General Pyrrhus, courtesy of Wikipedia, public domain. “One more such victory and we are undone.”.
The New York Times, an expert on Russian foreign and security policy, compellingly wries from Berlin concluding that even a diplomatic “victory” by Putin over President Trump will prove Pyrrhic for Putin. Excerpt:
Mr. Putin’s Russia, resource constrained and mired in the war in Ukraine, is going to find itself ill equipped to throw its weight around, whatever the outcome of Friday’s summit.
… But the war in Ukraine essentially remains unwinnable on Mr. Putin’s terms, and Russia, with so many of its resources sunk in it, is being forced into retreat elsewhere.
Russian advances on the battlefield continue, in the main, to come slowly and at enormous cost to the invader. And even if the Russian military were to accomplish another breakthrough, Mr. Putin still could not achieve his real aim: Ukraine’s total subjugation within Russia’s orbit. Ukrainians will resist occupation, and Europe will not abandon Ukraine to its fate.
And as Mr. Putin indulges his illusion of total victory, Russia’s global throw-weight suffers. …
Russia’s decreasing ability to assert itself has emboldened other players. … The war in Ukraine, a cul-de-sac of enormous proportions, has generated a host of smaller cul-de-sacs for Russia’s foreign policy, laying bare its limitations and even forcing it into occasional retreats.
Countries close to Russia, like Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan, remain vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s appetite for domination. Not because Russia would want to occupy them militarily, but because Mr. Trump’s apparent disinterest in their domestic trajectories (and Europe’s preoccupation with itself) could leave them more susceptible to Russia’s creeping economic, cultural and political coercion over time. But Mr. Putin will have limited bandwidth to ramp up any pressure anywhere unless he ends the war in Ukraine. And there is no indication that he intends to do so.
Mr. Putin has long insisted that Ukraine will be his. But in a world shaped by Mr. Trump’s mercurial temperament and might-is-right principles, his obsession may cost Russia more than he has bargained for.
Slava Ukraine!
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