As the second Trump presidency approaches, calls for immediate negotiations to end the Russo-Ukrainian War are getting louder. That fact alone is of little importance — after all, even Putin says he wants to negotiate. What is important, and frequently ignored, are the assumptions on which calls for negotiation are based.

What does it mean to support Ukraine?

Putin assumes that Ukraine is part of Russia. Invading Ukraine not only makes sense for him; it’s a moral imperative/ Anything short of Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty is unacceptable to him.

Putin also assumes, wrongly, that Russia is winning. Given these assumptions, he can accept nothing short of Ukraine’s capitulation. Compromise with him is impossible as long as he he remains in power and believes he’s winning.

Ukraine assumes it has the right to exist as an independent state. The size and content of that state — though not its survival — are negotiable in principle. Compromise is, as President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent remarks about Ukraine’s willingness to accept territorial losses in exchange for NATO membership, therefore possible.

Until the war began on Feb. 24, 2022, most Western leaders assumed Ukraine did not matter to their own nations’ stability, security and survival. For most of them, that assumption has changed. Survival is non-negotiable, but stability and security are open to a variety of definitions. Compromise is possible.

It follows that, while Ukraine and the West are willing to make concessions in order to reach a compromise with Russia, Putin is not. He will accept a compromise only if he is forced to accept one.

The New York Times recently ran an op-ed by Megan K. Stack acknowledging “Vladimir Putin’s hunger for expansion,” which goes so far as to state that if “Ukrainians would be hung out to dry … Putin could end up attacking again or expanding his imperial designs to other neighbors.” In other words, Ukraine is the only thing between Russian expansionism and the West. This is a strategic argument that rests on unsentimental geopolitical realism.

But Stack goes on: “We want Ukraine to function as a protectorate, but ultimately, we are unwilling to protect it. A sensible, ugly strategy — tactically defensible but morally reprehensible.”

For the sake of argument, let’s say that America is unwilling to protect Ukraine and that morality has nothing to do with it. Even then, it logically follows from the assumption that Ukraine is the only obstacle to Putin’s further expansionism that ignoring Ukraine’s importance is tactically senseless and strategically indefensible.

After all, how can permitting Putin’s expansionism be regarded as defensible? Such a position would make sense only if one were to argue that Europe’s security and existence are completely irrelevant to U.S. interests. Not even most MAGA-friendly Trump supporters would be willing to go quite that far.

Stack’s conclusion — “America is not going to save Ukraine” — is thus off the mark. For one thing, it contradicts its own geopolitical premises. A strategically savvy America would realize that its own security and wellbeing depend on Ukraine’s. For another, America isn’t the only game in town. The Europeans, and possibly the South Koreans, also matter. For a third, Ukrainians will save themselves, partly because they can win if given enough assistance, but mostly because Putin’s Russia is losing and cannot win.

Support for Ukraine matters

The abysmal state of Russia’s military and economy is something that proponents of immediate negotiations frequently ignore, as if the only problems that mattered were Ukraine’s. Russia has lost over 715,000 soldiers and is losing roughly 1,700 every single day, about 40,000 per month.

Moreover, the Russian economy is headed for stagflation or hyperinflation, and even Russian officials know that Putin’s military spending is destroying their country. To be sure, Russia is gradually capturing bits and pieces of Ukrainian territory. But as the University of Saint Andrew’s Phillips O’Brien notes, that amounts to less than 0.5 percent of Ukraine.

Ignoring Russia leads many to conclude that Ukraine is too overwhelmed with problems to win. In fact, Russia is also too overwhelmed with problems to win. It is simply not true that, as the Stack writes, “the Russian position has gradually strengthened, and there is no reason to expect Mr. Putin to lose the upper hand now. That may sound like defeatism, but it’s also realism.” No, it’s not defeatism or realism. It’s fantasy, as veteran journalist James Brooke and Ukraine expert Timothy Ash have shown.

As Ash writes, Putin’s “invasion of Ukraine has proven to be a catastrophe of epic proportions for Russia. Almost three years in Russia, a supposed great power, has been unable to defeat Ukraine … A war which was meant to be over in two weeks has lasted over 1,000 days and is nowhere near a conclusion. Russia has lost perhaps half a million men, and maybe half its conventional military capability.”

It gets worse, according to Ash: “Russia has had to scrape the barrel by going cap in hand to North Korea and Iran for weapons and now troops. … Let’s not forget that the war in Ukraine was going so badly that only a year back Putin faced an existential threat from the Prigozhin coup — he came close to losing power. Russia has been exposed as a declining colonial power.”

Ash therefore concludes: “Putin goes into any talks with Trump in a critically weak position. Yes he can continue the war, as can Ukraine, for some time yet, but it will just kill hundreds of thousands more Russians, waste huge amounts more resources and finance and still leave a risk of a Prighozin 2.”

Since Russia is weak and Ukraine matters to the survival of the West, it follows that the West’s priority must be Ukraine’s security and survival — goals that are attainable now if the West takes advantage of Russia’s weakness and drives a hard bargain at the negotiating table.

Ukrainians focus on NATO membership mostly because that would signal a genuine Western commitment to their country. But they have no illusions that the mealy-mouthed Article 5 would compel NATO members to rush to their assistance with boots on the ground, hence their focus on security guarantees by individual countries.

But Ukrainians also know that such guarantees, like those included in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, are promises that can be broken. Their security and survival are primarily up to themselves — which is why they insist on the “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” formula. That is, they must have the military capacity to both stop Russia today — which they’re doing despite lukewarm Western support — and to deter Russia tomorrow, which they’ll be able to do if the U.S. and its allies continue to enhance their military capabilities.

Geopolitics — as well as morality — require stopping Putin’s further expansion at all costs and under any circumstances. And that means, quite simply, that Ukraine’s survival is a precondition of the West’s survival.

Photo: president.gov.ua

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines.

He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.” The text you just read was published in The Hill.