Opinion: Neither Russia nor the West knows how this war will end.

Editor’s note: Anna Arutyunyan is a journalist, analyst, and author specializing in Russian politics.she is the author of “Hybrid Warriors: Agents, Freelancers, and Moscow’s Struggle for Ukraine” And I’m co-authoring my next book with Mark Galeotti. “The Downfall: Prigozhin, Putin, and the Battle for Russia’s Future” The views expressed in this comment are her own.read more CNN Opinion.

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Switzerland is set to host the Ukraine Peace Summit by summer, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has high hopes that Switzerland will “strengthen” his country. However, Russia’s war with Ukraine is now in its third year, and the next summit is unlikely to bring about a breakthrough. Not only because Russia will not be present, but more importantly because neither side has a clear vision of what victory would mean or how to achieve it. .

There is still much speculation about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions to completely conquer Ukraine, which he intends to take whatever he can get, but the Kremlin has made that goal clear in two ways. They continue to be as vague as they were when they launched the “special military operation.” years ago.

“Peace will come when we achieve our goals by de-Nazification, demilitarization and neutrality in Ukraine,” President Putin said in December. It can be interpreted to mean everything, nothing, and whatever the Kremlin wants.

Western policymakers would be wise to judge the Kremlin’s intentions based on its actions rather than its words. Although Russia’s war machine is in a better position than it was a year ago, it has been largely unable to seize Kiev, as it had tried to do early in the war, and from mid-2022 onwards it will focus on territorial gains in the east. ing.

Since announcing the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson regions in September 2022, the Russian government has been almost adamant about occupying all of these regions. What it will do if that happens is that the Russian government is testing the West by demonstrating an aggressive posture that far exceeds its intention or ability to carry out this action, to see how far it can get away with it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said recently that “the special military operation began as an operation against Ukraine, but over time it took the form of a war against the Western powers.”

This is partly because the plans and intentions of Ukraine’s Western allies are very vague. Are the US, EU and UK providing limited aid to Ukraine to defend its territory (as they appear to be doing) or are they actually fighting a proxy war to “defeat” Putin’s Russia? (what they seem to be saying)?

Just as the Kremlin has, Ukraine’s Western allies have also signaled a determination to “defeat” Russia without actually articulating what that defeat would mean. Far from alarming the Kremlin, this strategic ambiguity actually makes the West look weak from Moscow’s vantage point, overpromising to compensate for a lack of political will.

This was made clear at the Munich Security Conference, where one policymaker’s explanation summed up the essence of the West’s Ukraine strategy as “lots of words and no concrete commitments.”

One reason is that the goal of victory that Ukraine set last year – to retake all occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which has been under Russian control for nearly a decade – is looking increasingly unrealistic. That’s what happened.

Military support means that Ukraine’s allies are willing and able to provide stops precisely where Ukraine’s most pressing talent shortages are. Despite French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent pompous comments that he would “not rule out” sending troops to Ukraine, NATO countries are not seriously considering this destructive and escalating measure, and rightly so. is.

But problems remain in Ukraine. “The most pressing problem in any unit is the lack of manpower,” a Ukrainian company commander said recently, reiterating the growing awareness on the Ukrainian front lines of how serious the problem has become.

Indeed, Zelenskyy last month fired top commander Valery Zarzhiny amid controversy over suggestions that up to 500,000 additional troops may be needed to meet Ukraine’s goals. This proposal was financially and politically unfeasible, so Zelenskiy dismissed generals and began a “reset” of the military command, but without expanding the force or reducing its goals.

There is another problem. The return of Russian troops to their positions by February 24, 2024 and the removal of the de facto Russian regime from the territory of Donetsk, Luhansk and Donetsk, no matter how difficult it may be, two years after the start of the war. It is quite another thing to get rid of them. Crimea, which they have occupied for 10 years.

But Ukraine’s Western allies have failed to consider these realities, relying instead on triumphalist rhetoric as right-wing parties in the United States and Europe become reluctant to bear the costs.

A recent white paper from the Estonian Ministry of Defense promised to “defeat Russian imperialism’s theory of victory” but failed to define exactly what that meant. Former President Donald Trump’s allies who oppose the aid package, which has stalled in Congress, may be wrong to believe that $60 billion “doesn’t change the realities on the battlefield” — weapons. The increase can and will help maintain the defense and defense of Ukraine. Perhaps we will regain more territory.

But it does little to guarantee “the fate of the free world” or “save democracy as we know it,” as some U.S. lawmakers argued in support of the bill.

The problem is that while more weapons and aid will help Ukraine defend itself, there is no guarantee that the country of about 37 million people will ultimately be able to defeat an enemy of more than 140 million people. To casually suggest that this is inevitable would mislead Ukraine, sow mistrust among Western taxpayers, and suggest weakness to Russia.

While there is scope to tighten sanctions already in place, it would not force a drastic change in Kremlin policy, and there are limits to additional military aid as Western countries begin to deplete their own stocks of arms and ammunition. There is. can be provided.

Law and justice may say that Ukraine deserves to liberate its occupied territories, but realism suggests that this may be a bloody or unattainable goal. Western allies need to start recognizing their limited resources, or at least the limits of what they can or will offer Ukraine.

This means honestly defining what you can actually achieve. The declaration that the only acceptable goal is the absolute “defeat” of President Putin is quite understandable. However, when political and economic constraints limit the resources that Western countries can devote, their continued insistence on pushing Kiev into a perpetual war in pursuit of either peace or an opaque concept of “victory”? There is a good chance that you will be forced to make a choice.

A plausible victory, no matter how unpleasant or unfair, would require not only increased military support for Ukraine, including serious security measures, but also a commitment by Kyiv to ensure that its It may require some recognition that you may have to abandon some of your goals. This is a pill to swallow – part of the occupied territory.