Column: As bad as the war in Ukraine is now, it’s likely to get worse

Final week, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent 90 minutes on the cellphone with French President Emmanuel Macron, who requested him to declare a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Not , Putin replied.

“He refuses to cease his assaults,” Macron wrote on Twitter after the decision.

A French official mentioned Putin appeared decided “to take management of all of Ukraine.”

“The worst is but to return,” the official added.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in its second week. Some Russian items are mired in mud, however the offensive is escalating total.

Because the invasion has escalated, so, too, have financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies. And, like Ukraine’s armed forces, the sanctions have had extra punch than anticipated. The Russian ruble has plunged in worth, and atypical Russians have scrambled to ATMs to attempt to get their cash out of endangered banks.

However the two escalations are removed from equal.

The sanctions have clearly broken Russia’s financial system, however there’s no signal that they’ve affected Putin’s calculus.

Extra Russian items have moved into Ukraine. Russian missile and artillery strikes on civilian neighborhoods have stepped up. Ukraine’s three largest cities — together with Kyiv, the capital — are at risk of falling.

Ukraine’s defenders are combating courageously, however they’re slowly shedding floor.

“Sanctions could affect Russian resolution making down the highway,” mentioned Richard N. Haass, president of the nonpartisan Council on International Relations. “However they received’t cease the siege of Kyiv.”

The Russian president has waged struggle in opposition to cities earlier than and has been rewarded with success.

Putin got here to energy in 1999 largely by waging a savage struggle in opposition to separatists in Russia’s principally Muslim republic of Chechnya. The ensuing marketing campaign killed tens of hundreds of civilians.

The lesson for Putin: Ruthless navy motion works.

“Each time you suppose, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Properly, sure, he would,” Fiona Hill, a former White Home skilled on Russia, mentioned in an interview with Politico.

Putin’s intentions towards Ukraine ought to have come as no shock. He has publicly demanded since 2007 that the nation be returned to some type of Russian management. The CIA warned that he may invade Ukraine as early as 2008, Hill famous. (She was a CIA intelligence analyst on the time.)

“If he can, he’s going to take the entire nation,” she mentioned.

Putin could not wish to occupy all of Ukraine’s territory, she added, however he could wish to divide it into “a fractured, shattered Ukraine.”

And he could also be keen to combat for a very long time. His struggle in Chechnya lasted virtually 10 years.

The Western response is aimed toward elevating Putin’s prices till he — or Russia’s navy brass, its oligarchs and the Russian public — resolve that their losses from the struggle outweigh any advantages. That, too, might take a very long time.

“Putin has proven little interest in a negotiated consequence that’s throughout the ZIP Code of actuality,” Haass instructed me. “That would change, however provided that three issues happen: if his navy suffers excessive battlefield prices, if the sanctions start to precise an actual financial value and if common unrest grows.

“Our coverage should be aimed toward bringing about these three situations.”

Sanctions hawks argue that along with punishing Putin within the close to time period, the measures serve a separate long-term U.S. curiosity by weakening Russia economically and militarily.

“Sanctions will worsen Russia’s place in its long-run competitors with western international locations,” Edward Fishman, a former State Division skilled now at Columbia College, instructed me. “Now we have zero curiosity in enhancing Russian energy.”

He predicted that the sanctions would keep in place “so long as Putin is in energy, if not longer,” in “a long-term struggle of attrition.”

However an authentic objective of those sanctions was to influence Moscow to vary course. To perform that, america wants to supply Russians the prospect of no less than some sanctions aid in the event that they withdraw their forces.

That form of supply isn’t more likely to change Putin’s thoughts, but it surely might assist enhance stress on him from his navy and his oligarchs, in addition to the Russian public.

“I can think about placing out — with the Ukrainians taking part — some definition of a negotiated consequence that might produce some sanctions aid,” Haass mentioned. “However we’re not there but.”

President Biden, for one, isn’t there but. His spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, mentioned final week that sanctions aid isn’t on the desk.

“We’re in the course of an invasion, so I don’t suppose now’s the second the place we’re giving anyone that form of an offramp,” she mentioned.

Translation: For now, either side are nonetheless escalating.

That French official was in all probability proper. The worst is but to return.