military. The spillover effects lead to widespread economic fallout and further stress already weak infrastructure across Russia, causing a temporary rally-around-the-flag effect. Russian citizens back retaliation.

In response to the cyberattacks, Russia places its nuclear forces on alert and deploys additional delivery systems to Belarus. Russian submarines cut key fiber-optic cables, leading to the degradation of information exchange, such as global communication and key anti-submarine early warning systems. Through back channels, Moscow signals that it intends to use nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Ukraine and will respond if the United States or any NATO member intervenes. The United States is forced to increase its nuclear alert levels, pushing the world into the most dangerous strategic crisis since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Pundits dub the standoff the “Cyber Missile Crisis.”

Digital Lies: In the future, Russian cyber efforts create a backlash against the United States’ image abroad.

Despite military setbacks in Ukraine and dissent at home, attitudes toward Russia across the Global South are increasingly positive. The use of troll farms, easy access to RT in Africa, and computational propaganda successfully create an image of Moscow as a victim of Western neo-imperialism. Putin is seen in these narratives as more of a twenty-first-century Che Guevara than an aging strongman. The barrage of global propaganda complicates U.S. development programs and leads to widespread protests outside U.S. embassies abroad. Chinese Communist Party intermediaries amplify these efforts and spread the discontent to Southeast and Central Asia as well as Latin America.

At home, the global wave of propaganda finds inroads on both the left and right of the U.S. political spectrum. Propaganda tailored to right-wing audiences stresses Russia as a defender of Christianity and a bulwark stopping a “woke West” from triggering the collapse of civilization. On the left, the social media-tailored messages speak to nonintervention and a need to divest from military power in favor of social spending at home. These messages also seek to link the framing of Washington as a neo-imperial power to historic grievances inside the United States.

The campaigns are accelerated by widespread access to generative artificial intelligence (AI), leading to a wave of deepfakes and AI-written content online. Absent public or private sector policies to moderate content, the barrage of content overwhelms social media. Public trust in governing institutions continues its long-term decline and spreads to a larger sense of cynicism in U.S. society.

Policy Implications

The empirical evidence combined with the scenarios suggests a need to expand public-private partnerships and other collective defense mechanisms in cyberspace while developing new approaches to counter-influence operations and competition in the information environment. These recommendations, though developed independently and prior to its publication, match priorities outlined in the 2023 National Cyberspace Strategy .

Recommendation 1: Increase Public-Private Partnerships Supporting Cyber Defense

It is not enough to secure critical U.S. intelligence and military networks. Modern societies live through complex networks that cross the public and private sectors. The easier it is to create pooled data and common standards, the harder it will be for adversaries to compromise security. This is equivalent to the old military adage of “moving with the terrain.” If the terrain (i.e., cyberspace) is defined by scalable networks connecting diffuse groups, then making it easier for these groups to coordinate defense will make it harder for any one actor to conduct offensive action.

In practical terms, this logic means that the more incentives the U.S. government can offer for public-private sector collaboration, the more likely cyber defense will hold against future attacks. For example, what if the companies that moved to help countries and societies under siege such as Ukraine were given tax credits or at least allowed to factor the labor hours used as a tax write-off? What if the U.S. government created a new category of grants or contract vehicles, such as indefinite delivery, and indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQs), that allowed the private sector to rapidly surge for supporting key U.S. partners and allies during a crisis? The ends and ways are clear: bolster cyber defenses through increased public-private collaboration. What is less clear is the optimal means for doing so, which will likely require a creative mix of inducements and policy changes similar to those proposed by the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Second, increasing public-private partnership should leverage clear, transparent pooled data on cyber threats. While the U.S. government is making progress on sharing threat information, the process could go much further. Just as the private sector relies on economic and weather data collected by the U.S. government, the same should apply to cyberspace, with the U.S. government maintaining a pool of credible data continually updated by data scientists. This data pool should anonymize entity names (e.g., businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies), similar to established practices with the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Safety Reporting Program, and use a common typology, as seen in the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Without this common reference data set, the U.S. government and the private sector are as blind as financial firms were before government reporting of inflation and employment statistics.

Pooled data is a public good that can help public-private sector collaboration. Understanding attack trends over time will help cybersecurity professionals determine when to update networks and the best mix of defenses to ensure continuity of operations. With this information, the U.S. government can then determine where and how best to defend forward, prioritizing more exquisite cyber operations against threats yet to be mitigated by increased public-private sector coordination.

Recommendation 2: Increase Diplomatic Engagement around Cyber Defense and Shared Intelligence

Similar to working with the private sector, the U.S. government should expand efforts to coordinate with partners and allies to secure cyberspace. Recommendations like this are easy to say but hard to implement, requiring coordination across multiple agencies by, with, and through multiple partners. While the Department of State will play the leading role, it must work with other departments, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and multiple elements within the military and intelligence community, to coordinate partner outreach activities.

The resiliency of Ukrainian networks has been in part related to actions taken prior to the conflict to support developing and implementing a national cyber strategy. Ukraine’s strength in cyber defense has illustrated the critical role played by not just the private sector but also foreign governments in helping Kyiv prepare for the increase in cyber intrusions during the opening stages of the war.[99]

There are two primary areas to focus on with diplomatic outreach in support of cybersecurity: information sharing and interoperability. With respect to information sharing, the U.S. government should accelerate efforts to share knowledge of vulnerabilities with its partners. Too often, governments withhold information out of a desire to protect sources and methods used to gain the insight or, more insidiously, because the vulnerability data is linked to exploits currently in use by said government. These limitations, while valid, tend to prevent sharing of timely information on cyber vulnerabilities with partners and allies. They also create bureaucratic barriers and a culture of “no” that limits trust among key partners, often leading to delayed collection and imbalanced understanding of the cyber operational environment that discourages collective defense and coordination. It is also worth pointing out that without a central data repository, there is no single, verified repository tracking cyberattacks using a common framework. Even if it exists on classified networks, which these authors doubt, the bureaucratic barriers to sharing limit timely access or updates, often leaving even the intelligence community dependent on third-party vendors, such as threat intelligence firms. 

Second, diplomatic outreach should build interoperability with key partners and allies by increasing the number of crisis simulations and cyber games used to develop a common understanding of how best to respond to coordinate cyber defenses, including incident response and consequence mitigation. Organizations such as the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) have a proven track record of developing and running major cyber exercises for federal, state, and local agencies. These efforts should be expanded to include international programs facilitated by the Department of State. These games would explore critical infrastructure attacks occurring simultaneously in multiple countries and how best to coordinate cyber defenses and incident response. These games would respond to the most dangerous course of action: that a rogue state such as Russia successfully degrades critical infrastructure globally. Given the targeting data seen above, this campaign would likely target private sector systems and seek to hold a state hostage through the suffering of its people (i.e., deterrence by punishment) as part of an escalating crisis. Given recent revelations about China’s probing of critical infrastructure networks globally, this finding extends well beyond coordinating defense against Russia.[100]

Recommendation 3: Reassess How to Counter Cyber-Enabled Information Operations

Observations of the first year of the war in Ukraine suggest that it is easier to defend against malware than lies. However, the U.S. government has yet to develop a credible, dynamic response to cyber-enabled information operations and computational propaganda. Efforts such as the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center are a step in the right direction but are underfunded and lack the authorities to counter misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation at machine speed.

The challenges of countering global propaganda are so large that no single agency or approach is likely to address them. Therefore, the U.S. Congress should charter a new congressional commission to study how best to combat misinformation as it relates to the larger U.S. national security strategy and challenge of existing legislated authorities. Prior commissions such as the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission are an example of how to catalyze change as it relates to securing cyberspace and can serve as a model.

The use of cyberspace to connect battle networks, support intelligence, and exchange information is here to stay. Of note, it took less time for the communication technology to become ubiquitous in war than it did for the printing press to give way to written military orders. Yet the shape of modern war is reinforcing previous academic work skeptical of the term “cyberwar” and the extent to which states have successfully integrated the use of malware, which may be better suited for espionage than battlefield tool kits. Combined arms warfare is hard. Cyber combined effects are even more difficult and prone to uneven results, opportunity costs, and the perennial fog and friction that hang over the use of violence in pursuit of political objectives.

It is dangerous to use any one case to generalize the character of war. Yet the scale and stakes of the war in Ukraine make it a crucial case for understanding the future of war. Because it is hard to imagine any future conflict where cyberspace does not play some supporting role across the levels of war, failing to analyze how great powers such as Russia apply cyber power risks missing key trends.

The mix of empirical assessment and alternative futures reviewed here suggest that cyber operations will likely prove better suited for shaping strategic interactions—whether through espionage or propaganda campaigns—than determining tactical outcomes. As with electronic warfare and signals intelligence, even when cyber operations support the art of battle, it will be indirectly and through altering the balance of information between opposing forces. Even here, the decision to employ exquisite cyber capabilities will be subject to intelligence and technical gain/loss analysis as commanders at different levels in the chain of command seek to preserve capability and balance exploitation with access. Put simply, the rush to use cyber access for a battlefield effect risks losing operational and strategic access. There is a commitment problem hanging over cyber operations: fear of future loss limits current use. This makes the idea of “cyber call for fire” at the battalion and company level a prospect that will always be subject to restrictions based on rules of engagement, authorities, and gain/loss considerations in a manner that structurally limits its responsiveness. This logic adds to preference for substituting easier-to-measure physical effects such as artillery and missile strikes. Why hack what you can destroy?

The strategic logic of cyberspace is harder to gauge. There still is the prospect that Moscow has held back significant cyber capabilities to hold Western critical infrastructure at risk as a strategic deterrent. Even if this is true, a cursory look at Ukraine shows that previous efforts to use cyber operations to degrade critical infrastructure have produced only limited, temporary results. The prospect is further questionable given the balance of offense and defense in cyberspace as multiple countries and firms race to search for intrusions. Last, even though cyberspace is critical to modern political warfare and propaganda campaigns, the extent to which the population continues to be captured by subtle lies and deepfakes is unknown. The future could prove that distracted citizens around the world prove as susceptible to cyber-enabled influence campaigns as they are to data-driven marketing. Alternatively, people will begin to adapt, making them more resilient to the flood of lies that accompanies all war, but also likely more cynical and prone to mistrust.

Grace B. Mueller , PhD is a postdoctoral fellow at the Army Cyber Institute. Benjamin Jensen , PhD is the senior fellow for future war, gaming, and strategy in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a professor in the Marine Corps University, School of Advanced Warfighting. Brandon Valeriano , PhD is a distinguished senior fellow at the Krulak Center for Innovation in the Marine Corps University . He previously served as a senior adviser to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and is currently a senior adviser to Solarium 2.0.  Ryan C. Maness , PhD is an assistant professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). He is also the director of the DOD Information Strategy Research Center at NPS. Jose M. Macias is a research assistant with the International Security Program at CSIS.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not represent the policies of the U.S. government, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Marine Corps.

This report was made possible by support provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Please consult the PDF for references.

This report is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2024 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

Grace B. Mueller

Benjamin Jensen

Brandon valeriano, ryan c. maness, jose m. macias, programs & projects.

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Ukraine: Conflict at the Crossroads of Europe and Russia

• Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has set alight the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.
• A former Soviet republic, Ukraine had deep cultural, economic, and political bonds with Russia, but the war could irreparably harm their relations.
• Some experts view the Russia-Ukraine war as a manifestation of renewed geopolitical rivalry between major world powers.

Introduction

Ukraine has long played an important, yet sometimes overlooked, role in the global security order. Today, the country is on the front lines of a renewed great-power rivalry that many analysts say will dominate international relations in the decades ahead.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a dramatic escalation of the eight-year-old conflict that began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and signified a historic turning point for European security. A year after the fighting began, many defense and foreign policy analysts cast the war as a major strategic blunder by Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

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Many observers see little prospect for a diplomatic resolution in the months ahead and instead acknowledge the potential for a dangerous escalation, which could include Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon. The war has hastened Ukraine’s push to join Western political blocs, including the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Why is Ukraine a geopolitical flash point?

Ukraine was a cornerstone of the Soviet Union, the archrival of the United States during the Cold War. Behind only Russia, it was the second-most-populous and -powerful of the fifteen Soviet republics, home to much of the union’s agricultural production, defense industries, and military, including the Black Sea Fleet and some of the nuclear arsenal. Ukraine was so vital to the union that its decision to sever ties in 1991 proved to be a coup de grâce for the ailing superpower. In its three decades of independence, Ukraine has sought to forge its own path as a sovereign state while looking to align more closely with Western institutions, including the EU and NATO. However, Kyiv struggled to balance its foreign relations and to bridge deep internal divisions . A more nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking population in western parts of the country generally supported greater integration with Europe, while a mostly Russian-speaking community in the east favored closer ties with Russia.

Ukraine became a battleground in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and began arming and abetting separatists in the Donbas region in the country’s southeast. Russia’s seizure of Crimea was the first time since World War II that a European state annexed the territory of another. More than fourteen thousand people died in the fighting in the Donbas between 2014 and 2021, the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. The hostilities marked a clear shift in the global security environment from a unipolar period of U.S. dominance to one defined by renewed competition between great powers [PDF].

In February 2022, Russia embarked on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the aim of toppling the Western-aligned government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

What are Russia’s broad interests in Ukraine?

Russia has deep cultural, economic, and political bonds with Ukraine, and in many ways Ukraine is central to Russia’s identity and vision for itself in the world.

Family ties . Russia and Ukraine have strong familial bonds that go back centuries. Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, is sometimes referred to as “the mother of Russian cities,” on par in terms of cultural influence with Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was in Kyiv in the eighth and ninth centuries that Christianity was brought from Byzantium to the Slavic peoples. And it was Christianity that served as the anchor for Kievan Rus, the early Slavic state from which modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians draw their lineage.

Russian diaspora . Approximately eight million ethnic Russians were living in Ukraine as of 2001, according to a census taken that year, mostly in the south and east. Moscow claimed a duty to protect these people as a pretext for its actions in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014.

Superpower image . After the Soviet collapse, many Russian politicians viewed the divorce with Ukraine as a mistake of history and a threat to Russia’s standing as a great power. Losing a permanent hold on Ukraine, and letting it fall into the Western orbit, would be seen by many as a major blow to Russia’s international prestige. In 2022, Putin cast the escalating war with Ukraine as a part of a broader struggle against Western powers he says are intent on destroying Russia.

Crimea . Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 to strengthen the “brotherly ties between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples.” However, since the fall of the union, many Russian nationalists in both Russia and Crimea longed for a return of the peninsula. The city of Sevastopol is home port for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the dominant maritime force in the region.

Trade . Russia was for a long time Ukraine’s largest trading partner , although this link withered dramatically in recent years. China eventually surpassed Russia in trade with Ukraine. Prior to its invasion of Crimea, Russia had hoped to pull Ukraine into its single market, the Eurasian Economic Union, which today includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Energy . Moscow relied on Ukrainian pipelines to pump its gas to customers in Central and Eastern Europe for decades, and it paid Kyiv billions of dollars per year in transit fees. The flow of Russian gas through Ukraine continued in early 2023 despite the hostilities between the two countries, but volumes were reduced and the pipelines remained in serious jeopardy.

Political sway . Russia was keen to preserve its political influence in Ukraine and throughout the former Soviet Union, particularly after its preferred candidate for Ukrainian president in 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, lost to a reformist competitor as part of the Orange Revolution popular movement. This shock to Russia’s interests in Ukraine came after a similar electoral defeat for the Kremlin in Georgia in 2003, known as the Rose Revolution, and was followed by another—the Tulip Revolution—in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Yanukovych later became president of Ukraine, in 2010, amid voter discontent with the Orange government.

What triggered Russia’s moves in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014?

It was Ukraine’s ties with the EU that brought tensions to a head with Russia in 2013–14. In late 2013, President Yanukovych, acting under pressure from his supporters in Moscow, scrapped plans to formalize a closer economic relationship with the EU. Russia had at the same time been pressing Ukraine to join the not-yet-formed EAEU. Many Ukrainians perceived Yanukovych’s decision as a betrayal by a deeply corrupt and incompetent government, and it ignited countrywide protests known as Euromaidan.

Putin framed the ensuing tumult of Euromaidan, which forced Yanukovych from power, as a Western-backed “fascist coup” that endangered the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea. (Western leaders dismissed this as baseless propaganda reminiscent of the Soviet era.) In response, Putin ordered a covert invasion of Crimea that he later justified as a rescue operation. “There is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our western partners have crossed the line,” Putin said in a March 2014 address formalizing the annexation.

Putin employed a similar narrative to justify his support for separatists in southeastern Ukraine, another region home to large numbers of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. He famously referred to the area as Novorossiya (New Russia), a term dating back to eighteenth-century imperial Russia. Armed Russian provocateurs, including some agents of Russian security services, are believed to have played a central role in stirring the anti-Euromaidan secessionist movements in the region into a rebellion. However, unlike Crimea, Russia continued to officially deny its involvement in the Donbas conflict until it launched its wider invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Why did Russia launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022?

Some Western analysts see Russia’s 2022 invasion as the culmination of the Kremlin’s growing resentment toward NATO’s post–Cold War expansion into the former Soviet sphere of influence. Russian leaders, including Putin, have alleged that the United States and NATO repeatedly violated pledges they made in the early 1990s to not expand the alliance into the former Soviet bloc. They view NATO’s enlargement during this tumultuous period for Russia as a humiliating imposition about which they could do little but watch.

In the weeks leading up to NATO’s 2008 summit, President Vladimir Putin warned U.S. diplomats that steps to bring Ukraine into the alliance “would be a hostile act toward Russia.” Months later, Russia went to war with Georgia, seemingly showcasing Putin’s willingness to use force to secure his country’s interests. (Some independent observers faulted Georgia for initiating the so-called August War but blamed Russia for escalating hostilities.)

Despite remaining a nonmember, Ukraine grew its ties with NATO in the years leading up to the 2022 invasion. Ukraine held annual military exercises with the alliance and, in 2020, became one of just six enhanced opportunity partners, a special status for the bloc’s closest nonmember allies. Moreover, Kyiv affirmed its goal to eventually gain full NATO membership.

In the weeks leading up to its invasion, Russia made several major security demands of the United States and NATO, including that they cease expanding the alliance, seek Russian consent for certain NATO deployments, and remove U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. Alliance leaders responded that they were open to new diplomacy but were unwilling to discuss shutting NATO’s doors to new members.

“While in the United States we talk about a Ukraine crisis , from the Russian standpoint this is a crisis in European security architecture,” CFR’s Thomas Graham told Arms Control Today in February 2022. “And the fundamental issue they want to negotiate is the revision of European security architecture as it now stands to something that is more favorable to Russian interests.”

Other experts have said that perhaps the most important motivating factor for Putin was his fear that Ukraine would continue to develop into a modern, Western-style democracy that would inevitably undermine his autocratic regime in Russia and dash his hopes of rebuilding a Russia-led sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. “[Putin] wants to destabilize Ukraine , frighten Ukraine,” writes historian Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic . “He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too.”

What are Russia’s objectives in Ukraine?

Putin’s Russia has been described as a revanchist power, keen to regain its former power and prestige. “It was always Putin’s goal to restore Russia to the status of a great power in northern Eurasia,” writes Gerard Toal, an international affairs professor at Virginia Tech, in his book Near Abroad . “The end goal was not to re-create the Soviet Union but to make Russia great again.”

By seizing Crimea in 2014, Russia solidified its control of a strategic foothold on the Black Sea. With a larger and more sophisticated military presence there, Russia can project power deeper into the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa, where it has traditionally had limited influence. Some analysts argue that Western powers failed to impose meaningful costs on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea, which they say only increased Putin’s willingness to use military force in pursuit of his foreign policy objectives. Until its invasion in 2022, Russia’s strategic gains in the Donbas were more fragile. Supporting the separatists had, at least temporarily, increased its bargaining power vis-à-vis Ukraine.  

In July 2021, Putin authored what many Western foreign policy experts viewed as an ominous article explaining his controversial views of the shared history between Russia and Ukraine. Among other remarks, Putin described Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” who effectively occupy “the same historical and spiritual space.”

Throughout that year, Russia amassed tens of thousands of troops along the border with Ukraine and later into allied Belarus under the auspices of military exercises. In February 2022, Putin ordered a full-scale invasion, crossing a force of some two hundred thousand troops into Ukrainian territory from the south (Crimea), east (Russia), and north (Belarus), in an attempt to seize major cities, including the capital Kyiv, and depose the government. Putin said the broad goals were to “de-Nazify” and “de-militarize” Ukraine.

However, in the early weeks of the invasion, Ukrainian forces marshaled a stalwart resistance that succeeded in bogging down the Russian military in many areas, including in Kyiv. Many defense analysts say that Russian forces have suffered from low morale, poor logistics, and an ill-conceived military strategy that assumed Ukraine would fall quickly and easily.

In August 2022, Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive against Russian forces, recapturing thousands of square miles of territory in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions. The campaigns marked a stunning setback for Russia. Amid the Russian retreat, Putin ordered the mobilization of some three hundred thousand more troops, illegally annexed four more Ukrainian regions, and threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity.”

Fighting in the subsequent months focused along various fronts in the Donbas, and Russia adopted a new tactic of targeting civilian infrastructure in several distant Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, with missile and drone strikes. At the first-year mark of the war, Western officials estimated that more than one hundred thousand Ukrainians had been killed or wounded , while Russian losses were likely even higher, possibly double that figure. Meanwhile, some eight million refugees had fled Ukraine, and millions more were internally displaced. Ahead of the spring thaw, Ukraine’s Western allies pledged to send more-sophisticated military aid, including tanks. Most security analysts see little chance for diplomacy in the months ahead, as both sides have strong motives to continue the fight.

What have been U.S. priorities in Ukraine?

Immediately following the Soviet collapse, Washington’s priority was pushing Ukraine—along with Belarus and Kazakhstan—to forfeit its nuclear arsenal so that only Russia would retain the former union’s weapons. At the same time, the United States rushed to bolster the shaky democracy in Russia. Some prominent observers at the time felt that the United States was premature in this courtship with Russia, and that it should have worked more on fostering geopolitical pluralism in the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, in Foreign Affairs in early 1994, described a healthy and stable Ukraine as a critical counterweight to Russia and the lynchpin of what he advocated should be the new U.S. grand strategy after the Cold War. “It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire,” he wrote. In the months after Brzezinski’s article was published, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia pledged via the Budapest Referendum to respect Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty in return for it becoming a nonnuclear state.

Twenty years later, as Russian forces seized Crimea, restoring and strengthening Ukraine’s sovereignty reemerged as a top U.S. and EU foreign policy priority. Following the 2022 invasion, U.S. and NATO allies dramatically increased defense, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, as well as ramped up their sanctions on Russia. However, Western leaders have been careful to avoid actions they believe will draw their countries into the war or otherwise escalate it, which could, in the extreme, pose a nuclear threat.  

Ukraine’s Struggle for Independence in Russia’s Shadow

What are U.S. and EU policy in Ukraine?

The United States remains committed to the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. It does not recognize Russia’s claims to Crimea or the other regions unlawfully annexed by Russia. Prior to the 2022 invasion, the United States supported a settlement of the Donbas conflict via the Minsk agreements [PDF].

Western powers and their partners have taken many steps to increase aid to Ukraine and punish Russia for its 2022 offensive. As of February 2023, the United States has provided Ukraine more than $50 billion in assistance, which includes advanced military aid, such as rocket and missile systems, helicopters, drones, and tanks. Several NATO allies are providing similar aid.

Meanwhile, the international sanctions on Russia have vastly expanded, covering much of its financial, energy, defense, and tech sectors and targeting the assets of wealthy oligarchs and other individuals. The U.S. and some European governments also banned some Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a financial messaging system known as SWIFT; placed restrictions on Russia’s ability to access its vast foreign reserves; and blacklisted Russia’s central bank. Moreover, many influential Western companies have shuttered or suspended operations in Russia. The Group of Eight, now known as the Group of Seven , suspended Russia from its ranks indefinitely in 2014.  

The invasion also cost Russia its long-awaited Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Germany suspended its regulatory approval in February. Many critics, including U.S. and Ukrainian officials, opposed the natural gas pipeline during its development, claiming it would give Russia greater political leverage over Ukraine and the European gas market. In August, Russia indefinitely suspended operations of Nord Stream 1, which provided the European market with as much as a third of its natural gas.

What do Ukrainians want?

Russia’s aggression in recent years has galvanized public support for Ukraine’s Westward leanings. In the wake of Euromaidan, the country elected as president the billionaire businessman Petro Poroshenko, a staunch proponent of EU and NATO integration. In 2019, Zelensky defeated Poroshenko in a sign of the public’s deep dissatisfaction with the political establishment and its halting battle against corruption and an oligarchic economy.

Before the 2022 offensive, polls indicated that Ukrainians held mixed views on NATO and EU membership . More than half of those surveyed (not including residents of Crimea and the contested regions in the east) supported EU membership, while 40 to 50 percent were in favor of joining NATO.

Just days after the invasion, President Zelenskyy requested that the EU put Ukraine on a fast track to membership. The country became an official candidate in June 2022, but experts caution that the membership process could take years. In September of that year, Zelenskyy submitted a formal application for Ukraine to join NATO, pushing for an accelerated admission process for that bloc as well. Many Western analysts say that, similar to Ukraine’s EU bid, NATO membership does not seem likely in the near term.

• What triggered Russia’s moves in 2014?
• Why did Russia launch an invasion in 2022?

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Understanding Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

• Aaron Stein
• Maia Otarashvili
• February 24, 2022
• Eurasia Program

Introduction 

On February 24, 2022 Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. 

In times of crisis, balanced, in-depth analysis and trusted expertise is paramount. The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) remains committed in its mission to provide expert analysis to policy makers and the public on the most pressing foreign policy challenges.

To help you understand this evolving crisis, we have compiled a list of publications, event recordings, and podcasts to help explain current events in Ukraine. FPRI has also included resources about other protracted conflicts, the neighboring Baltic states, and the role of NATO in managing the fallout from the war.

If you have not already done so, be sure to follow the FPRI fellows listed below for further reading and resources. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Russian Aggression in Ukraine & Russian Defense 

• Moscow’s Mind Games: Finding Ideology in Putin’s Russia – February 2023
• The Confrontation with Russia and US Grand Strategy – February 2023
• Tanks a Lot (Well, Actually Not That Many for Ukraine) – February 2023
• Wagner Group Redefined: Threats and Responses – January 2023
• ‘Let’s Make a Deal’? Ukraine and the Poor Prospects for Negotiations with Putin – January 2023
• Will Russia Survive Until 2084? – December 2022 
• How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success – December 2022 
• Ecological Path to Peace Is Possible in Ukraine – November 2022 
• Putin’s Philosophers: Reading Vasily Grossman in the Kremlin – November 2022 
• The Russian-Ukrainian War Triggers an Energy Revolution – September 2022 
• Ukraine’s Defense Industry and the Prospect of a Long War – September 2022
• Understanding Russia’s Efforts at Technological Sovereignty – September 2022
• Watching the War on Russian Television – August 2022
• War Crimes in Ukraine: In Search of a Response – August 2022
• Why Russian Elites Are Standing By Putin – July 2022
• Climate Action Meets Energy Security: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Adds a New Dimension to Energy Transition – June 2022
• The War’s Impact on Russia’s Economy and Ukrainian Politics – June 2022
• The Evolving Political-Military Aims in the War in Ukraine After 100 Days   – June 2022
• How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine has Affected Kazakh Politics – June 2022
• Russia’s Use of Cyberattacks: Lessons from the Second Ukraine War – June 2022
• What’s Next for Ukraine’s (and its Neighbors’) Domestic and Foreign Policy? – June 2022
• Reviving the Prospects for Coercive Diplomacy in Ukraine – May 2022
• Food Prices, Elections, and the Wagner Group in Africa – April 2022
• Appraising the War in Ukraine and Likely Outcomes – April 2022
• Ukraine War Sparks Suspicion over Russia’s Designs on Kazakhstan – April 2022
• Do Russians Really “Long for War” in Ukraine? – March 2022
• Kadyrov’s Ukraine Gamble – March 2022
• Lukashenka’s Fatal Mistake – March 2022
• What We Can Learn about Russian Strategy from Ivan III – March 2022
• The Russian Navy in the Russia-Ukraine War Scare – February 2022
• How Will China Respond to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis? – January 2022
• Moscow’s Compellence Strategy – January 2022
• Zapad 2021 and Russia’s Potential for Warfighting – September 2021 
• Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy – August 2021 
• Russia’s Forever Wars: Syria and Pursuit of Great Power Status – September 2021
• Understanding Russia’s Cyber Strategy – July 2021
• Russia’s Nuclear Strategy: A Show of Strength Despite COVID-19 – May 2021
• Even Thieves Need a Safe: Why the Putin Regime Causes, Deplores, and Yet Relies on Capital Flight for its Survival – November 2021
• Five Years of War in the Donbas – October 2019 
• Coal Mines, Land Mines and Nuclear Bombs: The Environmental Cost of the War in Eastern Ukraine – September 2019
• ​​ Volodymyr Zelensky: Ukraine’s Servant of the People? – September 2019 
• Russia’s Tragic Great Power Politics – March 2019
• Ukraine’s Presidential Election and the Future of its Foreign Policy – March 2019
• Bond of War: Russian Geo-Economics in Ukraine’s Sovereign Debt Restructuring – September 2018
• The Ukrainian Military: From Degradation to Renewal – August 2018
• Reflecting on a Year of War – February 2023
• Will Russia Survive Until 2084? – January 2023
• The Russia-Ukraine War and Implications for Azerbaijan – July 2022
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: Uncompromising Objectives and an Uncertain Future – June 2022 
• The State of Play in Ukraine – May 2022
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: Nukes, Negotiations, and Neutrality – April 2022 
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: Implications for China  – March 2022
• What the West Needs to Know About Russia’s War in Ukraine – March 2022
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: Analyzing the Western Military and Economic Response – March 2022
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Humanitarian Crisis and Prospects for Resolution – March 2022
• Russia’s Long Shadow and the Future of Europe – February 2022
• Russia-Ukraine Tensions: Will Moscow’s Compellence Strategy Work? – January 2022 
• Interview with Russian Dissident Ilya & Former Duma Member Ilya Ponomarev – January 2022
• Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy  – August 2021
• FPRI Special Briefing: U.S. Sanctions Against Russia – March 2021
• FPRI Special Briefing: Alexeyi Navalny and U.S.-Russia Relations – February 2021
• Don’t Mention the War – April 2023
• Torn in the USA: How Important is the War in Ukraine for the United States? – March 2023
• Ukraine One Year In: The Helpers – March 2023
• Reflecting on a Year of War – February 2023 
• Mobilize This – January 2023
• War in Ukraine: A Firsthand Account – December 2022 
• Public Opinion in Russia: What Do We Know, What Can We Know? – November 2022
• Russia’s War in Ukraine: The Strategic Picture – September 2022
• Russia’s Manpower Conundrum in Ukraine – May 2022
• The Air War Over Ukraine – March 2022 
• Debating a No Fly Zone: The Risk of Escalation with Moscow – March 2022
• Examining Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – March 2022
• The Risk of War: Russia’s Options for War in Ukraine – February 2022
• The Risk of War in Ukraine: Moscow’s Military Posture – February 2022
• Tensions Over Ukraine: Russia’s Rationale for War – February 2022
• Russian Perceptions of Military AI and Automation – February 2022
• Russia’s Anti-Satellite Weapon: Understanding Russia’s ASAT Test – November 2021
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Navalny? – September 2021
• Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy: Looking Back at the Ukraine Crisis – August 2021
• Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – May 2021
• Learning From Our Adversaries: Russian Aerial Operations in Syria – April 2021

Protracted Conflicts: Moldova and Georgia

• War As a Neighbor: Moldova and the Challenges of Facing Russian Aggression in Ukraine – April 2023
• Strategic Connectivity in the Black Sea: A Focus on Georgia – December 2021
• Taking Stock of U.S. Military Assistance to Georgia – December 2021 
• Georgia’s Democracy is in Trouble, It’s Time for Closer Engagement – November 2021 
• Russia’ Permanent War Against Georgia – March 2021
• Georgia’s Doomed Deep-Sea Port Ambitions: Geopolitics of the Canceled Anaklia Project – October 2020
• Anatomy of a Fraud: The Moldovan Parliamentary Elections – March 2019
• Geopolitical Games Expected Ahead of Moldova’s 2018 Elections – October 2017 
• The Future of US Strategic Interests in the South Caucasus: Challenges and Opportunities for the Biden Administration – October 2021
• Tug of War in the Black Sea: Defending NATO’s Eastern Flank – July 2021
• The Turkish Veto: Why Erdogan Is Blocking Finland and Sweden’s Path to NATO – March 2023
• Article 5 for the Next Decade of NATO – December 2022 
• The Art of the Possible: Minimizing Risks as a New European Order Takes Shape – November 2022 
• The Baltics Predicted the Suspension of the Ukraine Grain Deal — and Contributed to its Resumption – November 2022
• Good and Bad Neighbors: Perceptions in Latvian Society – September 2022
• Europe’s Wait for Turkmen Natural Gas Continues – September 2022 
• From the Migrant Crisis to Aggression in Ukraine: Belarus is Still on the Baltic Agenda – July 2022 
• Two Less Obvious Lessons for Baltic Defense from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – June 2022
• The Baltic Road to Energy Independence from Russia Is Nearing Completion – May 2022
• America Needs a Comprehensive Compellence Strategy Against Russia – April 2022
• Baltic Sea Mining as an Extension of the Russian Gray Zone – April 2022
• The Significance of the Turkish Straits to the Russian Navy – March 2022
• Fear, Solidarity, and Calls for Further Action in the Baltics as Russia Invades Ukraine – March 2022
• Latvia’s First Response to Russia’s War in Ukraine – March 2022
• Turkey’s Careful and Risky Fence-Sitting between Ukraine and Russia – February 2022
• At the Double: Poland’s Military Expansion – January 2022 
• Turkey’s Response to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis – January 2022 
• Afghanistan was a Turbulent NATO Proving Ground for the Baltic States – December 2021
• Crowded Pond: NATO and Russian Maritime Power in the Baltic Sea – December 2021 
• Baltic Perspectives on U.S. and Transatlantic Nuclear Negotiations with Russia – October 2021
• Namejs vs. Zapad: Military Exercises on Both Sides of the Frontline – September 2021 
• Reconceptualizing Lithuania’s Importance for U.S Foreign Policy – July 2021
• Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – April 2021
• Nord Stream 2: Germany’s Faustian Bargain with Gazprom and Why it Matters for the Baltics – December 2020
• Cooperation, Competition, and Compartmentalization: Russian-Turkish Relations and Their Implications for the West – May 2021
• America’s Approach to the Three Seas Initiative – May 2021
• The Baltic States as NATO Heavyweights – March 2023 
• The Future of European Energy – February 2023
• What’s Happening With Russian Speakers in Latvia? – January 2023
• We Can France if We Want To: What Does Paris Want for Ukraine and Europe? – November 2022 
• Giorgia on My Mind: Italy’s Rightward Turn and Its Implications – October 2022 
• Stuck in the Magyar: Why is Hungary the “Bad Boy” of Europe? – October 2022 
• Bloc Party: The EU and the War in Ukraine – September 2022 
• The View from Ukraine: An interview with Dr. Volodymyr Dubovyk – August 2022 
• What Does Erdogan, Erdo-want? – July 2022
• Baltic Power Hour – July 2022
• No More Niinistö Nice Guy: Has Finland’s Security Calculus Changed? – June 2022
• Swedening the Deal: Stockholm Turns to NATO – June 2022
• The Energy Trilemma: An interview with Dr. Andrei Belyi – May 2022
• The Sejm Difference? Poland and the New, Old Europe – May 2022
• Bundes-where? Germany’s Politics and Security in Changing Times – May 2022
• Ukrainian Refugees in Latvia: An interview with Agnese Lāce  – April 2022
• Who Speaks For Eastern Europe? – February 2022
• Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs on Latvia’s Foreign Policy Challenges – November 2021 
• Reframing the Baltic states: An Interview with Dr. Andres Kasekamp – October 2021

FPRI Experts to Follow 

• Rob Lee – @RALee85   Eurasia Senior Fellow, PhD Student at King’s College, London
• Bob Hamilton – @BobHam88   Black Sea Fellow, Research Professor at the U.S. Army War College  
• Maia Otarashvili – @MaiaVanRijn Deputy Director of Research
• Aaron Stein – @aaronstein1  
• Chris Miller – @crmiller1 Director of Eurasia Program, Assistant Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
• Nikolas Gvosdev @FPRI_Orbis   Editor, Orbis: FPRI’s Journal of World Affairs, Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in Economic Geography and National Security at the U.S. Naval War College
• Clint Watts – @SelectedWisdom Distinguished Research Fellow , National Security Contributor for NBC News and MSNBC
• Indra Ekmanis – @indraekmanis Baltic Sea Fellow and Editor of the Baltic Bulletin
• Una Bergmane @UnaBergmane Baltic Sea Fellow, Researcher at the University of Helsinki
• Mitchell Orenstein @m_orenstein   Eurasia Senior Fellow, Professor of East European and Russian Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• Stephanie Petrella @sdpetrella  Eurasia Fellow
• Sara Ashbaugh @sara_ashbaugh Editor in Chief, BMB Russia
• Eilish Hart @EilishHart    Eurasia F ellow, Eurasia Program
• Clara Marchaud @ClaraMarchaud Editor of BMB Ukraine

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Center for Security Studies

Russia’s war in ukraine: china’s calculus.

Euro Atlantic

China confronts difficult choices in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The war presents China with several risks, but China continues to view Russia as a valuable partner. China remains cautious about supporting Russia in ways that would incur heavy costs, such as helping it to evade sanctions, but it is likely to continue providing rhetorical support and resisting calls to rein in Russia, argues Brian G. Carlson in this CSS Analysis.

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Russia’s war in Ukraine will serve as an important test for the China-Russia relationship. In recent years, a shared desire to revise the international order and to reduce the power of the US has drawn the two countries together. Russia has set aside concerns about a potential threat from China, calculating that China’s rise distracts the US from Europe and thereby increases Russia’s room for maneuver. Similarly, China perceives benefit from Russia’s antagonism with the West, which limits US ability to focus on China’s growing power and ambitions in Asia and beyond.

Download To the publication (PDF, 362 KB)

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Background Video of South asian countries and their people

Understanding the War

On February 24, 2022, the world watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, inciting the largest war in Europe since World War II. In the months prior, Western intelligence had warned that the attack was imminent, amidst a concerning build-up of military force on Ukraine’s borders. Learn about the war and its historical context.

Expert Analysis

Learn factual information on Ukraine, the war, and the historical context to the conflict. HURI’s faculty, staff, and associates offer their knowledge and insights in articles, interviews, podcasts, and other media.

Resources for Ukrainians

Find immigration resources, ways to preserve your data, and opportunities for scholars, students, writers, and cultural workers.

Voices from Ukraine

Today, on the one-year after of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I look back and see what a difficult, tragic, sometimes unspeakably horrific path of transformation I, and perhaps the whole of Ukraine, have gone through.

Kseniia , psychologist, 38 years old. Feb 24, 2023

Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has shifted the lives of Ukrainians irrevocably on personal and societal levels. As Ukraine closes in on one full year of war, people have had to adjust to an aggressive new climate, reconstruct their habits and work schedules, and mentally acclimate to a harsh new reality.

Dmytro and Boris , medical professionals, Kyiv region. Dec 2022

Today I saw tanks passing by my building. They looked dirty, outdated and out of place. Although I knew they must have been on the way to the military base right outside of the city, it was unsettling to see.

Regina L, Mykolaiv , age 50. March-May

What You Can Do

Support for Ukraine takes many forms, from helping refugees find safe haven to assisting with the procurement and delivery of essential military and humanitarian supplies. Find ways that your time and skills can make a difference for Ukrainians.

Take Part in Local Action

Demonstrate global support for Ukraine by attending rallies and other events. Encourage lawmakers to keep sending aid. Assist local efforts to welcome refugees.

Ukraine needs financial support for its military defense and to aid vulnerable citizens impacted by the violence. We encourage supporting organizations with minimal overhead costs, efficient operations, transparency in spending, and local expertise.

Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained

Putin’s invasion in February began Europe’s first major war in decades.

by Jen Kirby and Jonathan Guyer

Russia is bombarding major cities in Ukraine, more than a week into a war where Moscow has faced setbacks on the battlefield — yet seems undeterred from its campaign to take Ukraine.

Get in-depth coverage about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Why Ukraine?

Learn the history behind the conflict and what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said about his war aims .

The stakes of Putin’s war

Russia’s invasion has the potential to set up a clash of nuclear world powers . It’s destabilizing the region and terrorizing Ukrainian citizens . It could also impact inflation , gas prices , and the global economy.

How other countries are responding

The US and its European allies have responded to Putin’s aggression with unprecedented sanctions , but have no plans to send troops to Ukraine , for good reason .

How to help

Where to donate if you want to assist refugees and people in Ukraine.

On March 4, Russia seized Zaporizhzhia , one of Europe’s largest nuclear power plants. Russian shelling of the southeastern Ukraine facility set off a fire , which Ukrainian officials warned could set off a nuclear disaster. It took hours, but the fire was extinguished, and international monitors said that they do not detect elevated radiation levels and that the fire did not damage “essential” equipment. US officials have said Russia now appears to be in control of the plant.

But the incident was a reminder of how dangerous this war in Ukraine is becoming, and how uncertain and confusing things still are on the ground. Russian troops were advancing toward Kyiv, and thousands and thousands are fleeing in advance of a possible siege on the city.

The Russian military has made advances in the south, and are gaining in the area of Kherson, a port city on the Black Sea whose control is reportedly contested , and Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. Russian bombardment of these cities has resulted in humanitarian issues , with bridges and roads damaged by the fighting and dwindling access to food, clean water, medicine, and electricity in certain areas. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, experienced heavy Russian fire this week, and strikes have heavily damaged residential areas .

Ukrainian and Russian officials met in early March, and tentatively agreed on the need to humanitarian corridors — basically, safe zones for civilians to flee and supplies to pass through — but did not reach agreements on a larger ceasefire. As of March 6, multiple attempts to evacuate Ukrainian civilians have been halted because of Russian shelling.

Putin’s attempt to redraw the map of Europe risks becoming the most devastating conflict on the continent since World War II. Already, it is causing an astounding humanitarian crisis: Hundreds, perhaps thousands , of civilians have died, and more than 1.5 million people have fled the violence so far, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making it the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

The battle for Ukraine began in the early morning hours, local time, on February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a “special military operation” into the country of about 40 million. He claimed the Russian military seeks “demilitarization and denazification” but not occupation; attacks shortly followed from multiple fronts and targeted toward multiple cities.

Ukraine’s resistance has complicated Russia’s efforts to seize the country. Russian forces have not made the progress they likely thought they would at the start of the campaign. The Russian military’s early strategy has perplexed some experts and observers . But the more protracted this war becomes, the more catastrophic it will be.

The United States and its allies in Europe and the United Kingdom imposed the toughest financial sanctions ever on Russia after the first incursion, and have only built on these penalties since. On February 26, the United States and European countries agreed to block some Russian banks from SWIFT, a global messaging system, which will essentially prevent those institutions from doing any global transactions, a punishment that allies had previously hesitated to pursue . Already, Russia’s economy is reeling from the impact of these penalties .

This sustained international pressure, and Ukraine’s resistance, may still not be enough to force Russia to end its military campaign. That leaves Ukraine — and the world — in a perilous and unpredictable moment.

Ukraine is under siege

After months of Putin building up tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border and a series of failed diplomatic talks, Russia is now waging a full-out war on Ukraine.

Tensions escalated quickly when, on February 21, Putin delivered an hour-long combative speech that essentially denied Ukrainian statehood . He recognized the independence of two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine where Moscow has backed a separatist rebellion since 2014 and sent so-called peacekeeping forces into the region. As experts said , that was likely just the beginning, setting the stage for a much larger conflict.

Days later, that larger conflict materialized. On February 24, Putin announced he was launching an assault “to defend people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime,” a reference to a false claim about the government in Ukraine. He demanded Ukraine lay down its weapons or be “ responsible for bloodshed .”

Soon after Putin’s speech, reports emerged of explosions around cities, including Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and the capital Kyiv . The Ukrainian foreign minister called it “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” By the afternoon in Ukraine, Russian troops and tanks had entered the country on three fronts : from Belarus in the north, from the east of Ukraine, and from the south.

The Russian military has targeted critical infrastructure, like airports, with airstrikes and has launched more than 400 missiles , as of March 1. As a senior US defense official said on February 26, “There’s no doubt in our mind that civilian infrastructure and civilian areas are being hit as a result of these barrages.”

The main battlefronts are in Kyiv’s outskirts; in southern Ukraine, including the major city of Mariupol; and in eastern Ukraine around Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.

“They had maximal war aims,” Michael Kofman, research director in the Russia studies program at CNA, said in an interview posted on Twitter on February 25. “They had a military operation that’s now in progress, first to try to achieve regime change, encircle the capital, and try to overthrow the Ukrainian government, and then a much larger set of pincer movements to encircle and envelope Ukrainian forces. Try to do this quickly and force surrender of isolated pockets.”

But the Russian army has not been able to completely roll over Ukrainian forces, and some analysts have suggested Moscow may have been surprised at Ukraine’s resistance. Pentagon officials said that, as of March 4, Russia has committed about 92 percent of its combat power so far. Ukraine’s airspace remains contested.

Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation, told a panel of reporters on February 28 that Russia’s military performance has been odd. “In other words, some of the things that I would have expected — like the air force taking a major role — have not happened.”

“Seems to me there was a lot of war optimism and a sense that the [Ukrainian] government would fall with just a little push,” Charap continued. “And that didn’t happen. I wouldn’t read too much into that about the ultimate course of the war, though. This is still a situation where the deck unfortunately is stacked against the Ukrainians, despite their bravery.”

Putin himself has called on the Ukrainian army to “take power into their own hands and overthrow” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a sign that Putin remains focused on regime change. “According to the available intelligence, the enemy marked me as a target No. 1 and my family as the target No. 2,” said Zelenskyy, speaking on the night of February 24.

Efforts to stop the fighting have so far failed. On February 28, high-level officials from Russia and Ukraine met at the Ukraine-Belarus border, and again on March 3. Russia has continued to insist that a ceasefire requires “demilitarization” and neutrality for Ukraine, but Ukraine has only continued to push for more military aid and ascension into Western bodies like the EU, even signing an EU membership application amid the fighting .

Both Ukraine and Russia have suggested they will hold another round of talks in coming days. Across conflicts, there is usually a severe escalation in fighting before ceasefires, as everyone attempts to maximize their leverage. “I think that they want to inflict maximum damage to pressure the Ukrainian government to seek some sort of ceasefire that is effectively a surrender,” said Margarita Konaev, associate director of analysis and research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

The toll of this young conflict is growing. The UN has said that, as of March 6, more than 350 civilians have been confirmed killed and hundreds more have been wounded; Ukraine’s emergency services puts the civilian death toll at 2,000 people as of March 2 . Ukrainian officials have said about 11,000 Russian troops have been killed in the fighting, as of March 6, but American and European estimates of Russian casualties have been substantially lower . The Russian government has reported nearly 500 soldier deaths . Experts said all these statistics should be treated with a great deal of caution because of the fog of war and the incentives both Russia and Ukraine have to push a particular narrative.

• Why is Putin attacking Ukraine? He told us.

Ukrainian officials have also accused Russia of war crimes after reports of a shelling of an orphanage and kindergarten outside of Kyiv . Across Ukraine, thousands of civilians of all ages are enlisting to fight . Ukrainian officials called on residents to “make Molotov cocktails” to defend against the invasion. More than 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries like Poland since the conflict began, according to a United Nations estimate .

The roots of the current crisis grew from the breakup of the Soviet Union

Russia’s invasion contravenes security agreements the Soviet Union made upon its breakup in the early ’90s. At the time, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, had the third-largest atomic arsenal in the world. The US and Russia worked with Ukraine to denuclearize the country, and in a series of diplomatic agreements , Kyiv gave its hundreds of nuclear warheads back to Russia in exchange for security assurances that protected it from a potential Russian attack.

But the very premise of a post-Soviet Europe is helping to fuel today’s conflict. Putin has been fixated on reclaiming some semblance of empire, lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is central to this vision. Putin has said Ukrainians and Russians “ were one people — a single whole ,” or at least would be if not for the meddling from outside forces (as in, the West) that has created a “wall” between the two.

• “It’s not about Russia. It’s about Putin”: An expert explains Putin’s endgame in Ukraine

Last year, Russia presented the US with a list of demands , some of which were nonstarters for the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Putin demanded that NATO stop its eastward expansion and deny membership to Ukraine, and also made other demands for “security guarantees” around NATO.

The prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO has antagonized Putin at least since President George W. Bush expressed support for the idea in 2008. “That was a real mistake,” Steven Pifer, who from 1998 to 2000 was ambassador to Ukraine under President Bill Clinton, told Vox in January. “It drove the Russians nuts. It created expectations in Ukraine and Georgia, which then were never met. And so that just made that whole issue of enlargement a complicated one.”

Ukraine is the fourth-largest recipient of military funding from the US, and the intelligence cooperation between the two countries has deepened in response to threats from Russia. But Ukraine isn’t joining NATO in the near future, and President Joe Biden has said as much. Still, Moscow’s demand was largely seen as a nonstarter by the West, as NATO’s open-door policy says sovereign countries can choose their own security alliances.

Though Putin has continued to tout the threat of NATO, his speech on February 21 showed that his obsession with Ukraine goes far beyond that. He does not see the government in Ukraine as legitimate.

“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said, per the Kremlin’s official translation . “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians.”

The two countries do have historical and cultural ties, but as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explained , Putin’s “basic claim — that there is no historical Ukrainian nation worthy of present-day sovereignty — is demonstrably false .”

As experts noted, it is difficult to square Putin’s speech — plus a 2021 essay he penned and other statements he’s made — with any realistic diplomatic outcome to avert conflict. It was, essentially, a confession that this wasn’t really about NATO, said Dan Baer, the acting director of the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “It was about that he doesn’t think Ukraine has a right to exist as a free country,” he said before Putin’s escalation on the night of February 23.

This is the culmination of eight years of tensions

This isn’t the first time Russia has attacked Ukraine. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, invaded eastern Ukraine, and backed Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. That conflict has killed more than 14,000 people to date .

Russia’s assault grew out of mass protests in Ukraine that toppled the country’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, which began over his abandonment of a trade agreement with the European Union. US diplomats visited the demonstrations, in symbolic gestures that further agitated Putin.

President Barack Obama, hesitant to escalate tensions with Russia any further, was slow to mobilize a diplomatic response in Europe and did not immediately provide Ukrainians with offensive weapons.

“A lot of us were really appalled that not more was done for the violation of that [post-Soviet] agreement,” said Ian Kelly, a career diplomat who served as ambassador to Georgia from 2015 to 2018. “It just basically showed that if you have nuclear weapons” — as Russia does — “you’re inoculated against strong measures by the international community.”

Since then, corruption has persisted in the Ukrainian government, and the country ranks in the bottom third of the watchdog group Transparency International ’s index.

Ukraine’s far-right presence has grown and become somewhat normalized, and there are government-aligned fascist militias in the country. But Moscow has drawn out those issues to advance false claims about genocide and other attacks on civilians as a way to legitimize the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine and to create a pretext for invasion. In his prerecorded speech shared on the eve of the bombardment of Ukraine, Putin said he sought the “ denazification ” of Ukraine.

To be clear: The Ukrainian government is not a Nazi regime and has not been co-opted by the far right. Zelenskyy is Jewish; he speaks proudly of how his Jewish grandfather fought against Hitler’s army .

Yet, days earlier, Putin used these sorts of claims as part of his explanation for recognizing as independent the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic, the two territories in eastern Ukraine where he has backed separatists since 2014. “Announcing the decisions taken today, I am confident in the support of the citizens of Russia. Of all the patriotic forces of the country,” Putin said before moving troops into the regions for “peacekeeping” purposes.

At the time, most experts Vox spoke to said that looked like the beginning, not the end, of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.

“In Russia, [it] provides the political-legal basis for the formal introduction of Russian forces, which they’ve already decided to do,” Kofman, of CNA, told Vox on February 21 . “Secondarily, it provides the legal local basis for Russian use of force in defense of these independent republics’ Russian citizens there. It’s basically political theater.”

It set “the stage for the next steps,” he added. Those next steps are now clear.

How the rest of the world is responding

The United States and its allies around the world have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and have since announced increasingly tough sanctions, intended to completely isolate Russia from the international community and inflict real economic costs.

Biden announced on the afternoon of February 24 that the United States would impose sanctions on Russian financial institutions, including cutting off Russia’s largest banks from the US financial system, and on Russian elites in Putin’s inner circle. America will also implement export controls on certain technologies . The United Kingdom and Europe added their own sanctions, imposing the “ massive ” penalties the West had been warning Putin about.

The US and its allies have only amped up the pressure since then. On February 25, the EU and US imposed sanctions on Putin himself . On February 26, the US and European countries announced an agreement to cut some (but not all) Russian banks off from SWIFT, the global messaging system that enables most international transactions, which will make it very difficult for Russia to make transactions beyond its borders. (Japan also signed on to SWIFT actions on February 27.) The US and its allies have said they will target Russia’s central bank , specifically its foreign reserves that Moscow needs to help support its currency. The US has continued to add penalties, including joining other countries in closing US airspace to Russian aircraft , and sanctioning more than a dozen oligarchs.

The United States has said it will not involve troops in any Ukrainian conflict, though more US military aid to Ukraine is on its way and the US has shored up its presence on NATO’s eastern flank. On February 24, the Pentagon said it would send 7,000 additional troops to Germany , and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on February 26 that he was authorizing “up to $350 million” in additional military aid to Ukraine, including “further lethal defensive assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne, and other threats it is now facing.”

Such aid, according to a February 26 tweet by State Department spokesperson Ned Price, will be provided “immediately” and include “anti-tank and air defense capabilities.” Other European and NATO countries are also stepping up their assistance, including Germany , which reversed a long-standing policy of not sending lethal aid to conflict zones.

• How to punish Russia for Ukraine

Russia knows that the US and its partners do not want to commit themselves militarily, and, as Putin launched his invasion, he offered an ominous warning as he touted Russia’s nuclear arsenal : “There should be no doubt that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.” On February 27, Putin escalated that threat by putting the country’s nuclear deterrent forces on high alert .

NATO has vowed to protect its members from any Russian aggression. On February 25, NATO announced that it was activating part of its NATO Response Force — a 40,000-troop unit modernized after the 2014 Crimea invasion — to protect allies on NATO’s eastern flank. “We are now deploying the NATO Response Force for the first time in a collective defense context. We speak about thousands of troops. We speak about air and maritime capabilities,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said .

Yet these are largely defensive measures, which means most of the punishment against Russia will come in the form of economic sanctions. Still, the West is starting to shift from an original hesitancy to impose the most severe costs on Russia over fears of what it might mean for Europe, the US, and the rest of the global economy — and what Russia might do to retaliate.

They’re not all the way there, however. For example, even the SWIFT action is expected to leave some carve-outs so Russia can still export gas to Europe . The tougher the sanctions on Russia, the harder it will hit the US and especially European economies, so leaders are still trying to soften the impact. But the fallout from these punishments — along with other measures, like the EU and United States barring Russia from their airspace — is being felt in Russia, as the ruble crashes and analysts warn of a deep recession .

• Prepare for higher gas prices thanks to Russia — and more inflation

A way out of this war is difficult to contemplate as bombs are falling on Ukraine, but the US and its allies are going to have to do careful diplomacy to isolate and put pressure on Russia in the long term — and create incentives for Moscow to stop its assault on Ukraine . The US and its allies are also likely going to have to decide how much they want, or can, support Ukraine as it battles Russia.

“The real question, I think, is going to come down to what extent the West can and will try to support and supply a long-term insurgency against Russia,” said Paul D’Anieri, an expert on Eastern European and post-Soviet politics at the University of California Riverside. “And what level of success does Russia have in fighting back against? Unfortunately, it seems like the best strategy for peace right now is when enough Russians die, that the Russians decide it’s not worth it anymore.”

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Ways forward for the war in Ukraine

Maryna Venneri

The war in Ukraine marks the end of the post-Cold War era of peace. It demonstrates that U.S. power is not absolute and the threat of nuclear escalation remains as close and implacable as ever. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become the largest conventional military attack since World War II. Writing about the conflict in The New York Times , Emma Ashford said, “There are no other good options [than massive sanctions]. Diplomacy has been exhausted.” Indeed, diplomacy seems to have reached a dead end; the parties involved cannot seem to find common ground for negotiation or consensus. The two sides’ perspectives and demands preclude the possibility of successful diplomacy.

What does Russia want?

Russia has been transparent about its demands. It has stated its four requirements of Ukraine to end the war:

• Fully demilitarize, which means that Ukraine should stop any kind of military action;
• Amend the constitution toward neutrality (which would prevent it from joining NATO);
• Recognize Crimea as Russian territory; and
• Recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

Russia is not willing to compromise and, in trying to force Ukraine to bend, has taken a harsh stance on Western countries helping Ukraine.

What does Ukraine want?

Ukraine, however, is equally firm in its demands of Russia: It requires peace, immediate ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of all troops, and security guarantees. Ukraine’s position regarding territorial sovereignty is unchangeable — it will never recognize Crimea and the Donbas region as part of Russia. Moreover, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is attempting to capitalize on the moment; in a big push to secure Ukraine’s place in the West, he is pleading for immediate EU membership and if not membership in NATO, then at least closer cooperation with it through the establishment of a no-fly zone over the country.  

What does the West want?

The West’s priority is to prevent spillover. EU and NATO countries are willing to pay any price to contain the military conflict in Ukraine without deploying their own personnel. However, the EU and NATO are unable to match their military efforts with Ukraine’s expectations: No one wants to directly confront Russia , which threatens to use its nuclear weapons. Western countries have shown a rare display of unity in imposing sanctions on Russia and arming Ukraine , but there is no agreement on further action. Eastern bloc countries , excluding Hungary , are pushing for more direct military support, while the U.S., representing NATO, is trying to walk a thin line between backing Ukraine and not becoming directly involved.

The war in Ukraine isn’t really about Ukraine  

Considering Ukraine’s complex geopolitical position, the current invasion is not about, as President Vladimir Putin claims, protecting ethnic Russian speakers or saving the lives of oppressed Russians. The Kremlin’s propaganda that Ukraine and Russia are brotherly nations “connected … by blood [and] family ties” is merely a smokescreen. Rather, Russia’s aim is to secure the territory of Ukraine, which will serve as a buffer between Moscow and NATO expansion.

Ukrainians feel that the war is about their independence, identity, and very survival. While Europe and the U.S. admire their patriotism and democratic values, helping them by providing financial assistance and imposing economic sanctions, they refuse to take on a greater role in the conflict. But NATO and the U.S. are not innocent bystanders . The decision to broaden NATO’s influence into post-Soviet countries, despite promises to Russian leaders not to expand “one inch” east of Germany , was a determining factor in today’s conflict.

NATO and U.S. officials continue to repeat that NATO is a defensive alliance and is not at war with Russia , which means it will not take part in the fighting in Ukraine. Russia, however, views things differently. It does not hide its dispute with the West, making clear that there will be “consequences” for any EU agency or citizen involved in the conflict and that any attempt by the West to intervene with the Russian “special military operation” will have “consequences greater than faced in history.” Later, Putin openly stated that any provision of lethal weapons, fuel, or lubricants to the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be seen as a hostile action against Russia and thus, all Western weapons shipments are to be considered “legitimate targets.”

Fearing war fatigue in Ukraine or an escalation of tensions with the potential to spill over beyond region, the West is keen to act. But what can the EU and NATO do to help resolve the war in Ukraine?

The West’s current strategy won’t work

The main response to Russian aggression thus far has been economic sanctions. These measures are not an efficient means of ending the conflict in Ukraine. For Russia, the imposition of sanctions is nothing new. Thus, Putin likely took such a response into his calculations regarding the war. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the EU’s role in the Ukraine conflict demonstrates such indifference: “The Western countries should wake up to the fact that the days of their undivided rule in the global economy are long gone.”

Sanctions will certainly harm Russia, but the Kremlin can survive the immediate economic fallout. Russia’s international reserves total $643.2 billion, of which approximately 40% is in euros, 30% in Chinese yuan, 5% in British pounds, 5% in Japanese yen, and 20% in gold. Thus, the West can cut Russia off from half of its foreign currency reserves — those kept in euros, pounds, and yen — but Moscow can still maintain its economy for some time using Chinese currency and its gold reserves. If the latest negotiations in the U.S.  regarding the imposition of secondary sanctions on buying or selling Russian gold are enforced and European leaders follow suit by imposing such measures, too, there is a possibility to cut Russia off from one of its remaining ways to postpone the collapse of its currency and, subsequently, its economy.

The way forward

If the West wants to hit Russia where it hurts, it must stop buying Russian gas and oil. While the Ukraine war has prompted policymakers in Brussels to expedite efforts to end the bloc’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas (currently targeting a deadline of 2027 ), a concrete strategy for achieving this has yet to be determined. Historical precedent suggests that it is questionable whether the EU will be able to maintain its harsher stance toward Russian gas. Initial discussions about diversifying the European gas market started in 2006 and continued in 2009, after the Russo-Georgian War, and 2014, following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. The economic sanctions imposed in 2014 were limited to the oil sector and EU purchases of Russian gas have actually increased since then.

Stronger sanctions are essential as, at least for now, there are no prospects of the West putting boots on the ground to counterbalance Russia. These should include Russia’s expulsion from the SWIFT system. The focus should be on targeting its essential industries, such as the energy sector, since energy revenues from Europe amount to more than one-third of Russia’s income .  

The conflict in Ukraine presents an opportunity for the EU and the U.S. to revive their strong union based on realpolitik. The U.S. must take a stronger stance and play a key role in leading a coalition not against Russia per se, but against the irreversible consequences for the world order should Ukraine fall to authoritarian rule. Now is the moment for strong leadership and innovative diplomacy beyond the usual tools of lengthy negotiations, institutional bureaucracy, and economic leverage.

The loss of Ukraine would damage the existing security framework and regional order beyond repair. It would put the West in a weak position and open the floodgates for more dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to use military force in pursuit of their interests — and go unpunished for their crimes. As the war in Ukraine has made clear, the old liberal order of enforcing the rules and punishing the violators is dead. The conflict is revealing a new geopolitical order, wherein power must be balanced with power.

Maryna Venneri is a Ukrainian freelance writer providing policy analysis and academic research on the Eastern European region with a specific focus on civil war studies.   She was previously a fellow with MEI's Frontier Europe Initiative working on Black Sea security. The views expressed in this piece are her own.

Photo by Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click here .

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Ukraine invasion — explained

The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep. The current conflict is more than one country fighting to take over another; it is — in the words of one U.S. official — a shift in "the world order." Here are some helpful stories to make sense of it all.

The ripple effects of Russia's war in Ukraine continue to change the world

Scott Neuman

Alyson Hurt

A year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, the repercussions continue to reverberate around the world. Not only has the war in Ukraine set off a geopolitical realignment, but it has caused economic hardship far from the epicenter of the fighting.

The Feb. 24, 2022, invasion has touched off a refugee crisis, as Ukrainians flee the conflict in their homeland and many Russian men seek to avoid conscription. Meanwhile, it has spurred a process toward expanding NATO, with Finland and Sweden pursuing membership after decades of official neutrality.

Ukraine and Russia are key exporters of wheat, barley, corn and cooking oil, particularly to African and Middle Eastern countries. Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal last summer to allow Ukrainian grain to pass through Black Sea ports, but Russia is reportedly still hindering shipments . Russia is also a major producer of fertilizer and petroleum. Disruptions to the flow of these goods are compounding other supply chain and climate challenges, driving up food and gas prices and causing shortages in places such as Chad , Tunisia and Sri Lanka .

More than 8 million refugees have fled Ukraine in what the World Health Organization describes as "the largest movement of people in the European Region since the Second World War." Many have been involuntarily relocated by Russia. Others have put a strain on resources, as well as schools and hospitals, in Poland and Germany .

A 21st century war in Europe — led by a nuclear power — is pushing the world toward realignment. It has rattled NATO, the European Union and the U.N ., forcing countries to take sides in ways that have led to escalating tensions and diplomatic shifts. For example, Turkey , despite being a NATO member, has increased trade with Russia since the start of the war and has thrown up objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance.

Russia is one of the world's largest producers of oil and fuel. European countries have banned the Russian oil, gas and diesel they relied on, which initially caused a steep spike in prices. However, moves by European nations to lock in alternative sources , along with conservation efforts and a mild winter, have largely alleviated those price hikes. Now prices have returned to pre-invasion levels.

Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Its attack on Ukraine has notably reenergized NATO, with the U.S. and other member states funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment into Ukraine. Early weapons deliveries included anti-tank rockets such as the U.S.-made Javelin. In the latest moves, the U.S ., Germany and Britain have promised to provide state-of-the-art tanks.

NPR's Will Chase, Alex Leff, Pam Webster, Desiree F. Hicks and Nishant Dahiya contributed to this report. The text and graphics build on previous work by Alina Selyukh, Connie Hanzhang Jin and Nick Underwood.

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Russia-Ukraine Conflict

• 26 Feb 2022
• 12 min read
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This editorial is based on “Stay the Course” which was published in Indian Express on 26/02/2022. It talks about the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

For Prelims: Russia-Ukraine Conflict, Regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Black Sea, Cold War, NATO, Minsk Protocols, Warsaw Pact.

For Mains: Ukraine-Russia Conflict and India’s Interests in Ukraine and Russia, Implications of Conflict on India.

The Ukraine crisis has crossed a critical point, with Russia following up its recognition of rebel regions in eastern Ukraine (Donbas region)- Donetsk and Luhansk with a full-fledged invasion to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine.

This decision by Moscow is a rejection of the inviolability of national borders in Europe as agreed to in the Helsinki agreement of 1975 and a major challenge to the global order.

While on one hand Russia remains India’s biggest and time-tested supplier of military hardware, the US, the EU, and UK are all vital partners that India cannot afford to antagonise. Considering India’s strategic interests, a balanced approach that India has followed till now, is a pragmatic way forward.

What is the Conflict?

• Contestation about post- Cold War central European territoriality and resurrecting a burnished Russian past is at the core of the Ukraine crisis.
• Ukraine and Russia share hundreds of years of cultural, linguistic and familial links.
• For many in Russia and in the ethnically Russian parts of Ukraine, the shared heritage of the countries is an emotional issue that has been exploited for electoral and military purposes.
• The balance of power in the region, Ukraine being a crucial buffer between Russia and the West, Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership and Russian interests in the Black Sea accompanied by the protests in the Ukraine are the major causes of the ongoing conflict.

What is the Current Scenario?

• The conflict is now the largest attack by one state on another in Europe since the Second World War, and the first since the Balkan conflict in the 1990s.
• With the invasion of Ukraine, agreements like the Minsk Protocols of 2014, and the Russia-NATO Act of 1997 stand all but voided.
• Sanctions have been imposed by the U.S., the European Union (EU) , the UK, Australia, Canada and Japan.
• China rejected calling Russia’s moves on Ukraine an “invasion” and urged all sides to exercise restraint.
• More recently, India abstained on a US-sponsored UNSC resolution that “deplores in the strongest terms” Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine, with New Delhi saying dialogue is the only answer to settling differences and disputes and voicing “regret” that the path of diplomacy was given up.
• China too abstained, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

What is Russia’s Stand?

• NATO’s expansion violated promises made prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union , that Ukraine’s accession to NATO would cross Russia’s red lines, and that NATO’s strategic posture poses a continuing security threat to Russia.
• NATO’s expansion as a politico-military alliance, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, was a U.S.’s initiative intended to temper European ambitions for strategic autonomy and to counter Russia’s resurgence.
• The Ukraine crisis was justified by the Russian President on the grounds of security interests and the rights of ethnic Russians in former Soviet Republics.
• The US and its western allies are refusing to bar Ukraine from NATO, claiming it as a sovereign country that is free to choose its own security alliances.

How will India be impacted by this Conflict?

• The Russia-Ukraine crisis will send cooking gas, petrol and other fuel bills soaring for Indian households and businesses. Higher oil prices add to freight/transportation costs.
• The surge in crude oil prices will lead to an increase in India’s oil import bills , and gold imports could jump back up, keeping the rupee under pressure.
• However, getting alternative sources for fertilisers and sunflower oil may not be as easy.
• Exports to Russia account for less than 1% of India’s total exports, but exports of pharmaceuticals and tea could face some challenges , as will shipments to CIS countries. Freight rate hikes could make overall exports less competitive, too.

What Could Be The Way Forward?

• The world is still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic , which hurt the poorest countries and people the most, it can ill-afford a conflict-induced slowdown.
• It is incumbent on Russia to implement a ceasefire and, subsequently, for both sides to return to the negotiating table. Escalation is not an option.
• A sustainable security order has to reflect current realities: it cannot be simply an outgrowth of the Cold War order, and it has to be driven from within.
• Also, a European order that does not accommodate Russia’s concerns through genuine negotiation cannot be stable in the long term.
• Therefore, the West (US and Other western Countries) should push both sides to resume talks and live up to their commitments as per the Minsk agreement to restore relative peace on the border.

What is an India-Specific Way Forward?

• It will have to balance the pressure from one strategic partner to condemn the violation of international law, with that from another to understand its legitimate concerns. India managed these pressures during the 2014 crisis of Crimea annexation, it shall again manage it effectively.
• Economic Aspect: On the fiscal side, the Government, which has been conservative in its revenue assumptions in the Budget, has the room to pre-emptively cut domestic fuel taxes to nip inflationary expectations, stoke faltering consumption levels and sustain India’s fragile post-Covid-19 recovery through this global churn.
• At the same time, the US, the EU, and UK are all vital partners , and India’s relations with each of them, and the Western world in general, go far beyond the sum of their parts.
• Delhi must talk continually to all sides , and engage with all of its partners, keeping in mind that there is no justification for the violation of any country’s territorial sovereignty.
• India must also make it clear to coercing countries that their “with us or against us” formulations are hardly constructive.
• The best course is for all parties to step back and focus on preventing an all-out war, rather than divide the world and return it to the days of the Cold War.

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Just War Theory and The Russia-Ukraine War

1. War, Unjust War, and Just War

There are three wars currently in progress in Ukraine: the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian war against Ukraine, and the Ukrainian war against Russia. It is necessary for the purpose of evaluation to make these distinctions, for the first of these wars is, like the Second World War (understood as a war between allied and axis powers), neither just nor unjust. Only a war fought by one or more belligerents against an opponent can be just or unjust. Many or most of what we refer to as wars consist of a just war on one side and an unjust war on the other—or, to be more precise, a war with predominantly just aims on one side and a war with predominantly unjust aims on the other.

There is no credible understanding of a just war according to which the Russian war against Ukraine is a just war. It is a wholly unprovoked war of aggression intended by those who initiated it—primarily Putin—to conquer Ukraine, annex its territory, and assimilate its population. The motives of the war’s planners are doubtless many and various, but some stand out as obvious and dominant. One is to expand the Russian empire until it is at least coextensive with its earlier boundaries under the tsars and the post-revolutionary Soviet dictators. Another motivation echoes the American concern about “falling dominoes” as a reason for invading Vietnam. Many of the states that were ruled by Soviet puppet regimes during the Cold War have, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, been adopting more and more elements of Western culture, in particular liberalism and democracy. Ukraine was a falling domino that threatened to become a fully independent, economically flourishing democracy in a large border territory that Russia had repeatedly ravaged in the past—a state that would be an example, highly visible to Russians, of an appealing alternative to Putin’s tyrannical kleptocracy.

Ukraine’s war against Russia is, by contrast, a paradigmatically just war of defense against unjust aggression. These judgments, however, leave open a range of highly important moral questions. Is it permissible for Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine? What are the limits to what it is permissible for Ukrainians to do in defense against Russia? What is it permissible, or required, for those in other countries to do? Is it, for example, permissible for other countries to impose economic sanctions on Russia even though doing so will harm civilians? Should other countries provide weaponry to Ukraine? And, if so, are there limits to the types of weaponry it is permissible to provide? Is it, for example, permissible to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions? Finally, might it ever be permissible to intentionally kill Russian civilians if this were necessary to prevent the killing of an even greater number of Ukrainians?

2. Permissible Targets in War

I begin with the first of these questions, even though it is perhaps of no practical interest to readers outside Russia, and it seems unlikely that there will be many, if any, readers of this article inside Russia. Nevertheless, it is at least of theoretical interest that, according to traditional just war theory, Ukrainian soldiers are legitimate targets for Russian soldiers, who act permissibly in attacking and killing them. In this respect, the traditional moral theory coincides with the law of armed conflict, according to which it is not illegal for combatants to fight in a war that is illegal. The view that it is morally permissible for Russian soldiers to kill Ukrainian soldiers is an implication of the traditional doctrine known as the “moral equality of combatants,” which asserts that all combatants in a war have the same rights and duties and that none do wrong unless they violate the rules governing the conduct of war. It makes no difference, morally, whether the war in which they are fighting, or the goals for which they are fighting, are just or unjust.

But what can possibly be said in support of the claim that Russian soldiers are morally permitted to go in tanks where Ukrainians have been living in peace, posing no threat to any Russian or anyone else, and begin to kill members of the Ukrainian military? None of those members had done anything to make him- or herself morally liable to be attacked or killed. Of course, after the Russians invaded, threatening the freedom, well-being, and lives of millions of morally innocent and unthreatening people, Ukrainian soldiers did begin to threaten the lives of Russian soldiers. Yet a substantial proportion of these Ukrainians were, when the invasion began, ordinary civilians who joined the military in response to it and began to threaten Russian soldiers only to defend their fellow Ukrainians. That they then threatened the Russian soldiers does not mean that the Russians had a right to self-defense in the circumstances. They forfeited that right, along with the right not to be attacked, by threatening the lives and well-being of innocent Ukrainians.

As an analogy, imagine that a man carrying a loaded gun enters the house of a family who are strangers to him with the intention of holding the residents captive and perhaps killing some of them. One family member gets a weapon to defend himself and the others. It would be preposterous to suppose that his preparation to defend the innocent people in the house makes it permissible for the intruder to kill him in self-defense.

According to what has come to be known as “revisionist just war theory,” the moral equality of combatants is false. Ukrainian soldiers are not legitimate targets, even if they threaten the lives of Russian soldiers. They are innocent people in the relevant sense, in that they have done nothing to make themselves morally liable to attack. All violent action by Russian soldiers against Ukrainians, civilian or military, is morally wrong—unless, perhaps, it is intended to prevent Ukrainian soldiers from acting in a way that would itself be wrong, such as launching a missile against a civilian target in Russia. It does not follow, however, that all Russian soldiers are murderers or attempted murderers—though some of them are. Many of them have been deceived by government propaganda or act under duress, or both. These conditions do not affect the objective wrongness of their action but they do mitigate the soldiers’ culpability.

One interesting though largely theoretical question concerns the comparative wrongness of attacking Ukrainian soldiers and attacking Ukrainian civilians. Suppose that a Russian soldier intentionally kills a Ukrainian soldier, knowing that in doing so he will also kill a Ukrainian civilian as a side effect. Most people believe that, even if killing the soldier is morally wrong, killing the civilian is even more seriously wrong. But most people also believe that it is in general more seriously wrong to kill a person as an intended means than to kill that person as an unintended side effect. If this is true, then, since neither the soldier nor the civilian is liable to any harm at all, intentionally killing the soldier should be more seriously wrong than killing the civilian as a foreseen side effect. Also, as Helen Frowe has noted , killing the soldier increases, though perhaps not significantly, the probability that Russia will succeed in achieving its unjust aims. The greater wrongness of killing the soldier is, however, compatible with the Russian soldier’s being more culpable for the killing of the civilian, as he presumably believes, in accordance with traditional just war theory, that his killing Ukrainian soldiers is not morally objectionable in any way.

3. The Requirements of Necessity and Proportionality

According to both traditional and revisionist just war theory, it is presumptively permissible for Ukrainian soldiers to engage in violence in the collective defense of all those threatened by Russian aggression. There are, however, conditions in which the resort to or continuation of a war in support of just, defensive aims is not permissible. These conditions are identified by the just war principles of necessity and proportionality.

For a war or its continuation to be necessary in the relevant sense, it must be the morally best means of achieving just aims, taking into account both the probability of success and the probable bad effects, both intended and unintended. The just aim of the Ukrainians is to avoid subjugation by Russia. And it seems clear that when Russian tanks entered Ukraine and sought to encircle Kyiv, there was no alternative at all to armed resistance. It is conceivable that the Ukrainians could ultimately have maintained their political independence by engaging in mass nonviolent resistance, but that would have required years of preparation and training of the civilian population, and thus it was not an option when the tanks and ground forces arrived.

Unlike the requirement of necessity, the requirement of proportionality does not compare a war or its continuation with alternative courses of action. It instead assesses whether the possible bad effects of a war, taking probabilities into account, would outweigh, or be excessive in relation to, the achievement of the just aims, again discounted for probabilities. Not all bad effects, though, count in determining whether a war or its continuation would be proportionate. Harms inflicted on those who are morally liable to those harms are bad effects but do not count in the assessment of proportionality. Assuming that each Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine is morally liable to be killed by Ukrainian forces, the Ukrainian war against Russia cannot be disproportionate because of the number of casualties among Russian soldiers.

One might wonder whether a war with a just cause could be disproportionate because of the harms that would be inflicted by the other , unjust side on those who are fighting for the just cause and the civilians in whose defense they would be fighting. In some cases, the prospect of such harms do make it disproportionate for the governing authorities to initiate or prolong a war with a just cause, or for other states to enable the government to do this. In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky has suggested that this is true of Ukraine’s war against Russia. The interviewer observes that the only public debate that people are taking seriously:

is, how much in arms should we give them? And should we simply give them arms? Or should we intervene militarily? And that is the debate. But a more rational way of looking at this, as you say, would be to think about how to prevent Ukrainians from dying in this horrible war.

Chomsky responds by saying that “I would agree except for the word ‘rational.’ It’s the more humane way” and then goes on to explain, in effect, that rationality is distinct from morality. His view is that the risks inherent in the Ukrainian war against Russia are, to use my term, disproportionate, so that the just cause of preserving Ukraine’s political independence and territorial integrity must be abandoned in favor of a “diplomatic settlement” that ends the war “ without destroying Ukraine and going on the destroy the world .” The settlement will involve “neutralization of Ukraine, some kind of accommodation for the Donbas region, with a high level of autonomy, maybe within some federal structure in Ukraine, and recognizing that, like it or not, Crimea is not on the table.” Chomsky’s view, in short, is that Ukraine must make concessions to Russian aggression, allowing Russia to achieve some of its unjust aims. And at least part of the reason for this is that the potential harms to Ukrainians (“destroying Ukraine”) are too great for the continuation of the war to be morally justified.

Although I have the most profound respect for Chomsky, I disagree with him here. To the extent that his concern is, as the interviewer suggests, “to prevent Ukrainians from dying,” my view is that it is the Ukrainians’ right to decide whether they would rather endure the risks of continued war or accept the certainty of subjugation to Russia. In an editorial written in September 2023, Thomas Friedman reported , after visiting Ukraine, that “nearly every Ukrainian I spoke to in Kyiv was at once exhausted by the war and passionately determined to recover every inch of their Russian-occupied territory.” (Admittedly, those in Kyiv may have a different view from those in the areas in which most of the fighting is taking place.)

A similar point applies, with certain grave reservations, to the controversy that arose about supplying Ukrainian forces with cluster munitions. These weapons can be effective against concentrations of troops, even in established defensive positions, but tend to leave substantial amounts of unexploded ordnance lying on the ground that may kill civilians, particularly children, even years later. For this reason, some states have agreed to legal bans against their use. Yet, because the ground war against Russia is being fought entirely on Ukrainian territory, those who would be exposed to the later risks from the present use of cluster munitions are the Ukrainians themselves; and it can thus be argued that they should be the ones to decide whether the military benefits from the use of these weapons are sufficient to outweigh the future risks (which they could minimize through concerted intra- and post-war efforts to locate and remove the undetonated explosives).

Chomsky is certainly right, though, to suppose that the larger risks to the world could render the Ukrainian war of defense disproportionate. His principal concern is with the risk of escalation to nuclear war. That risk is of course ever-present in this war but seemed greater at the time he was interviewed, in April of 2022, when there was uncertainty about what Russia’s response might be if Western states were to supply Ukraine with various forms of advanced weaponry—particularly following Putin’s several explicit threats to use nuclear weapons. It now seems, however, that the continued provision of the same types of weapons that have already been provided and been militarily effective involves little risk of provoking the Russians to use nuclear weapons.

The same cannot be said, however, about direct military intervention in support of Ukraine, particularly by states that are members of NATO. That seems clearly ruled out as disproportionate because of the risk of escalation. Although some just war theorists are reluctant or unwilling to concede this, unjust aggressors can render what would otherwise be permissible defensive action disproportionate by credibly threatening sufficiently serious harms in response to such action. In the present case, if there were a sufficiently high probability that Putin would use nuclear weapons against NATO forces were they to intervene in support of Ukraine, and if, whatever intentions they might have in advance, NATO powers might then use nuclear weapons in retaliation, I think Putin would have made it disproportionate and therefore impermissible for NATO forces to intervene militarily in Ukraine.

The deterrence of conventional intervention has, indeed, been one of the two most important uses of nuclear weapons by their possessors. In addition to deterring nuclear attacks, nuclear weapons have consistently been used, usually without any need for explicit threats, to deter third-party intervention in support of the victims of conventional attacks (usually though not always unjustified) by a nuclear-armed state.

Another ground for concern that the Ukrainians’ pursuit of their just aims by means of war might be, or have been, disproportionate is that, at certain times, the war between the two states has threatened to cause mass starvation in certain areas of the world by preventing the shipment of grains and other foods from both Ukraine and Russia to those who had previously relied on those supplies for their survival. At present, this does not seem to be a reason for judging the Ukrainian war against Russia to be disproportionate but that could change. It is conceivable that the Russians could use the threat of starving entire populations as a means of rendering the continuation of the war by Ukraine disproportionate. One must, however, set against this one good effect that the Ukrainian war against Russia is having internationally, and that is to strengthen the deterrence of other potential aggressors. As Paul Krugman notes in a recent editorial, “Russia’s failures in Ukraine have surely reduced the chances that China will invade Taiwan.” In this way, as many have observed, the sacrifices by the Ukrainians have been of great service to all peoples at risk of unjust attack.

4. Liability to Harm in War

Earlier there was reason to hope that the coordinated implementation of economic sanctions against Russia by many of the world’s states could make a significant contribution to the effort to prevent Russia from succeeding in achieving its aims in Ukraine. If Putin and his fellow oligarchs could have been persuaded that among the costs to them of continuing the war would be the substantial weakening of the Russian economy and rising discontent among the citizens, they might have been motivated to find a way of saving face while bringing the war to an end. But there were two main concerns about sanctions at that time.

One was that sanctions would be largely ineffective. That concern seems to have been to a considerable degree warranted. Russia’s efforts to achieve its aims in Ukraine have so far been frustrated by military resistance but it is doubtful that economic sanctions have been a significant supplement to military action. There is, indeed, some reason to believe that they may have been counterproductive overall, in much the way that Russia’s attacks on power stations in Ukrainian cities have been. As both the Germans and the British learned, or should have learned, in the Second World War, efforts to demoralize enemy civilian populations by harming them often have the opposite effect, causing people to hate those who harm them even more, thus reinforcing their support for their own government.

The other concern that the broad-ranging sanctions raised was that they might constitute terrorism insofar as they have been intended to impose hardship on the civilian population as a means of motivating ordinary citizens to exert pressure on the Russian government to end the war. If terrorism consists in intentionally and harmfully using innocent people as a means of influencing the action of others, then the imposition of sanctions with the intention of inflicting burdens on ordinary civilians may constitute terrorism, albeit of a quite minor sort.

This reason for concern about the permissibility of sanctions seems to me less serious than the doubts about the efficacy of sanctions. For most Russians, the effects of the sanctions have been comparatively minor and have not violated their rights. Citizens in Moscow, for example, have never had a moral right to be able to eat McDonald’s hamburgers. Nor have most Russian citizens been entirely morally innocent. When the leader for whose being in power they bear some responsibility, however small, initiates an unjust war against a neighboring population—and particularly one that their state has a long history of oppressing—they have a responsibility, and perhaps a duty, to register some form of objection, even if only clandestinely, given the risks involved in open protest. It is true, of course, that no one Russian civilian on his or her own could have prevented the initiation or continuation of the Russian war against Ukraine; but a certain number of them acting together could have. That most Russians have failed to fulfill their responsibility to oppose the war—and indeed have continued to support the war —may make them morally liable to suffer the comparatively minor harms that have been caused by the sanctions.

The theoretical point behind this perhaps surprising claim about civilian liability is that liability to harm is essentially comparative. Liability arises when harm is unavoidable but distributable—that is, when someone must be harmed but who it will be is a matter of choice. A person is morally liable to be harmed when it is comparatively more just that he be harmed—typically because he is responsible for the fact that harm is unavoidable—than that anyone else be harmed, taking the magnitudes of the different harms into account. Liability, in short, is a matter of comparative justice in the distribution of harm when harm is unavoidable.

In this case, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made great harm unavoidable. If sanctions could be effective—and, as I noted, it was reasonable earlier to believe that they could be—then the choice that potential imposers of sanctions had was between a high probability of minor harms to a large number of Russian civilians and a reduction in the probability that some smaller number of morally innocent Ukrainians (civilians and soldiers) would be killed by Russian soldiers. And whether and to what extent an individual is morally liable to be harmed on a particular occasion is a function not only of the degree to which that individual is causally and morally responsible for a threatened unjust harm but also on the magnitude of the unjust harm that is likely to be averted by harming that individual.

Common views about the ways in which harms and benefits aggregate might alone provide a justification for choosing to impose sanctions in these conditions. This justification would not be based on considerations of liability but would instead be a “lesser-evil justification.” Claims about aggregation are often illustrated by such choices as, for example, preventing a large number of people from experiencing a minor headache and preventing a small number of people from dying. It may be claimed that there is no number of people whose headaches it would be better to prevent rather than the saving of the lives of just a few people. This is of course a claim about preventing harms rather than causing them; but if it were true that, whatever one did, one would either cause each of a very large number of people to have a minor headache or cause only one person to die, it seems intuitively that it would be better to cause the headaches no matter how many people would suffer them. And a similar claim might be made about the choice between causing a large number of Russian civilians to suffer minor harms from sanctions and allowing a much smaller number of Ukrainian civilians to be killed.

But once we factor in the fact that most Russian civilians bear some very small degree of responsibility for the fact that some harm is unavoidable in the circumstances, while Ukrainian civilians (and soldiers) bear none at all, it seems that there is not only a lesser-evil justification but also a liability justification for inflicting small harms on a very large number of Russian civilians as a means of reducing the probability that a much smaller number of Ukrainians will be killed—as well as reducing the probability that many more Ukrainians will have to live under Russian domination. (There has always, as I noted, been uncertainty about the effectiveness of economic sanctions. But insofar as some people must bear the costs of that uncertainty, they should, as a matter of comparative justice, be Russian civilians rather than Ukrainians, other things being equal.)

There are, of course, many courageous and morally admirable Russians who have openly protested against their country’s war, many of whom have suffered serious harms through imprisonment and other punishments at the hands of their government. Some of these individuals have also experienced additional though lesser harms as a side effect of the sanctions, which only compounds the injustices they have suffered. One hopes that they nevertheless approve of the sanctions, at least to the extent that they have been effective, and excuse those who have imposed them as both groups share the same cause of ending Russia’s unjust and cruel war.

5. Terrorism in the Russia-Ukraine War

I will conclude with a more serious concern about terrorism. The Russian war has been consistently terrorist, with repeated bombings of residential buildings, the rape, torture, and killing of civilian detainees, the intentional destruction of power stations to deprive ordinary Ukrainians of heat in winter, cooked food, clean water, and so on. Although Ukraine has been capable of terrorist reprisals, it has, at least until recently, largely refrained from exercising that capacity. Around mid-2023, there was a successful drone strike on the Kremlin, though the explosion was small and the damage minimal. As this was a strike on the political source of the Russian war, it cannot be considered a terrorist act. (Nor, I think, was the attempt to kill Aleksandr Dugin, which inadvertently killed his daughter Daria Dugina instead, an act of terrorism by whoever conducted it. Although they were civilians, both Dugin and his daughter were highly influential and effective propagandists for the Russian war who were therefore both causally and morally responsible to a significant degree—perhaps to a higher degree than most Russian combatants—for the threats to innocent people and just institutions in Ukraine.) There were also, however, other small-scale drone strikes in Moscow that may have warranted Putin’s description of them as “terrorist.”

More recently there was a Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, that killed at least 22 people and injured many more. This occurred the day after Russia fired more than 150 missiles at various Ukrainian cities, damaging or destroying factories, hospitals, and schools. And just prior to the attack on Belgorod, President Zelensky announced that Ukraine would “work toward pushing the war back” to “where it came from—home to Russia.” These facts support the suspicion that the Ukrainian attack on the city was a reprisal for the attacks on Ukrainian cities—that is, a terrorist reprisal to terrorist attacks. Although a Ukrainian official claimed that only military facilities in Belgorod had been targeted, the official did not offer any evidence in support of this claim. One hopes that the official’s statement is true, but in the absence of detailed evidence about the alleged targets and what was actually destroyed, skepticism cannot be lightly dismissed.

Even if many Russian civilians are, in the circumstances, liable to small harms from economic sanctions, they do not bear sufficient causal or moral responsibility for their government’s unjust war to make them liable to be killed. If , therefore, the attack on Belgorod was indeed intended as a reprisal-in-kind for the Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, it was a terrorist act for which there was no moral justification. Indeed, in addition to being immoral, the attack on Belgorod may ultimately be counterproductive or self-defeating, both because it may tarnish Ukraine’s international reputation as the innocent victim of aggression and terrorism that nevertheless abides by the moral and legal rules of war, and because it may alienate the sympathies of some of the Russians who at least until now have supported Ukraine in whatever ways they could. These people may be rightly reluctant to express or provide support for a military that intentionally kills Russian civilians.

There are, I concede, difficult theoretical issues here. Suppose, however unrealistically, that it were true that Ukraine’s intentionally killing 500 Russian civilians by means of drone attacks on Moscow would cause the Russian government to end the war in Ukraine and withdraw from all Ukrainian territories except Crimea. And suppose that all of the Russian civilians who would be killed would be adults who voted for Putin and have consistently supported the Russian war. Killing these people would prevent not only the killing of a far greater number of Ukrainians, including children, but also the subjugation of Ukraine by Russia. In these conditions, some killings are, from the Ukrainian perspective, inevitable or unavoidable. Assuming, as I claimed earlier, that liability is comparative, it might be argued that it would be more just that a smaller number of civilians who bear some tiny responsibility for the fact that some killings are unavoidable should be killed than that a much greater number of civilians who bear no responsibility for this fact should be killed. If so, it seems that there should be a liability justification for intentionally killing the Russian civilians as a means of ending the war—that is, that the Russian civilians are, in the circumstances, morally liable to be killed. And if the Russian civilians are liable to be killed, killing them would not be an instance of terrorism, since terrorism is the intentional infliction of certain harms on people who are not liable to those harms as a means of manipulating the action of others.

Even if one’s intuition is that it would be permissible to kill the 500 Russian civilians, one need not accept that they are liable to be killed; for there might instead be a different form of justification for killing them. If killing them would avert vastly greater harms to wholly innocent Ukrainians, it might be justified as the lesser evil. The Russians would not be liable to be killed; hence killing them would wrong them and infringe each one’s right not to be killed. But their rights would be overridden by the need to defend the similar rights of a far greater number of Ukrainians. Killing them would indeed constitute terrorism, but terrorism that could be morally justified as the lesser evil.

There are thus three possibilities: (i) that the Russian civilians are liable to be killed so that killing them would not be terrorism, (ii) that killing them would be justified terrorism, and (iii) that killing them would be unjustified terrorism. The case for the claim that they are liable to be killed is based on the view that liability is a matter of comparative justice. Suppose, as I claimed earlier, that a large number of Russian civilians could be liable to suffer the comparatively minor harms inflicted by sanctions because they bear some very small degree of responsibility for the fact that harm is unavoidable, whereas Ukrainians bear none at all. In that case, Russian civilians could in principle be liable to greater harms, and perhaps even be liable to be killed, if killing them were the only way to reduce the risk of a vastly greater number of Ukrainians being killed.

One might object to this argument that, if the degree of a person’s responsibility for a threatened harm is very slight, then the harm to which that person can be liable on the basis of that responsibility must be slight as well, as in the case of the harms inflicted on Russian civilians by economic sanctions. This objection is challenged, however, by a common—though certainly not universal—intuition about an example that I refer to as ‘The Conscientious Driver’:

A person has chosen to take a drive in her car purely for pleasure. She is driving carefully and alertly and has kept her car well-maintained. Still, despite her precautions, her car malfunctions and veers uncontrollably off the road and, unless it is stopped, will kill a man having a picnic in the grass well away from the road. Some soldiers in a convoy are parked nearby and one of them can use a weapon he has to blow up the car, thereby saving the picnicker though killing the driver.

My view is that, because the driver chose to engage in a morally optional activity that she knew would expose each of a large number of other people to a negligible risk of great harm, she is responsible—though not culpable—for the fact that either she or the picnicker will be killed. Because of that, considerations of justice dictate that, if all other considerations are equal, she should be the one to be killed—that is, that she is liable to be killed to prevent her from killing the picnicker. But, if this is right, then a person can be morally liable to be killed on the basis of a minimal degree of responsibility for a threatened harm, though the harm must be at least as serious as that of being killed. Hence some Russian civilians who bear only a minimal degree of responsibility for the war might be morally liable to be killed if that were necessary to prevent the killing of a greater number of wholly non-responsible Ukrainian civilians.

There are, however, other differences that are probably morally significant between the case of the conscientious driver and that of the Russian civilians, such as that the killing of the driver would not use her as a means of saving the picnicker, though killing the Russian civilians would harmfully use them as a means of saving Ukrainians. I cannot, however, pursue these other differences here and must therefore leave it an open question which of the three views I noted above is the correct view about the hypothetical example in which killing Russian civilians would end the war in Ukraine. I do think that this example is of more than merely theoretical interest and hope that these brief and inconclusive thoughts about it will stimulate further discussion in the future.

6. Conclusion

In summary, I have argued that, because the Russian aim of conquering Ukraine and incorporating it into Russia is an unjust aim, virtually any use of force by the Russian military is impermissible. Ukraine and its supporters are, however, also bound by moral constraints, such as proportionality, that Russia can exploit to its advantage, perhaps making it impermissible for Ukraine to fully achieve all of its just aims. There are also moral constraints on what Ukraine may do that would be harmful to Russian civilians. I have argued, however, that not all harms that might be intentionally inflicted on at least some Russian civilians would constitute terrorism. But, for both moral and prudential reasons, Ukraine should not retaliate against Russian terrorist attacks by itself attacking civilian targets in Russia—except, perhaps, in the direst conditions in which there would clearly be either a lesser-evil justification or a liability-based justification for doing so.

Citation for Republication: This essay was originally published as part of a special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica entitled, “Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War.” A copy of the original article can be found here .

• Jeff McMahan

Jeff McMahan is the Sekyra and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including The Ethics of Killing and Killing in War , and he is currently editing a set of books for Oxford University Press on the legacy of his greatest teacher and good friend: Derek Parfit.

• civilian immunity
• civilian liability
• economic sanctions
• Editor: Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen
• Editor: Richard B. Gibson
• proportionality
• Reflections on the Russia-Ukraine War
• Revisionist just war theory
• the moral equality of combatants

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How Ukraine’s History Differs from Putin’s Version

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Yale professor Timothy Snyder, about the difference between the history of Ukraine and the version of it told by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Available to listen on NPR’s  All Things Considered

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to justify the invasion of Ukraine with a number of reasons, but we’re going to focus on one with a very deep stem. In essence, he argues that Ukraine has no right to exist, that it is historically Russian land and a fictional country created by Russian Bolsheviks. In a speech earlier this week, Putin claimed that Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood. And last summer, Putin published an essay titled “On The Historical Unity Of Russians and Ukrainians,” where he insisted that Ukraine and Russia’s shared history makes them one nation.

Historians say Ukraine’s actual history tells a different story. To learn more, we called Timothy Snyder. He is the Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. And he is with us now to tell us more. Professor Snyder, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Very glad to.

MARTIN: As we just heard, President Putin questions Ukraine’s very existence. How do you respond to these statements?

SNYDER: Dictators in foreign countries don’t get to tell you who you are. So even if it were true that Mr. Putin is - were a historian, which is not, you don’t get to tell another country who they are on the basis of reading a couple of books or writing an essay yourself. But in any event, the history that he tells doesn’t make any sense. His claim that Russia and Ukraine and others, for that matter, are one country because of something that happened a thousand years ago just doesn’t hold up logically. There weren’t nations in the modern sense a thousand years ago. And between the thousand years ago and now, an awful lot of things happened in the meantime.

MARTIN: so I wanted to get to both of these things separately. So first of all, can we just take these in two separate parts? First, I wanted to ask is, do you have a sense of how widespread are Putin’s beliefs about Ukraine’s history among Russians?

SNYDER: I think he is at an extreme. There are certainly lots of Russians, the surveys say about two-thirds, who believe in some version of we are one people. But Mr. Putin’s idea, which essentially is that God announced that we are one people a thousand years ago when a certain Viking chieftain baptized himself into Christianity, is an extreme view even in Russia.

MARTIN: So let’s flip this now and talk about Ukraine’s actual history, recognizing, of course, that you are a scholar with deep knowledge of the region and the history, and we cannot tell a thousand years of history just in our short time together today. Though could you just as briefly as you can tell us, what are the historical foundations of Ukraine as a nation independent of Russia? I mean, the fact that they have their own language is one telling data point, isn’t it?

SNYDER: Absolutely. So Russia’s mostly in Asia. Ukraine is a small country which is in Europe. Ukraine took part in every European turning point that we can think of - Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment. It’s all there. Like most European countries, Ukraine had a national movement in the 19th century which was directed against an empire which, of course, is not true of Russia. Russia was the name of an empire at that point. And then, as you say, Ukraine has its own language, but also a distinct tradition in poetry and literature, which is rather beautiful. And during the history of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union wasn’t Russia. The Soviet Union was created in part because everyone understood back in 1922 when the USSR was created that Ukraine was distinct and some kind of special place would have to be made for it. And then inside the Soviet Union, different things happened to Ukrainians. Stalinism was much harsher and more lethal in Ukraine. And all of that goes to make up a different historical memory in Ukraine today as opposed to Russia.

MARTIN: During a Harvard lecture last week, you said that, quote, “Ukraine is a place that helps us to understand other places. It’s not just a vacuum. It’s not just a place which gets defined by Russia. It’s a place which helps us to define ourselves.” Could you just tell us a little bit more about what you meant?

SNYDER: Yeah. I mean, Ukraine has been at the center of all of these 20th century and 21st century trends that are essential to understand. Ukraine was at the center of the civil wars after the First World War, when there were a couple of attempts to establish Ukrainian state. But those were put down and failed. Ukraine was at the center of Stalinism. Ukrainians died in the millions in a famine in the early 1930s. Ukraine was at the center of Hitler’s planning for the Second World War. His idea was to take hold of the black earth, the fertile soil of Ukraine, and use that to build a German empire.

And those two things taken together mean that Ukraine was the most dangerous place in the world to be in the ’30s and ’40s. Ukraine was at the center of the end of the Soviet Union. Ukraine is at the center of the problem of inequality, which we are also face in United States. And in the 2010s, Ukraine has been at the center of cyber war and hybrid war and new forms of war. So if you were to pick a place to understand major trends, you know, at least in the northern hemisphere, Kyiv would be a very good place to start.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, obviously many on the political right or the far-right, let’s say, are questioning why this matters. They’re saying, you know, what’s the relevance, you know, to the United States? Why is this in America’s national interest? And obviously there are all kinds of issues attached to that. But for someone who doesn’t understand the relevance this and why we are spending as much time focusing on this as we are, what would you say?

SNYDER: Well, I think there is a basic human impulse to care when a smaller people is invaded by a larger people for no reason at all. But beyond that, we in the United States, along with our partners and friends around the world, live the way we do things to a certain peaceful order based on law and predictability and our economy, our way of life as well as our freedom - and depend upon that continuing. The single most brutal way to violate that is for one country to invade another country for no reason, which is what is happening here. So if we care - I mean, some people in America don’t care about democracy, and I’m not going to reach them. But for those of us who do, democracy rises and falls all around the world, and Ukraine is a democracy that’s being attacked by a tyranny.

MARTIN: That was Timothy Snyder. He is a professor of history at Yale and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Professor Snyder, thank you so much for sharing this expertise with us today. Thank you very much.

SNYDER: Glad to be with you. Thanks.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website  terms of use  and  permissions  pages at  www.npr.org  for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Latest Developments in Russia – Ukraine Conflict

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine . Know more about this in the link given. This page gives a background of the issue with an analysis of the developments before the invasion.

The tensions on Ukraine’s border with Russia are at their highest in years. Fearing a potential invasion by Russia, the US and NATO are stepping up support for Ukraine. In this article, we explain the reason for tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the latest developments, the stand of various stakeholders in the region, and the way forward for the UPSC exam IR segment.

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union , Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

• Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it disintegrated, and Russia has tried to maintain the country in its orbit since then.
• In 2014, a separatist insurgency started in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donetsk Basin, also known as,
• Russia further gained a maritime advantage in the region due to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
• As a result, both the US and the EU have pledged to safeguard the integrity of Ukraine’s borders.

Image Source: Al Jazeera

Importance of Ukraine to Russia

• Ukraine and Russia have shared cultural and linguistic ties for hundreds of years.
• Ukraine was the most powerful country in the Soviet Union after Russia.
• Ukraine has been a hub for commercial industries, factories and defence manufacturing.
• Ukraine also provides Russia with access to the Black Sea and crucial connectivity to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reasons for Russian Aggression

The chief reasons for Russian aggression are discussed below.

• Russia, considering the economic significance of Ukraine, sought Ukraine’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), which is a free trade agreement that came into being in 2015.
• With its huge market and advanced agriculture and industrial output, Ukraine was supposed to play an important role. But Ukraine refused to join the agreement.
• Russia claims that the eastward expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which they call “ enlargement ”, has threatened Russia’s interests and has asked for written security guarantees from NATO.
• NATO, led by the U.S., has planned to install missile defence systems in eastern Europe in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to counter Russia’s intercontinental-range missiles.

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia has been indulging in military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an aspiring NATO member. Russia has stated that its troop deployment is in response to NATO’s steady eastward expansion. Russia argues that its moves are aimed at protecting its own security considerations.

• Russia has mobilised around 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
• Russia seeks assurance from the US that Ukraine shall not be inducted into NATO.
• This has resulted in tensions between Russia and the West which have been supportive of Ukraine. The U.S. has assured Ukraine that it will “respond decisively” in case of an invasion by Russia.

Image Source: The Hindu

Russia’s demands

• Russia has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO that includes countries like Ukraine and Georgia that share Russia’s borders.
• Russia asked NATO to pull back its military deployments to the 1990s level and prohibit the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the bordering areas.
• Further, Russia asked NATO to curb its military cooperation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

The response from the West

• The U.S. has ruled out changing NATO’s “open-door policy” which means, NATO would continue to induct more members.
• The U.S. also says it would continue to offer training and weapons to Ukraine.
• The U.S. is said to be open to a discussion regarding missile deployment and a mutual reduction in military exercises in Eastern Europe.
• Germany has also warned Russia that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be stopped if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
• The U.S. threatens Russia by imposing new economic sanctions in case of attempts of invasion against Ukraine.

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

What implications does the Russia – Ukraine crisis have on India? This is discussed in this section.

• Maintaining strong relations with Russia serves India’s national interests. India has to retain a strong strategic alliance with Russia as a result, India cannot join any Western strategy aimed at isolating Russia.
• There is a possibility of CAATSA sanctions on India by the U.S. as a result of the S-400
• A pact between the US and Russia might affect Russia’s relations with China. This might allow India to expand on its efforts to re-establish ties with Russia.
• The issue with Ukraine is that the world is becoming increasingly economically and geopolitically interconnected. Any improvement in Russia-China ties has ramifications for India.
• There is also an impact on the strong Indian diaspora present in the region, threatening the lives of thousands of Indian students.

Also read: India – Russia relations

India’s stand

• India called for “a peaceful resolution of the situation through sustained diplomatic efforts for long-term peace and stability in the region and beyond”.
• Immediately after the annexation, India abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on a resolution that sought to condemn Russia.
• In 2020, India voted against a Ukraine-sponsored resolution in the UN General Assembly that sought to condemn alleged human rights violations in Crimea.
• India’s position is largely rooted in neutrality and has adapted itself to the post-2014 status quo on Ukraine.

Way forward

• The US along with other western countries is expected to revive the peace process through diplomatic channels in mitigating the tensions between Ukraine and Russia which would be a time-consuming process.
• Experts recommend more dialogues between the west and Russia that exert emphasis on the issue surrounding Ukraine.
• Ukraine should approach and focus on working with its Normandy Format allies, France and Germany, to persuade the Russian government to withdraw assistance for its proxies and allow for the region’s gradual safe reintegration into Ukraine.
• The Russian military expansion in Ukraine can be prevented on the geoeconomic grounds that will hamper its trade in the region especially with the Nord Stream pipeline that can carve out a way of resolving the ongoing crisis as pointed out by an expert.
• Ukraine’s internal disturbances need to be addressed to revive the Minsk II agreement for the development of peace in the region and dissolve the ongoing tensions.

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

What is the relation between russia and ukraine.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until its disintegration in 1991. Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and Russia has tried to maintain its influence on the country in its orbit since then.

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

Although Ukraine has no membership offer from NATO, it has been closer to the alliance since its establishment in 1997. Plans for NATO membership were dropped by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned.

Is Crimea a part of Russia?

The majority of the world considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea that has been battled over for ages due to its strategic importance. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea which was a part of Ukraine due to its declining influence over the region and emerging insecurities.

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Ukraine-Russia war live: Zelensky says Putin is ‘afraid’ as Moscow suffers Satan II missile failure

Ukraine ‘closer to peace than we think’, zelensky tells allies in washington, article bookmarked.

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine was “closer to the end of the war” with Russia than many people realise.

Mr Zelensky is currently in Washington DC to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He added Vladimir Putin is “afraid” of Ukraine’s Kursk operation, in which it has taken more than 1,000 square km of Russian territory.

“I think that we are closer to peace than we think,” he told ABC in an interview that is due to be released in full on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been adamant peace talks will only begin if Kyiv abandons swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine to Russia and drops its NATO membership ambitions.

It comes as Russia appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” in a test of its Sarmat (Satan II) missile, a key weapon in the modernisation of its nuclear arsenal.

The Satan II missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks, according to arms experts.

The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes.

Russian forces storming east Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, bloggers and media say

Russian forces have begun storming the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a stronghold that has resisted Russian attack since the beginning of the 2022 war, according to Russian war bloggers and state media.

Russian forces in eastern Ukraine advanced at their fastest rate in two years in August, according to multiple open source maps, even though a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region sought to force Moscow to divert troops.

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s primary tactical goal is currently to take the whole of the Donbas region in south-eastern Ukraine. Russia controls just under a fifth of Ukraine, including about 80% of the Donbas.

Russian forces have been pushing westwards at key points along some 150 km (93 miles) of the front in the Donetsk region, with the logistics hub of Pokrovsk a key target. They captured nearby Ukrainsk on 17 September and were now entering the hilltop town of Vuhledar, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Pokrovsk.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had defeated Ukrainian units at a series of settlements including Vuhledar, which Russians call Ugledar, and that the Eastern Grouping of Russian forces had improved their tactical positions. It gave no further details on Vuhledar.

Unverified video on Russian state media showed Vuhledar, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, under heavy artillery and aerial bombardment.

Ukraine accuses Russia of seeking to illegally control strategic sea as arbitration hearings open

Ukraine has accused Russia of seeking to illegally seize control of the strategically important Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait

Kremlin says Israeli strikes on Lebanon risk destabilising the Middle East

The Kremlin has warned Israeli strikes on Lebanon had the potential to completely destabilise the Middle East and widen the conflict there.

Israel struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Iran-backed group attacked military facilities in northern Israel on Tuesday, a day after hundreds were killed in Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah targets.

Asked about the Israeli strikes, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call: “This is an event that is potentially extremely dangerous when it comes to the expansion of the conflict, to the complete destabilisation of the region. Of course, this is of extreme concern to us.”

In a separate statement, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow condemned what she called “indiscriminate” strikes on Lebanon that target civilians.

“It is urgent to stop the spiral of violence before the situation spirals completely out of control. We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities,” she said.

Russia has deepened ties with Hezbollah patron Iran since the start of its “special military operation” in Ukraine. It has questioned the proportionality of Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the number of civilians killed, straining ties with Israel.

Watch: Putin’s Satan II ballistic missile ‘blows up during test launch’

Putin’s Satan II ballistic missile ‘blows up during test launch’

A Russian RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile likely failed during a test earlier this month, according to arms experts and satellite imagery from the launch site. Maxar satellite images from 21 September show a crater about 60 meters wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia and damage around the area that was not visible in imagery from earlier in the month. It was not clear from the imagery if the liquid-fueled Sarmat failed during a launch or if there was an accident during defuelling. “By all indications, it was a failed test. It’s a big hole in the ground,” said Pavel Podvig, an analyst based in Geneva, who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces project. “There was a serious incident with the missile and the silo.” The 35-meter RS-28 Sarmat, known as Satan II, has a range of 18,000km and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes. It can carry up to 16 multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle nuclear warheads as well as some Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, according to Russian media.

Explained: What is the Satan II missile?

The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks.

The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II, has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes.

Russian media say it can carry up to 16 independently targetable nuclear warheads as well as Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, a new system that Putin has said is unmatched by Russia’s enemies.

Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that Russia has the biggest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world, and warned the West not to cross a threshold that could lead to nuclear war.

Putin said in October 2023 that Russia had almost completed work on the missile.

Kremlin continues to show public disinterest in peace talks short of complete destruction of the Ukrainian state, think tank says

The Kremlin have continued to show a public disinterest in peace talks unless it involves the complete destruction of the Ukrainian state, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank has said.

ISW analysts noted that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed reports that Ukraine invited Russia to attend Ukraine’s second peace summit but that the Kremlin had not demonstrated any interest in participating.

Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov recently said there is “no alternative” to Russian victory in Ukraine, reiterating Russia’s unwillingness to negotiate on terms other than Ukrainian “capitulation”.

“ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin is not interested in good faith peace negotiations with Ukraine and that the Kremlin will only invoke the concept of ‘peace plans’ and ‘negotiations’ to prompt the West to pressure Ukraine into preemptive concessions on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the situation report from the ISW said.

World leaders meet at UN conference amid global divisions including three wars and possible middle-east conflict

 World leaders will open their annual meeting at the UN General Assembly under the shadow of increasing global divisions, major wars in Gaza, Ukraine and, Sudan and the threat of an even larger conflict in the wider Middle East. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres previewed his opening “State of the World” speech to presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers at Sunday’s “Summit of the Future,” saying “our world is heading off the rails — and we need tough decisions to get back on track.” He pointed to conflicts “raging and multiplying, from the Middle East to Ukraine and Sudan, with no end in sight” and to the global security system, which he said is “threatened by geopolitical divides, nuclear posturing, and the development of new weapons and theaters of war.”

At last year’s UN global gathering, Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, took center stage. Mr Zelensky will be in attendance this year.

One killed and two injured in Russian attack on east Ukrainian town

A Russian guided aerial bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka has killed one person and injured two, according to the Dontesk regional governor Vadym Filashkin.

The attack damaged two unspecified infrastructure facilities, Filashkin added via the Telegram messaging app.

The eastern town lies some 12 kilometers (8 miles) from Chasiv Yar, a town on high ground where Ukrainian forces are attempting to stave off Russian westward advances.

Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians in its invasion of Ukraine, although it has killed thousands of them. It says its strikes on infrastructure aim to reduce Ukraine‘s ability to fight.

For Russia's response to the West, listen to Putin, the Kremlin says

The Kremlin has said that people should re-listen President Vladimir Putin’s statements in St Petersburg to understand Russia’s response to a possible decision by the West to allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles.

Russia will not test a nuclear weapon as long as the United States refrains from testing, Putin’s point man for arms control said on Monday after speculation that the Kremlin might abandon its post-Soviet nuclear test moratorium.

In St Petersburg in June, Putin said he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with long-range Western weapons.

Russia will achieve all its aims in Ukraine, Kremlin says

Russia has no alternative but to achieve all of its aims in the “special military operation” in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Peskov said that as soon as the aims were achieved, the military operation would end.

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Program: Is Australia treating the Ukraine conflict with indifference?

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Former Federal Attorney-General and ex-high commissioner to the UK, George Brandis has issued a warning that Australia is treating the world's most important conflict - Russia's war against Ukraine - with indifference.

In a blunt opinion piece published in the Nine Newspapers, he sets out the case as to why Australia can no longer treat Ukraine as a far away conflict. He told RN Breakfast the war is "a conflict of global dimensions."

• Guest : George Brandis, Former Federal Attorney-General and Former high commissioner to the UK
• Producer : Eleni Psaltis 

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