Last month, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov, said Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed to split the invading country in two to create “North and South Korea in Ukraine”.
While analysts say a divided Ukraine is now unlikely, a split nation where Moscow retains control or significant influence over key areas in eastern and southern Ukraine is the expected uncertain future of the besieged country.
And despite Russia’s losses in major cities like Kyiv, some experts have suggested that Putin’s ability to seize some territories may also encourage other autocratic nations to try to take control of their own neighboring regions.
“I think there is still a danger if Putin manages to sell this as a success,” said Max Bergman, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And success will not be judged in 2022, but in 2025 and 2030. [that Russia] invaded a country, took more territory. “
“Does it send a message”
“[If] “Everyone has to change their cards, because suddenly Ukraine recognizes or capitulates … Russian control, that sends a message,” Bergman said.
The two-month invasion of Ukraine killed or wounded thousands, wrecked cities and forced more than five million people to flee abroad.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, its obvious goal was to take Kyiv, the capital. But Ukrainians, using Western weapons, are thwarting the pressure and forcing Putin’s troops to retreat.
“At the beginning of the war, there was a feeling that the Russian military would be able to move quite aggressively and succeed in many of its goals,” said Alex Brido, a leading foreign policy expert on Russia and Ukraine’s Eurasia Group.
“And that could include dividing the country if they couldn’t gain control of the whole of Ukraine. Now it looks a little different.”
“A little more obscure”
Unable to take control of Kyiv, Russia’s focus has shifted to its offensive in the eastern region of Donbass, while maintaining control of the south near Crimea and Crimea itself.
“It’s a little different from something like categorical, East Germany, West Germany. A little more vague, “Brido said.
“There is interest in creating a territory that is somehow constantly ambiguous and that is used as a kind of lever on Ukraine in terms of obtaining concessions on neutrality or never joining NATO.
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Bergman said Russia could claim victory by taking control of the Donbass region, making some additional territorial gains around Mariupol and consolidating north of Crimea.
“If they had to take this and a little more and do real damage to the Ukrainian army, on paper, the Russians would look at this and say, ‘Well, look, we did what we were trying to achieve. We have won this territory, now we have a land bridge to Crimea, Donbass is ours. “
However, that means there may be some “really awkward territorial boundaries” within a country or within certain cities – wherever the battle line is drawn, Bergman said.
“I think we’re a little bit in a Cold War situation, maybe not as visual and as sharp as the Berlin Wall,” he said.
“Russia will always try to gain control of the whole of Ukraine”
Liana Fix, a historian and political scientist at the Körber-Stiftung whose focus is on Russia and Eastern Europe, said Russia would certainly not be satisfied with East and South territory alone.
“The war was largely due to the fact that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent state,” she said.
A Russian military convoy is moving on a highway in an area controlled by Russian-backed separatist forces near Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 16, 2022. Mariupol, part of eastern Ukraine known as Donbass, has been a key target for Russia ever since. the invasion on 24 Feb. (Alexei Alexandrov / Associated Press)
That means Russia from the east and south will continue to put pressure on the rest of Ukraine and attack the rest of Ukraine, she said.
“It makes it easier to think that we are just giving Russia the parts of Ukraine that it wants. The other parts can continue on their own path, “she said.
“It will not happen. Russia will always try to gain control of the whole of Ukraine.”
Fix said there would be no clear division of Ukraine, but instead a changing line of war as the war of attrition raged.
“So you’ll see something like a shifting line back and forth. “We probably won’t see a stable line in any way,” she said.
Other nation-states could be encouraged by Putin
Meanwhile, if Putin succeeds in taking control of much of Ukraine, it must be assumed that other nation-states with similar aggressive goals could be encouraged in one way or another, said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant defense minister. of the United States for Europe. and NATO policy.
“And you can’t assume that Putin will stop there, that he won’t go a few years later to take the rest.”
Valentina, 50, hugged her 6-year-old granddaughter, Yaroslava, after arriving from Mariupol at a refugee center in Zaporozhye, Ukraine. (Leo Korea / Associated Press)
But NATO and the United States may also have to worry about where else Russia could “strain its muscles” if it achieves a significant victory in Ukraine, said Stephen Cale, a security and defense policy officer at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“Ukraine has basically tried to argue that we are not just fighting for ourselves, we are also fighting for Europe, and something like national security more broadly, especially when it comes to security in the Atlantic,” Cale said. .
“One of the challenges I see right now is exactly what this current conflict means for Ukraine and the security order in the Atlantic, and it is fundamentally changing … the rules of the road as they were after the Cold War.
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However, Bergman suggested that the military spending imposed on Russia could also deter others from taking similar action.
Initially, the geopolitical concern was that Russia would strengthen Ukraine militarily, declare victory and perhaps encourage other nations to seek territorial expansion through military force, he said.
“It was a nightmare for the global order. “I think the battle that the Ukrainians fought showed that the riots were real and so territorial, and that the seizure could be incredibly expensive,” Bergman said.
Brido of the Eurasia Group agreed that with some countries, the lesson they can learn is that the potential consequences of taking aggressive action against another country may be stronger than they originally expected.
“The sanctions themselves were stronger than expected at the outset,” he said. “And these are things that the Chinese government and other autocratic or totalitarian governments should see as a potential response to this kind of action. And that can certainly potentially limit that kind of behavior. “
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