The Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison is Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire and is sanctioned by the Russian Federation
Ukraine is facing a bleak winter.
Since the spring, Russia has destroyed at least 50 per cent of Ukraine’s capacity to generate electricity, leaving the country already 6GW short come the winter – a third of peak demand for the time of year. As recently as 17 November, much of the country was plunged into darkness by strikes from 210 Russian missiles and drones. Were Russia to gamble on a strike against Ukraine’s three remaining nuclear plants that now provide most of its power, Putin could kill the grid and cut off Ukraine’s heating and water in the deep midwinter. That is the greatest threat.
On top, Russian forces are crawling forward along the entire front, Ukrainian mobilisation appears inadequate and training is insufficient, despite assistance from allies. The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk and its plucky missile and drone assaults on Russia are contained, partly by 10,000 North Korean reinforcements. Little wonder morale is reportedly low and the Ukrainian public is coming to the view that their government must negotiate with Russia and perhaps give up territory. And Donald Trump’s return to the White House will ‘end (the war) sooner,’ Zelensky acknowledged recently – notably avoiding whether that was for better or worse.
What might a peace negotiated in these circumstances look like? The obvious compromise, however galling, is Ukraine conceding occupied territories in exchange for a pathway to NATO membership and implied border guarantees. But why would the aggressor accept that when he holds the advantage?
The moment Ukraine joins NATO, she is lost to him.
He will need a ceasefire to stem his own losses but not a formal treaty recognising new, settled borders. This all points to an outcome like that of the Korean War: frontlines solidifying into frontiers. If that happens, Putin’s Eye of Sauron will turn elsewhere, like Mao invading India almost a decade after fighting the West to a stalemate in Korea. But Putin is old, and apparently sick. He does not have anything like as long.
So where will he look?
He could simply look at ramping up his interference in the affairs of other countries, forever testing the boundaries. That means hybrid stuff like cutting submarine cables, cyberattacks plausibly denied, poisoning civilians in cathedral cities, employing mercenaries, and interdiction in the High North.
But where’s the glory in that?
In Putin’s head, the war in Ukraine is to reunite Greater Russia – a crazy view he has reinforced by comparing himself to Tsar Peter the Great: ‘He (Peter) seized nothing (from Sweden). He reclaimed it!’ This monster sees himself as Peter the Great, for goodness’ sake. That means taking territory, not just making mischief around Europe.
The lands Peter seized from Sweden are now Estonia and Latvia – lands to ‘reclaim.’ This master of mischief, mayhem, and misery might gamble that the West lacks the resolve to stop him seizing the Suwalki gap, for example. The narrow stretch of land between Lithuania and Poland, both in NATO, doubles as a corridor between the Kaliningrad enclave and the puppet-state Belarus. Seizing it would cut off the Baltic states by land from the rest of NATO and occupy NATO territory. Unless NATO suffers a nervous breakdown, that means World War III – a war the West is bound to win, but at terrible cost for both sides.
More likely in my view, Putin will look south towards the Caucasus. Putin, at his revanchist worst in his chillingly named documentary Russia: A New History, said three months before invading Ukraine that the fall of the USSR was ‘a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union… And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost.’ Implying that the borders of the old Soviet empire are the same as Greater Russia or historical Russia implies again that he would not conquer but ‘reclaim’ all those rightfully Russian lands. Lest we forget Putin still occupies large tracts of Georgia since invading in 2008. He still rigs elections for the governing coalition. He still seeks to scupper the country’s bid for EU membership. Georgia is poised to be another Ukraine.
If not Georgia, Armenia. Putin may seek to regain the influence he lost in 2018 to a revolution that swept away his puppets and empowered a critic, Nikol Pashinyan. Four years ago, Putin hardly bothered to aid Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ally, presumably hoping Pashinyan’s government would fall. But it survived. Unencumbered by the war in Ukraine, a victorious Putin surely would not allow Armenia to continue drifting towards the West. Besides, Gazprom – Russia’s state-owned energy company – owns all of Armenia’s gas networks. Putin could strangle Armenia’s electricity supply as he is strangling Ukraine’s, forcing them back under his boot. In the fevered mind of the demagogue, it seems such an easy win.
Should Putin judge it too risky to try his luck further in NATO’s backyard, he may see central Asia as worth a look.
Russia has long dominated this clutch of thinly populated former Soviet republics, and the war appears to have strengthened its hegemony. Since 2022, trade turnover between Russia and central Asia has increased by between 10 and 45 per cent and the volume of trade flowing along the Middle Corridor between China and Europe – the modern Silk Road – has quadrupled. Along with much more trade, the war has increased Kazakhstan’s reliance on revenue from oil almost entirely exported down pipelines either in Russia or owned by Russian company Transneft and effected millions of migrants to and from Russia, so much so that the 1.7 million Tajiks who migrated in 2022 alone sent back money worth at least one third of their homeland’s entire economy. These former provinces of the Soviet empire are now supplicants to Peter the Great’s preening pretender.
Yet for as much as the war has tightened Putin’s grip on the ‘stan’ economies, it has weakened his control of their politics. With China promising $4.5 billion of investment in the region and Saudi Arabia $14 billion, a paranoid Putin surrounded by sycophants might see former Soviet possessions slipping away. Like Armenia, all five states need Russia – for now. Influence in the region is a prize arguably greater than Ukraine over time. Kazakhstan is sitting on the twelfth-largest oil reserves in the world and produces more uranium than any other country, Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves, and Uzbekistan boasts the largest gold mine on earth. Putin will not let them go. This revanchist contest is with China, not NATO.
‘We dare not tempt them with weakness,’ John F. Kennedy said of the Soviets in his inaugural address. ‘For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.’ So far, we have tempted Putin with weakness. No more. Granting Ukraine permission to strike within Russia was commendable but not enough. Once a ceasefire is agreed, we will see Ukraine’s effective frontiers. As with South Korea, a line is all the West needs. Europe must guarantee those frontiers, even if Trump will not, such that it amounts to NATO membership – what Putin fears most and Zelensky needs most.
Prove the West’s strength of arms and spirit. Face down the bully. A little courage and the world – especially China, brooding and poised – will see NATO strengthened and Russia desperate merely to spare the blushes of its ersatz Peter the Great. Perhaps then, in God’s good time, he will go the way of his deposed pawn Assad and a new leader will restore the Russian Federation to its rightful place among the nations.
The Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison is Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire and is sanctioned by the Russian Federation
Ukraine is facing a bleak winter.
Since the spring, Russia has destroyed at least 50 per cent of Ukraine’s capacity to generate electricity, leaving the country already 6GW short come the winter – a third of peak demand for the time of year. As recently as 17 November, much of the country was plunged into darkness by strikes from 210 Russian missiles and drones. Were Russia to gamble on a strike against Ukraine’s three remaining nuclear plants that now provide most of its power, Putin could kill the grid and cut off Ukraine’s heating and water in the deep midwinter. That is the greatest threat.
On top, Russian forces are crawling forward along the entire front, Ukrainian mobilisation appears inadequate and training is insufficient, despite assistance from allies. The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk and its plucky missile and drone assaults on Russia are contained, partly by 10,000 North Korean reinforcements. Little wonder morale is reportedly low and the Ukrainian public is coming to the view that their government must negotiate with Russia and perhaps give up territory. And Donald Trump’s return to the White House will ‘end (the war) sooner,’ Zelensky acknowledged recently – notably avoiding whether that was for better or worse.
What might a peace negotiated in these circumstances look like? The obvious compromise, however galling, is Ukraine conceding occupied territories in exchange for a pathway to NATO membership and implied border guarantees. But why would the aggressor accept that when he holds the advantage?
The moment Ukraine joins NATO, she is lost to him.
He will need a ceasefire to stem his own losses but not a formal treaty recognising new, settled borders. This all points to an outcome like that of the Korean War: frontlines solidifying into frontiers. If that happens, Putin’s Eye of Sauron will turn elsewhere, like Mao invading India almost a decade after fighting the West to a stalemate in Korea. But Putin is old, and apparently sick. He does not have anything like as long.
So where will he look?
He could simply look at ramping up his interference in the affairs of other countries, forever testing the boundaries. That means hybrid stuff like cutting submarine cables, cyberattacks plausibly denied, poisoning civilians in cathedral cities, employing mercenaries, and interdiction in the High North.
But where’s the glory in that?
In Putin’s head, the war in Ukraine is to reunite Greater Russia – a crazy view he has reinforced by comparing himself to Tsar Peter the Great: ‘He (Peter) seized nothing (from Sweden). He reclaimed it!’ This monster sees himself as Peter the Great, for goodness’ sake. That means taking territory, not just making mischief around Europe.
The lands Peter seized from Sweden are now Estonia and Latvia – lands to ‘reclaim.’ This master of mischief, mayhem, and misery might gamble that the West lacks the resolve to stop him seizing the Suwalki gap, for example. The narrow stretch of land between Lithuania and Poland, both in NATO, doubles as a corridor between the Kaliningrad enclave and the puppet-state Belarus. Seizing it would cut off the Baltic states by land from the rest of NATO and occupy NATO territory. Unless NATO suffers a nervous breakdown, that means World War III – a war the West is bound to win, but at terrible cost for both sides.
More likely in my view, Putin will look south towards the Caucasus. Putin, at his revanchist worst in his chillingly named documentary Russia: A New History, said three months before invading Ukraine that the fall of the USSR was ‘a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union… And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost.’ Implying that the borders of the old Soviet empire are the same as Greater Russia or historical Russia implies again that he would not conquer but ‘reclaim’ all those rightfully Russian lands. Lest we forget Putin still occupies large tracts of Georgia since invading in 2008. He still rigs elections for the governing coalition. He still seeks to scupper the country’s bid for EU membership. Georgia is poised to be another Ukraine.
If not Georgia, Armenia. Putin may seek to regain the influence he lost in 2018 to a revolution that swept away his puppets and empowered a critic, Nikol Pashinyan. Four years ago, Putin hardly bothered to aid Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ally, presumably hoping Pashinyan’s government would fall. But it survived. Unencumbered by the war in Ukraine, a victorious Putin surely would not allow Armenia to continue drifting towards the West. Besides, Gazprom – Russia’s state-owned energy company – owns all of Armenia’s gas networks. Putin could strangle Armenia’s electricity supply as he is strangling Ukraine’s, forcing them back under his boot. In the fevered mind of the demagogue, it seems such an easy win.
Should Putin judge it too risky to try his luck further in NATO’s backyard, he may see central Asia as worth a look.
Russia has long dominated this clutch of thinly populated former Soviet republics, and the war appears to have strengthened its hegemony. Since 2022, trade turnover between Russia and central Asia has increased by between 10 and 45 per cent and the volume of trade flowing along the Middle Corridor between China and Europe – the modern Silk Road – has quadrupled. Along with much more trade, the war has increased Kazakhstan’s reliance on revenue from oil almost entirely exported down pipelines either in Russia or owned by Russian company Transneft and effected millions of migrants to and from Russia, so much so that the 1.7 million Tajiks who migrated in 2022 alone sent back money worth at least one third of their homeland’s entire economy. These former provinces of the Soviet empire are now supplicants to Peter the Great’s preening pretender.
Yet for as much as the war has tightened Putin’s grip on the ‘stan’ economies, it has weakened his control of their politics. With China promising $4.5 billion of investment in the region and Saudi Arabia $14 billion, a paranoid Putin surrounded by sycophants might see former Soviet possessions slipping away. Like Armenia, all five states need Russia – for now. Influence in the region is a prize arguably greater than Ukraine over time. Kazakhstan is sitting on the twelfth-largest oil reserves in the world and produces more uranium than any other country, Turkmenistan has the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves, and Uzbekistan boasts the largest gold mine on earth. Putin will not let them go. This revanchist contest is with China, not NATO.
‘We dare not tempt them with weakness,’ John F. Kennedy said of the Soviets in his inaugural address. ‘For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.’ So far, we have tempted Putin with weakness. No more. Granting Ukraine permission to strike within Russia was commendable but not enough. Once a ceasefire is agreed, we will see Ukraine’s effective frontiers. As with South Korea, a line is all the West needs. Europe must guarantee those frontiers, even if Trump will not, such that it amounts to NATO membership – what Putin fears most and Zelensky needs most.
Prove the West’s strength of arms and spirit. Face down the bully. A little courage and the world – especially China, brooding and poised – will see NATO strengthened and Russia desperate merely to spare the blushes of its ersatz Peter the Great. Perhaps then, in God’s good time, he will go the way of his deposed pawn Assad and a new leader will restore the Russian Federation to its rightful place among the nations.