The soft chimes of a song Ukraine doesn't want to hear

Though not being spoken loudly nor amplified by the media, a quiet and tentative consensus may be emerging on some key issues regarding ending the war in Ukraine.

On January 21, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said that “for this year, it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all — every inch — of . . . Russian-occupied Ukraine.”

Milley’s surprisingly public assessment that Ukraine was unlikely to recapture all of its territory, including Crimea, was echoed more quietly by anonymous U.S. officials. Toward the bottom of a lengthy New York Times article on the Biden administration’s increasing openness to providing Ukraine with “the power to strike” Crimea, the newspaper of record conceded that “the Biden administration does not think that Ukraine can take Crimea militarily.”

And that may not just be the assessment of the U.S. military; it may be a perspective shared by Ukraine as well. On January 24, David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post that “There is a widespread view in Washington and Kyiv that regaining Crimea by military force may be impossible.”

That assessment is also reflected in a just-published paper written for the RAND corporation by Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe. The paper, entitled “Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” makes the point a number of times.

It begins by critiquing analysts who suggest that Russia could be “forced out of Ukraine” and that it would “leave its neighbor in peace.” Such an “optimistic scenario,” the RAND paper suggests, “is improbable.” “An end to the war that leaves Ukraine in full control over all of its internationally recognized territory,” according to the authors, “remains a highly unlikely outcome.”

Later in the paper, they repeat that Ukraine retaking "all of its territory, including Crimea . . . seems equally improbable at the present stage of the conflict.” It even notes that “continued conflict also leaves open the possibility that Russia will reverse Ukrainian battlefield gains made in fall 2022.”

But retaking Crimea is not only unnecessary, it may also be detrimental for three reasons. First, as “Kyiv has retaken more territory since September, Russia has imposed far greater economic costs on the country as a whole through its strikes on critical infrastructure.” Second, Russia “perceives this war to be near existential,” and “Ukraine has long been in a category of its own in Russian foreign policy priorities.”

It should be added that, if Russia prioritizes Ukraine, Crimea — which most Russians and Crimeans see as part of Russia — is the highest priority in Ukraine. If Ukraine attempts to retake the region, “the risks of escalation—either nuclear use” or the war expanding to NATO — “will spike.” 

Finally, “given the slowing pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensives,” combined with Russia’s “substantial defensive fortifications along the line of control, and its military mobilization. . . restoring the pre-February 2022 line of control— let alone the pre-2014 territorial status quo — will take months and perhaps years to achieve.”

Attempting to retake Crimea would lengthen the war, and a longer war will lead to greater Ukrainian loss-of-life, the possibility of greater Russian territorial gains, greater devastation of Ukrainian infrastructure, and more disruption of the global economy. It will also prevent the U.S. from focusing on “other global priorities.” 

The authors of the RAND report say that attempting the recapture of Crimea would increase the duration of the war and that “duration is the most important” dimension for the U.S. to consider after the risks of nuclear weapons use, and a Russia-NATO conflict. They also say that longer duration increases both of those risks. 

So, despite the January 18 New York Times report quoting U.S. officials saying the Biden Administration was warming to the idea that Ukraine should strike Crimea, there may be a quietly emerging consensus encouraging the opposite. And there may be other signals of restraint if one reads the tea leaves a certain way.

On January 19, The Washington Post reported that CIA Director William Burns secretly met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. Though the Post headline frames the meeting as an opportunity for Burns to share intelligence, “top of mind for Zelensky and his senior intelligence officials during the meeting was how long Ukraine could expect U.S. and Western assistance to continue.” 

Burns reportedly hinted that there was a limit. “People familiar with the meeting” told the Post that “(Burns) acknowledged that at some point assistance would be harder to come by.” Zelensky left the meeting “with the impression that the Biden administration’s support for Kyiv remains strong and the $45 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine passed by Congress in December would last at least through July or August.” But he “is less certain about the prospects of Congress passing another multibillion-dollar supplemental assistance package as it did last spring.”

The RAND report offers similar hints. As the war goes on, “The intensity of the military assistance effort could become unsustainable.” It points out that some European and U.S. stocks of weapons “are reportedly running low.”

The report even suggests that Ukraine’s “belief that Western aid will continue indefinitely” may be discouraging negotiations and prolonging the war. The report entertains the idea of “conditioning future military aid on a Ukrainian commitment to negotiations.”

And then there is this from Washington’s foreign policy elite: In that aforementioned Washington Post column, Ignatius says that the Biden administration "has begun planning for an eventual postwar military balance that will help Kyiv deter any repetition of Russia’s brutal invasion." But he adds that the Biden administration has moved away from the earlier idea of “security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5.” Instead, “U.S. officials increasingly believe the key is to give Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself. Security will be ensured by potent weapons systems.” Ignatius says one interesting formula would be for the now well-equipped Ukraine to effect “a demilitarized status.”

The RAND report hints at the same change. Ukraine’s proposal of a security commitment by the U.S. and other countries to use military force if Ukraine was attacked was met by “lukewarm” reaction “at best” in the West, according to the report. It then suggests that the U.S. could “promise more aid for the postwar period to address Ukraine’s fears about the durability of peace.” It also recalls that the “tentatively agreed” upon settlement negotiated in Istanbul in April 2022 that balanced security guarantees with a commitment not to seek NATO membership, a point also noted by Ignatius.

On all of these issues there may be a very quiet, but emerging, shape of a consensus that Crimea cannot be recaptured militarily, that there may be a time limit on the West supplying weapons, and that a peace could be maintained after a negotiated end to the war without Ukraine entering NATO. Day-to-day developments could, of course, change the trajectory at any moment. As of this writing, the Ukrainians are asking for assistance beyond the tanks that were pledged last week. It is yet to be seen if Kyiv’s ambitions, and the West’s commitments to a long war, diverge in the months to come.