Vladimir Putin has become the first Russian leader since World War II to have provoked an invasion of his own country and to have lost sovereign territory. Having previously compared himself to Peter and Catherine the Great, Putin may end up looking more like the final czar, Nicholas II.
Ukraine’s Kursk offensive has already achieved several goals. It has:
- Demonstrated that Russian forces are stretched to the maximum of their abilities, incapable of both attacking Ukraine and protecting Russia simultaneously, and incapable of escalating their war effort.
- Proved that Western fears of Russian escalation are unfounded: The Kremlin has no ability to escalate.
- Forced Russia to pull some forces out of Ukraine in order to defend inside Russia.
- Destroyed Putin’s narrative that Russia’s war of aggression is merely a “special military operation” with no real costs to Russia. (Over 200,000 Russian civilians have had to be evacuated.)
- Demonstrated that billions of dollars in Western military and financial assistance are being put to good use.
- Given a much-needed morale boost to the Ukrainian people.
- And undermined the assumption that future peace negotiations are only about how much territory Ukraine cedes to Russia. (Now it is about mutual force withdrawals.)
Despite these tactical gains, however, we are still far from an end to the fighting, let alone a just and lasting peace. Russia bombs Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure on a daily basis, attacks along the front line in eastern Ukraine, occupies significant Ukrainian territory (around 20%) and insists on eradicating Ukraine as a people and as an independent state.
US equipment and ammunition are again arriving in sufficient quantity, and Western F-16s are now extending Ukraine’s intelligence collection and power projection capabilities well beyond the front lines, forcing Russia to retrench.
At the same time, the US and other allies continue to place restrictions on their military assistance to Ukraine, and non-military support continues to lag behind. Unless new decisions are made later this year, Western military aid to Ukraine will hit another wall in early 2025.
What was meant to have been a summer of summit decisions — all addressing some aspect of helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression — was instead a summer of disappointments.
- The Berlin-hosted Ukraine Recovery Conference (the third since Russia’s full-scale invasion), while hosting informative networking discussions, had no discernable results. Italy will host the next conference in 2025 and has a chance to do better.
- The G-7 Summit in Italy created a $50bn fund to help Ukraine, based on earnings from frozen Russian assets while failing to seize the $300bn of principal.
- The Swiss-hosted “peace summit” registered fewer than 90 nations supporting a declaration on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while countries such as Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa did not join.
- The Washington NATO summit failed to advance Ukraine’s NATO membership timeline. It also double-counted existing aid commitments to Ukraine, rather than establishing a new common fund for Ukraine, as Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had proposed.
- Only the June 2024 EU Summit made a major step forward by opening accession talks with Ukraine, a significant advancement, even though it will take years to come to fruition.
The coming year can and should be better. Ukraine is taking full advantage of long-range firepower (much of it home-grown), enhanced air power and air defenses, and superior leadership and command and control. It is strengthening its position in the face of what could be significant political pressure in 2025 to negotiate a deal with Russia.
The West should do better as well. Here are some suggestions:
Italy should seize the reins of the Ukraine Recovery Conference process and immediately launch steps designed to ensure real results when the conference convenes in the summer of 2025. After all, a thriving Ukrainian economy, in contrast to an extraction-based, sanctioned Russia, is the most important guarantee of Ukraine’s long-term victory.
What can Italy do? Most importantly, the so-called “multi-donor coordination platform” should be upgraded by establishing a permanent executive body that sets goals, an agenda, and pursues them with diligence throughout the year. There must also be much higher-level and “plugged-in” private sector engagement in Ukraine’s economic recovery.
If pushed by the Meloni government, the Italian private sector (in infrastructure, finance, housing, and more) could be well-positioned. And no one could be better to lead such a senior-level international body and to inspire the private sector than former Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte should pick up where Jens Stoltenberg left off — pushing the alliance to establish a $100bn fund for military aid to Ukraine, paid by member states according to existing cost-share formulae, to smooth over the inevitable bumps in the road of US and European funding due to our normal democratic processes.
It should also begin consultations in the NATO-Ukraine Council about how Article 5 could apply to Ukraine, and on that basis invite Ukraine to join NATO at the Netherlands-hosted NATO Summit in 2025.
Canada should use its G7 chairmanship to seek agreement on a legal framework for seizing already frozen Russian assets (something Canada has already done on a national basis). This is a unique and necessary compensation to Ukraine for the damage caused by Russian aggression and other war crimes, and need not wait until the 2025 G7 Summit in Canada.
The Swiss-hosted peace summit should stand firm on the UN-based principles of respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and rejection of the crime of aggression. No action beyond support for these principles should be taken.
The EU should prioritize chapters in Ukraine’s accession talks dealing with energy and the rule of law. These are the two most strategic dimensions that will link Ukraine and Europe and lay the foundations for European and other businesses to engage directly in Ukraine.
Ukraine continues to play a bad hand very, very well, while Russia’s decrepit governing system continues to negate every other advantage Russia might enjoy in terms of size, population, and resources.
The West needs to step up its game as Ukraine has done. We should worry far more about the consequences of a Russian victory through attrition than we currently worry about the risks of escalation.
Ambassador Kurt Volker is a former US Ambassador to NATO and a former US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations. He is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
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