World View: If this is war, Putin may already be winning

The threat of conflict has been enough to unsettle neighbours and win concessions

With more than 100,000 Russian troops encircling Ukraine and Europe potentially on the brink of the biggest conflict since the war, the only question that matters is one that nobody seems able to answer: what is Vladimir Putin's plan? Western opinion has coalesced around four broad possibilities: an all-out Russian invasion of the ex-Soviet republic; a more limited incursion in the eastern Donbas region; an unconventional hybrid attack; or a Russian military retreat. But what if the current situation – the build-up of troops, the alarm in western capitals, the confusion, the divisions, the panic, the fear – is itself the Kremlin's endgame? What if this is not the prelude to war but the war itself? If so, then Moscow could be forgiven for concluding that it is a war it is winning.

Although the Russian troop movements near Ukraine's eastern border did not begin until last spring, this moment has been decades in the making, stemming as it does from Putin's colonial revisionism and in particular his long-held grievance about Nato's expansion into what he regards as Russia's sphere of influence. But the timing of his move reflects Putin's assessment of the relative strengths of each side. In his eyes, the US and Europe are vulnerable and distracted while Russia, at least on his watch, has never been better positioned to absorb the costs that confrontation could bring.

Botched exit

An unpopular Joe Biden, damaged by his botched exit from Afghanistan, is facing legislative logjam. Emmanuel Macron is running for re-election. Boris Johnson is a laughing stock. Angela Merkel is gone and her successor, Olaf Scholz, is finding his feet. Turkey is preoccupied with Syria. Meanwhile, the transatlantic relationship is still in recovery mode after the damage it suffered during the Trump presidency, and the EU and Nato are riven by disputes over the rule of law, Afghanistan, Brexit – and, indeed, how to deal with a more assertive Moscow.

The Russian economy, which is about the size of Italy’s, is a minnow compared to that of the US or the European big powers, but Putin has for years been working to make it sanctions-proof. By easing its dependence on the dollar, reorienting trade and replacing western imports, he has made Russia better able to withstand the pressure of western sanctions. Those reinforced economic defences have been matched by investment in military ones; an overhaul of strategy, equipment and personnel has resulted in a modernised force that bears little comparison to the run-down husk of the immediate post-Soviet years.

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Approval ratings

The timing for Putin may also be driven by domestic considerations. He faces re-election in 2024, and while the systematic dismantling of Russian democracy over the past two decades means there is no chance of him losing, it cannot have escaped his attention that his approval ratings are a lot lower than they used to be. As Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, recalled this week, the last time Putin's approval fell significantly was before the illegal annexation of Crimea – an act that proved hugely popular in Russia and drove his popularity to new heights.

If Putin's aim is to force Nato out of eastern Europe, he clearly will not succeed. But that is almost certainly not his short-term goal. Nor can he realistically expect the west to bow to the maximalist demands he has set out, including an end to further Nato expansion and the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe – each of which was duly rejected by Washington last week. But look at what he has already achieved. Without firing a single bullet, Russia has succeeded in extracting a commitment to talks about the future of European security – something it has sought since the fall of the Soviet Union but which the US and Europe have always seen as their own business. That is far from a guarantee that what Russia calls "a new European security order" will follow, but making itself part of the discussion is an important tactical gain for Moscow.

Woefully unprepared

Seen from the Kremlin, the use of the troop build-up near Ukraine has succeeded in exposing divisions within Nato while showing that Europe’s failure to diversify its energy supplies and to invest in defence has left it woefully unprepared for major conflict. Perhaps the most obvious positive effect of its current threats, from Putin’s point of view, has been to make Russia a force to be reckoned with. That has been one of the driving forces of Putinism for 20 years.

Invading Ukraine would be hugely costly for Russia. It would suffer heavy battlefield losses, its economy would take a heavy hit and the political and strategic consequences would be unpredictable. Putin has never gambled that big. But why wage war when the threat of it can bring you so far?