What Does Victory Look Like in Ukraine?

Congressional staff delegations are simultaneously incredibly interesting and totally grueling. In order to convince the Ethics Committee that such trips are not corrupt boondoggles, trips have to be packed with meetings—the agendas for which have to be approved ahead of time. Which is why I was in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago as part of a staff delegation—led by the Center for Strategic and International Studies—to Poland, Ukraine, and Moldova to try to understand whether the United States should approve sending another $24 billion in supplemental aid to Ukraine. And, because our days were full of meetings, I had the opportunity to ask dozens of people from around the region what, to them, “victory” looked like.

Some argue that in order to reach a peace agreement, Russia should be allowed to continue its occupation of Crimea, and Ukraine should adopt a neutral stance toward NATO. Eliot Cohen argues that the shortest path to a cessation of conflict is through the collapse of the Russian military. Others maintain that an immediate cease-fire is needed. And still others maintain that peace can be achieved by bringing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin together to talk. In other words, ideas of how peace will come about in Ukraine vary.

All wars end, at least in theory. But getting parties to end organized state violence on acceptable terms is, to put it mildly, not easy. What a durable peace agreement might look like is therefore on everyone’s mind. Zelensky himself has promulgated a 10-point plan for achieving an acceptable peace. But talking to different people from around the region, other views surfaced.

A frozen conflict. This seemed to be the view most prevalent outside of Ukraine itself. Essentially, in this scenario, the Russian front line holds across eastern Ukraine and Russia maintains its grip on the east and Crimea. Fighting continues, but the major victory is that Russia does not take all of Ukraine. The Black Sea Fleet continues to harass Ukraine at sea and by launching missiles and drones, and Russian forces continue bombing civilian and military targets across Ukraine. With investments in (or donations of) air defenses, the harassment is manageable for the Ukrainian forces. This could ultimately take the form of the war formally continuing without significant gains on either side, or as a cease-fire mixed with intermittent periods of conflict.

As a strategist far removed from the front lines, I was reluctantly persuaded that this was the most likely, but far from the most acceptable, conflict outcome. Yet my visit to Ukraine convinced me otherwise—in particular, from seeing the impact of Russian war crimes firsthand and being told of horrors beyond imagination.

The question of war termination, therefore, isn’t just about which flag is raised over which territory; if it were, a land-for-peace kind of deal could be feasible. Rather, Russia and its military forces have made it clear that they are intent on brutalizing and eradicating Ukrainian culture and people. Russians have tortured Ukrainians (and are still doing so), murdered them, and thrown them into mass graves. Tens of thousands of war crimes have been reported and, according to Ukrainian investigators I spoke with in Kyiv, those represent the tip of the iceberg. To the Ukrainians, a frozen conflict means allowing Russia to continue brutalizing their fellow countrymen and women in the east—and it invites Russia to attack Ukraine again later, once it has reconstituted its forces.

Every inch of Ukrainian territory is taken back. Almost every Ukrainian stated that this was the minimum necessary requirement for peace. In their view, anything short of regaining all of the territory that was part of Ukraine prior to the 2014 invasion (read: Crimea, too) would only result in a Russian strategic pause, and another bloody start to the war at the time of Russia’s choosing.

Ukrainian interlocutors also made the point that regaining Crimea remains essential, since the peninsula is a key piece of real estate for launching operations against the rest of Ukraine. Many Ukrainians also see their resistance as a bulwark against Russia’s neoimperial ambitions: If Russia can retain any part of Ukraine, its appetite for regaining other “lost” territories will never be suppressed.

The Russian regime is overthrown—not just Putin. Ukrainian interlocutors who made this point argued that Putin has staked his own regime’s survival on successfully winning Ukraine. Putin has used a martial, violence-oriented vision of masculinity to strengthen his grip on power and Russian society. A defeat in Ukraine—especially when Ukraine has been depicted as alternately fascist and corrupted by Western feminists—would severely undermine the authoritarian order that Putin has constructed. According to this logic, Ukrainians taking back Ukrainian territory could deal a death blow to Putin—yet without some kind of change in polity, another threatening authoritarian actor would likely take the reins in a post-Putin Moscow. Instead, this idea of victory envisaged the hope of a changed and chastened Russia.

Ukraine is a thriving democracy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Ukraine experienced a bumpy path toward democracy—to put it mildly. Support to  Ukraine since 2014, particularly in development and humanitarian assistance, have allowed Ukrainian civil society to become a pretty cohesive network of community builders and democracy advocates. This has enabled staggering numbers of internally displaced persons from the east to be absorbed by, and resettled in, places like Kyiv and Lviv.

It has also created a useful foundation upon which Ukraine can advance its efforts to bring its government and economy up to standard to join the European Union. In this view, the seeds are already in place for Ukraine to be one of Europe’s leading democracies—it’s now time to cultivate them. Doing so will require continued economic and humanitarian support, in addition to providing Ukraine with the military capabilities needed to win the fight.

These are discussions for Ukrainians—and perhaps not the same ones that Americans should be having. Here, the question that keeps being asked is: What does victory look like to the United States? In many ways, Washington is far removed from the war in Ukraine, both geographically and geopolitically. Ukraine is neither a U.S. neighbor nor a NATO ally. Why should Americans care how this war ends? Why should Americans invest another $24 billion in Ukraine when there are problems on the southern border and forest fires in Maui?

Sure, $24 billion is a big number, but displacing entrenched Russian defenses was never going to be a cheap proposition. And it’s a whole lot cheaper than putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

But what kind of world do we want to live in? The answer requires speculation, of course, but strategy is, in many ways, inherently speculative. To start with, it’s an obvious point, but one worth restating: The world is watching. In Europe, Russia has demonstrated neoimperial intentions—and its former empire extended into what is now NATO territory. Interlocutors across much of Central and Eastern Europe consistently make the point that Russia’s appetite for land will hardly be sated if it wins in Ukraine.

Do we really want to tempt fate, and the Russians, into creeping into NATO territory—aggression that will inherently draw the U.S. into the conflict? (Indeed, we may already be seeing this conflict creep in Romania.) On the other side of the globe, in the view of observers in Asia, China is watching whether the United States will follow through on its assurances to Ukraine in order to gauge whether it will also do so with respect to Taiwan.

It  is also worth considering how destabilizing such a world would be to the global economy, and by extension to the American commercial, economic, and security interests that are so intertwined with the global order the U.S. helped construct. Economies need stability in order to prosper; a world characterized by chronic geopolitical instability would likely affect the United States in all sorts of ways. Some believe that a war with China over Taiwan would cost the global economy $2 trillion. And sure, there are risks to continuing to support Ukraine, but giving the Ukrainians the ammunition and other assistance they need remains our best shot at countering expansionist authoritarian regimes and the attendant instability that would arise from the kind of world we would live in if Ukraine is defeated.

More importantly, do we want to live in a world wherein an authoritarian state can massacre its democratic neighbors?  Ukrainian children are being separated from their families and deported to Russia.  The horrors of this war are mind-bogglingly terrible. Do we really want to look the other way?  The line must be held, and the line is now in Ukraine.

What does victory look like? It starts with a free Ukraine.