As the United States continues to deepen its involvement in Ukraine, policymakers say the dangers and costly sacrifices are still warranted. “As long as it takes,” stressed President Joseph Biden at the NATO summit in Madrid this July, “so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.” This escalatory approach is sustained by twin assumptions about the war, which claim Russian president Vladimir Putin resorted to an “unprovoked” military invasion of Ukraine to fulfill “maximum” aims of conquest.

But these purported assertions are erroneous.

And yet, they’re propagated, repeatedly, within the Western discourse over the war. The purpose of the narrative they conjure up is straightforward. The distortion and inflation of the threat serve to compel and enable Western governments to pursue—and maintain—hardline policies to deny Russia a victory in Ukraine.

Early on, with bias run amok in the West, the media’s glaring and lopsided access into the conflict had also undercut its legibility of what was happening on the ground. By default, it over-relied on information furnished by one side of the war’s ledger. This empowered Washington (and also Kyiv) with nearly unfettered access to shape the interpretation of the war and its events to Western audiences without facing much, if any, scrutiny.

In effect, the American public has been bamboozled into supporting a costly and risky proxy war against Russia. Then, it was actively led to believe that Ukraine was winning the fight, despite later reports that the U.S. intelligence community has lacked an accurate portrayal of the war on the ground from its very onset.

As a tool of foreign policy, threat inflation involves concerted and deliberate actions to misrepresent information and manipulate public perception so as to inspire overblown fear and outrage. In turn, this helps to justify costly and risky policies that would otherwise fail to earn sufficient political and public support. Such efforts not only amplify the threat posed by an adversary, but also characterize the source of aggression as an intrinsic quality of its leadership. This is to discredit the belief that its behavior may be a reaction to one’s own policies or actions motivated by circumstance. Thus, the course of action desired is situated within the public discourse as the only reasonable path forward.

Needless to say, Putin started an illegal and unjustified war. Yet, to enable a course correction toward a diplomatic solution, it’s the Western-based narrative about the war that requires a repudiation.

Take, for instance, the purported certainty in the West that Russia’s military sought to conquer a heavily populated and fervently nationalistic country nearly the size of Texas—and initially, intended to do so in a matter of days, no less. This belief is entirely baseless. In fact, even the U.S. military is incapable of pulling off such a feat in that little time. And yet, the falsehood, which formed the West’s perception of Russia’s intentions, remains unabated. So too is Washington’s incessant deflection of holding any responsibility for provoking the invasion, despite its ubiquitous and escalatory involvement in the precipitating crisis.

Today, the narrative of an unprovoked and maximum-aim war persists and dominates the public discourse in the West. There’s no doubt that it has advanced popular and political support for a noble cause. Not only does it help to punish Russia’s aggression in invading a sovereign country, but it also helps Ukraine defend itself. Now surpassing $53 billion in total aid since the war began on February 24, the notable U.S. commitment aims to keep Ukraine in the fight over the long term. By extension, it prolongs the effort to bleed and degrade Russia’s military in hopes of ushering in its retreat from Ukraine.

However, the trade-off in keeping a distorted reality intact undermines better judgments in bringing the war ravaging Ukraine to a responsible end. Indeed, despite the strategic and moral goals the narrative is meant to facilitate, its propagation has also obstructed diplomacy, expanded the consequences of the war beyond Ukraine, and intensified its modes of destruction within it. More troublingly, the blowback continues to compound. Since the West’s approach was founded on misleading assumptions to enact it, ensuring its continuation over time will become more difficult and inextricably bound up with risky military escalation and greater adverse effects on the global economy.

Enabling Denial by Proxy

In late 2021, as pessimism over the crisis ramped up, Biden pledged to put together “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult” for Putin to “do what people are worried he may do.” This included deterrence of both the punishment and denial variants. Deterrence-by-punishment involved a range of retaliatory sanctions inflicted on Russia’s economy if it invaded its neighbor. Deterrence-by-denial centered on manipulating Putin’s calculus to avoid an invasion by making it unlikely to be successful. Additionally, this also prepared the U.S. to burden, complicate, and spoil Russia’s chances of a speedy and economical victory should it resort to war.

But problems with U.S. strategy persisted. On the one hand, hesitancy in Europe, given the continent’s economic dependence on Russian energy exports, hindered the credibility of deterrence-by-punishment. To sanction Russia risked retaliatory measures in kind. On the other hand, deterrence-by-denial was inoperable through direct military engagement. Ultimately, Russia’s nuclear arsenal eliminated that possibility and neither the U.S. nor NATO intended to send troops to Ukraine, fearing escalation toward nuclear brinksmanship. To issue threats of direct war would be regarded as a bluff by Moscow and fail to deter its aggression.

Thus, to fill the coercive void and strengthen and signal resolve, Washington turned to threat inflation. This sought to buttress ongoing threats of sanctions and facilitate a deterrent strategy of indirect military engagement—or denial-by-proxy. Since the U.S. cannot directly prevent Russia from achieving its aims in Ukraine, it can try to rally Western support to overburden its strategy, resources, and tactics—rendering an invasion more costly to pursue and less likely to succeed if pursued. Without threat inflation to secure political and public buy-in, commitment to help defend Ukraine would fail to launch, be reduced to symbolic gestures, or fizzle out as soon as risks and costs mounted.

The driving logic is to shape the narrative because the narrative enables an indirect form of deterrence-by-denial. The Russian military may, ultimately, achieve some degree or outcome of victory on the battlefield in Ukraine. However, the blow to the West—and the liberal international order it seeks to preserve—is mitigated if that victory comes at great cost to Moscow, so much so that it turns the narrative of the war into Putin’s blunder.

No doubt, the prospect of another foreign policy calamity weighed heavily on the White House. In 2021, the fiasco ensued by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan—prompting an unforeseen swift takeover by the Taliban—had damaged the post-Trumpian image of Biden’s competence and credibility on the world stage. At home, he never fully recovered. A Russian military victory in Ukraine would deliver an even more consequential and humiliating defeat for the West, especially the United States. Some feared that back-to-back debacles abroad could weaken U.S. deterrence extended to Taiwan, emboldening China’s efforts to control the islands. Accordingly, from an intelligence, political, and strategic standpoint, Washington faced enormous pressure to overcorrect on the crisis in Ukraine.

As such, the Biden administration went to great lengths to deny Russia any semblance of a speedy victory—be it a swift military triumph or a quick political capitulation by Kyiv. Initially, the U.S. worked to bridge the divide among its NATO allies. To allow for a more credible deterrent threat to materialize, it shared intelligence on Russia’s military buildup at a two-day conference in Riga, Latvia, held on November 30 and December 1, 2021. But Putin’s resolve appeared to only harden. By the start of 2022, it was apparent that deterrence-by-punishment was failing to de-escalate the crisis. In turn, the U.S. intensified efforts at deterrence-by-denial.

In January 2022, the Biden administration leaned forward to get ahead of an invasion that hadn’t yet occurred—but one that it had to be ready to confront, nonetheless. Three key pieces of evidence pointed to an intensification in the U.S. approach. First, U.S. officials began to publicly estimate that an invasion was an ever-growing likelihood. “My guess is he (Putin) will move in,” said Biden on January 19, “He has to do something.” This was a change from the previous position, which emphasized that Putin’s intent to invade was unknown or inconclusive. Second, the U.S. incorporated denial-based plans to pre-empt and stifle the likelihood of a speedy Russian victory in case an invasion did happen. Finally, noticeable indications of threat inflation began to appear in the public discourse, whereby Russia’s ostensible aims and projected danger to the West were deliberately exaggerated.

These changes occurred as the U.S. knowingly prepared to officially dismiss Russia’s diplomatic proposal later that month. Centering on grievances and concerns over NATO’s role and its eastward expansion to induct Ukraine, Russia put forth a draft agreement in December 2021 to reset the post-Cold War security arrangement with the West. But in a delivered letter, the diplomatic proposal was declared by the U.S., in clearest terms, to be a non-starter. “There is no change. There will be no change,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken on January 26, in regards to the U.S. commitment to uphold NATO’s open-door policy to prospective members, including Ukraine.

A Blindspot within American Intelligence

Within the media discourse, the American intelligence community was “spot on” in predicting an invasion of Ukraine. But this assumption is misleading, at best, and dangerous, at worst. It has allowed statements and warnings issued by U.S. policymakers, who cite the authority of intelligence, to go unchallenged. Upon closer scrutiny, an examination of the rhetoric of the Biden administration in the lead-up to the war suggests good reason to question the quality of their information. Undoubtedly, the lack of access into the decisions and deliberations inside the Kremlin extends to the lack of insight into Russia’s intentions. Hence, the certainty espoused by U.S. leaders when maximizing Russia’s war aim is unsubstantiated and constitutes an overreach.

A healthy dose of skepticism about the veracity and depth of American intelligence—or, at least, how political elites portrayed it to the public—is needed. First, given the rhetoric and actions by Washington throughout the crisis, there’s no credible indication that access into Moscow’s deliberations over aims, strategy, and intentions was ever obtained by the U.S. intelligence community. Second, the eleventh-hour upswing in alarmism from U.S. officials was also intertwined with an intensified information campaign that sought to preempt and inflate the Russian threat so as to deter it. Importantly, evidence of threat inflation had well preceded the shift to assert a near certainty of an invasion. This makes it difficult to disentangle and discern if the alarmism was derived from new streams of intelligence—or if it stemmed from political decisions to strengthen deterrence-by-denial. Finally, there existed profound political and strategic incentives for U.S. policymakers (and the intelligence community) to hedge their bets. After the debacle in Afghanistan, the uncertainty and inaccessibility to the Kremlin would likely incentivize widening intelligence estimates or political statements to incorporate some level of plausibility over the worst-case scenario. As such, there’s little doubt that avoiding the surmountable damage of being caught flat-footed again was of paramount concern, driving an overcorrection.

Contrary to popular depiction, the U.S. forewarning of an invasion of Ukraine doesn’t necessitate that intelligence access into Russia’s intentions, aims, and strategy drove its decision to issue a prediction. In fact, it was only in the final week of the yearlong military escalation that U.S. officials signaled some modest level of certainty about the prospect of a Russian invasion, yet were still engaged to find a diplomatic solution. Warnings ratcheted up over the likelihood of war as the crisis visibly escalated to a boiling point. In Washington, concern grew over Moscow’s costly signaling after it publicized its ultimatum on December 17, 2021, whereby its rejection would set up a pretext to invade. Some believed Russia’s mere issuance of the demands had indicated that an invasion was a foregone conclusion.

In its public engagement, Washington hedged its threat assessment. It signaled that a Russian invasion was a growing likelihood, inflated the threat to help buttress ongoing deterrent efforts, but still couched those warnings within continued uncertainty regarding Putin’s plans and intentions. This rhetorical balancing act served to preserve the public perception of American credibility regardless of how events unfolded. If Russia invaded, the U.S. credits the accuracy of its intelligence to advance preparations to confront the threat; absent an invasion, it credits its deterrent strategy that kept Russia’s aggression in check.

Up until the closing days, U.S. officials had, repeatedly, stressed that its intelligence had not revealed Putin’s calculus. Throughout the crisis, not to mention the years preceding it, the U.S. intelligence community had been encumbered by a critical blind spot into reading Russia’s intentions. It acknowledged an inability to pinpoint decision-making inside the Kremlin, which required obtaining access to Putin and his deliberations or penetrating his inner circle. The uncertainty forced U.S. intelligence, in large part, to rely on interpreting Russia’s visible military posture and maneuvers along the borders with Ukraine. Indeed, former U.S. intelligence officials doubted if access inside the Kremlin was ever obtained, believing that assessments had to rely on imagery and signals intelligence on Russia’s military deployment, particularly as final orders came down the chain of command.

Indeed, leading up to the invasion, a snapshot into the rhetoric used by U.S. leaders points to the general but imprecise nature of information. In early 2022, the White House estimated an invasion between mid-January and mid-February. On February 11, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the U.S. intelligence community had “sufficient confidence” of a “distinct possibility” that an invasion occurs before the end of the Beijing Olympics, which concluded on February 20. But he also added, “We are not saying that…a final decision has been taken by Putin.” Meanwhile, in an hourlong call, Biden warned Western leaders that an invasion was expected to happen on February 16. Of course, that turned out to be incorrect. “Putin has put in place the capacity to act on very short notice,” said Blinken on that day, “He can pull the trigger. He can pull it today, he can pull it tomorrow, he can pull it next week.” On February 17, Biden said that there was “every indication” Russia prepared to attack Ukraine “in the next several days.” He added, “I guess it will happen.” The next day, on February 18, he stretched that prediction’s timeframe to “in the coming week, in the coming days,” but still emphasized it wasn’t too late for a diplomatic path.

This rolling-basis framing of prediction suggests that Western intelligence assessments suffered from a lopsided composition in source material. Analytically speaking, insight into Russia’s intentions exhibited an overreliance on its capabilities because the U.S. lacked access into the deliberations inside the Kremlin. Indeed, as late as February 17, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasized the ongoing lack of entry into Putin’s inner circle, saying that “we know about their capabilities but of course we don’t know with certainty about their intentions, so it remains to be seen what they will do.” This may have been sufficient to make estimations on general outcomes and provide an early warning system of an invasion’s final ground preparations. But the lack of direct access into Russia’s intentions undermined efforts to determine critical details, such as its strategy, military plans and objectives, and ultimately, political goals.

As such, U.S. predictions were made in the context of Russia having positioned its final military pieces. In February, Putin had claimed a partial withdrawal of Russian forces from the border. But evidence contradicted any signs of a pullback. “So far we have not seen any de-escalation on the ground from the Russian side,” said Stoltenberg on February 15, “Over the last weeks and days we have seen the opposite.” This suggested an invasion was on the horizon, and likely prompted U.S. officials to get ahead of it and elevate their warning status. The chances of an invasion are “very high,” Biden said on February 17, “because they have not moved any of their troops out,” but instead “have moved more troops in.”

Another sign of the unbalanced and limited nature of U.S. intelligence was the wide-ranging projections into the mechanics of a military invasion. Devoid of knowing Russia’s war-aim and military strategy, U.S. estimations of how an invasion would look relied on deducing plausible scenarios. Essentially, it focused on information gleaned from Russia’s mobilized military capabilities, force posture, and unit compositions.

Speaking from a White House podium, Sullivan suggested on February 11 that an invasion “could take a range of different forms,” with “a possible line of attack” being “a rapid assault on the city of Kyiv,” whereby the Russians “could also choose to move in other parts of Ukraine as well.” On February 17, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council, Blinken described a wider range of scenarios, even as he admitted: “We don’t know exactly the form it will take.”

Surely, at the individual level, U.S. policymakers were also incentivized to overcorrect and safeguard their reputations. Back in summer 2021, Blinken’s dismissal of a hyperbolic scenario he conceived—that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan wasn’t going to happen over the span of a weekend—had ironically turned out to be the reality foreshadowed. Now, the incentives at using hyperbole were reversed. Akin to throwing spaghetti on the walls at the UN, he warned of a false flag operation in the form of “a fabricated so-called ‘terrorist’ bombing inside Russia, the invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians, or a fake—even a real—attack using chemical weapons,” whereby Russian leaders “may theatrically convene emergency meetings” that greenlight an invasion. In the attack stage, “missiles and bombs will drop across Ukraine,” whereby “communications will be jammed,” and “cyberattacks will shut down key Ukrainian institutions,” all occurring prior to soldiers marching in “on key targets that have already been identified and mapped out in detailed plans.”

Needless to say, the forewarnings turned out to be wildly incorrect. Despite laying out an array of possibilities, the U.S. still missed Russia’s decision, days prior to the invasion, to recognize the independence of the two Russian-speaking breakaway provinces in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. This represented even more evidence of Washington’s lack of access to the decision-making calculus in Moscow. Moreover, the expectations over how Russia might conduct its war strategy were so overly generalized that military observers noted they “mirror-image” how the U.S. would conduct an invasion of its own.

A three-front assault—one of the scenarios predicted—wasn’t difficult to deduce. After all, Russia’s mobilization visibly took place in the border areas in the north, south, and east of Ukraine. Furthermore, a line of attack to Kyiv wasn’t difficult to deduce either. Russia used Belarus—a mere 140-mile drive to Kyiv—as a military staging ground, whereby it visibly stationed tactical and rapid deployment forces. Generally speaking, if the quality and insight of American intelligence were so robust, as suggested by the alarmism, it stands to reason why sharing it failed to convince European allies, including Ukraine. In fact, on February 12, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy still doubted the rhetoric coming from Washington. He insinuated that the U.S. public messaging was exaggerated from what the shared intelligence had stipulated, citing that “too much information in the information space” was negatively stirring a domestic panic. This divergence—or asymmetry in information—isn’t the result of uneven or privileged intelligence within the Western alliance, but rather of one ally’s active distortion.

Threat Inflation vs. Threat Assessment

In the face of criticism prior to the war, the White House defended its communications strategy. ”In Iraq, intelligence was used and deployed from this very podium to start a war,” Sullivan said, “We’re trying to stop a war.” The same logic was put forth to an international audience at the United Nations, where Blinken stated: “I am mindful that some have called into question our information, recalling previous instances where intelligence ultimately did not bear out. But let me be clear: I am here today, not to start a war, but to prevent one.” Essentially, threat inflation by the U.S. was justified because its cause was noble, even considered by those propagating it—a necessity. Because “by sharing what we know with the world,” Blinken continued in his February 17 address, “we can influence Russia to abandon the path of war and choose a different path while there’s still time.” Later on, CIA Director William Burns emphasized an ongoing information campaign of “selective declassification“ pursued by the U.S. intelligence community. “This is one information war that I think Putin is losing,” he noted in his congressional testimony alongside the heads of other intelligence agencies in March 2022, saying the U.S. had finally caught up with Russia’s previous command in weaponizing the information space.

According to U.S. and Western officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, the employment of information—or disinformation—was being used, at one level, to preempt, disrupt, and confuse Moscow in carrying out its plans and tactics and, at another level, to “undermine Moscow’s propaganda and prevent Russia from defining how the war is perceived in the world.” Until now, many observers believe the information “declassified” originated from reliable source material, failing to understand that information warfare was made necessary because of the lack of access into the upper echelons of the Russian state.

The tight inner circle and decision-making apparatus of Putin’s Russia—coupled with its advanced counterintelligence system—would constitute an enduring problem for the U.S. intelligence community. These limitations and constraints help explain the wide and intermittent variation in forewarnings issued by Washington. Indeed, preemption was unlikely driven by having reliable intelligence, but rather on the basis of lacking it. In all likelihood, “selective declassification” relied on speculative projection and conjecture, whereby target selection was guided by how Russia might or could operate given assumptions over its capabilities and past behavior, but not necessarily derived from accurate, real-time information. “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions,” admitted Blinken in November 2021, “but we do know its playbook.” As such, by targeting the playbook, U.S. preemptive tactics bypassed the problem posed by uncertainty and inaccessibility, increasing the costs and complications of an invasion so as to deter it.

Akin to a probabilistic process of elimination, preemptive efforts aimed to dampen the likelihood for a multitude of possible scenarios. Apart from the invasion itself, other threats and warnings never came to pass. In this jumbled mix was a coup d’état in major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, a ‘false flag’ operation using graphic video propaganda, a massive cyberattack, the use of chemical weapons, among others. None, however, were based on reliable information but rather on assumptions of their mere probability. Later on, U.S. officials acknowledged that threats based on unsubstantiated or low confidence were part of its information warfare against Russia. “It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,” said one U.S. official, “It’s more important to get out ahead of them, Putin specifically, before they do something.” In other words, these preemptive tactics were utilized as disinformation, sometimes just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”

Most consequentially, preemption to service an indirect form of deterrence-by-denial extended beyond the tactical level, and sought to shape the perception of Russia’s political aims and military ambitions.

In January 2022, the United States and United Kingdom spearheaded a joint information campaign that sought to maximize Russia’s potential war aims in the public discourse. On January 20, the Treasury Department issued sanctions on four pro-Russian Ukrainian elites, with a single reference to the audacious aim of “creating a new, Russian-controlled government in Ukraine.” Days later, in targeting the media establishment in the West, an erratic pattern of insufficient and unsubstituted claims was put forth by Washington and London. This consisted of public disclosures and private leaks to the media, whereby representatives of each government corroborated the other’s threat assessment. Substantively, they insinuated that the Kremlin’s plans for an invasion had designs to install a pro-Russian puppet regime in Kyiv.

These allegations, however, severely lacked details and, by all accounts, failed to meet basic thresholds of plausibility. Having trickled into the public discourse, the identification of elites purported to be Russia’s next handpicked puppet leader in Kyiv had risen to the level of comedic absurdity among the Ukrainian population. More significantly, the disclosures mimicked amateur and speculative guesswork. In fact, there was no trace or resemblance to a threat assessment that had undergone the traditional intelligence cycle. “Complete nonsense,” said a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker. “A lot of the people who are named as members of this future government aren’t even on speaking terms with each other,” he continued. “It’s a random group of names.” The head of research at a Kyiv-based think tank believed it to be “poorly thought-out” and “absolutely absurd,” saying such a regime “will not be supported by Ukrainian society.”

Instead of busy plotting a coup, Yevhen Murayev, alleged by the U.K. to potentially lead this pro-Russian government, was on vacation with his family on a tropical island. ”At first,” he said, “I thought it was some kind of prank.” Oddly, Murayev was no longer an ally of Russia. Years prior, Moscow sanctioned him after a falling out with another conspirator alleged by the U.S., Viktor Medvedchuk, who since May 2021 had been under house arrest for treason as part of the government’s crackdown on the Russophone opposition. “It isn’t very logical,” said Murayev, “I’m banned from Russia. Not only that but money from my father’s firm there has been confiscated.” Unsurprisingly, his party failed to gain a single seat in parliament in the previous election. Alleged by U.S. officials, another candidate was Oleg Tsaryov—a former parliamentarian who described himself to be the “most hated man in Ukraine after Putin.” Tsaryov left Ukraine and politics altogether in 2015. “This is a pretty funny situation,” he said, “Look at me. I’m not even invited to speak on [Russian] state TV because I’m not important enough. I’m a sanatorium director in Yalta.” Truly, Tsaryov runs three wellness clinics on the Black Sea. A fourth candidate was Ukraine’s former premier, Mykola Azarov, who despite being forced to flee the country in 2014, was now 74 years old, no less. “How can I defend myself against the allegation when nobody has provided any evidence against me?,” he said in frustration, “I can’t even sue the British, because they phrased it very carefully. They haven’t directly accused me of being involved, just that some people may have been thinking of using me.”

The purpose of the U.S. and U.K. allegations, however, was not to reflect reliable intelligence. Otherwise, such publicization would’ve been prohibited to protect sources and methods, especially when lacking inroads into reading Russia’s intentions. Instead, the disclosures and leaks represented a disinformation operation to harden deterrence-by-denial. By preempting a plan’s mere possibility, they believed its implementation would become more complicated and drive up its costs. “Calling it (i.e. regime change) out takes away the element of surprise and also reduces the chances of Russia succeeding if they actually attempt it,” said a Western official in January 2022, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Before February 24, the information environment in the West over the prospect of war and its potential scope and aims was muddled. But afterward, having settled the lingering uncertainty, the effects of the invasion cascaded, clarified, and consolidated the narrative that now dominates the public discourse. Not only did it legitimize the disinformation broadcasted in the lead-up to the war, but it also lent unwarranted credibility to the distorted threats that would follow. Consequently, this empowered the statements and information delivered from an official podium, and bestowed to U.S. leaders a windfall to further intensify threat inflation in pursuit of denial by proxy.

Surely, hours after the invasion launched, Washington inserted a new and even more nefarious intention into the fertile discourse. This coincided with the deliberate depiction of Putin’s state of mind as “unhinged” and “erratic,” painted as a congenital aggressor with an unquenchable thirst for power. Some went as far as to claim that his self-imposed isolation during the pandemic had prompted a psychosis. Ultimately, this invented narrative helped advance the myth that his warpath was hell-bent on hegemony. “He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine,” said Biden on the day Putin launched the invasion, “He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about.” Later that same day, when asked if there was any intelligence assessment to back up Biden’s assertion, Blinken evaded the question and responded, “You don’t need intelligence to tell you that’s exactly what President Putin wants. He’s made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.”

This audacious war-aim represented a sudden and monumental change in threat assessment. But elites and the media establishment in the West appeared oblivious. Ironically, despite the long struggle to ascertain the substance of Putin’s thinking, U.S. leaders suddenly became absolutely certain over his calculus and endgame—so much so that there wasn’t a need for intelligence. Indeed, the whiplash caused by the volatility of American threat assessments can make one wonder if the intelligence access, itself, was rapidly evolving or if policymakers were inventing threats along the way—effectively, as a tool of statecraft.

For instance, it was only in the preceding month that Biden estimated that Putin may be inclined to make a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. The White House walked back those comments and then reasserted it meant a non-miliary action, such as a cyberattack. The fear back then was that holding such public perceptions of a small-scaled invasion could inadvertently weaken deterrence and also complicate how the U.S. would respond in case it did happen. After all, a limited military action is likely to only justify a limited counteraction, thereby torpedoing any deterrent strategy. Nevertheless, Biden’s public estimation, even if ephemeral, had contradicted the emerging, yet flimsy, U.S. allegations that a potential Russian invasion was intent on regime change.

Astonishingly, in a span of just over a month, the White House had jumped from being indecisive about a Russian invasion to leaning towards a limited incursion, despite remaining unsure, and then, days later, warning of an intent to overthrow and install a new regime, to finally settle on a bid for regional hegemony to dominate half of Europe.

To be clear, Putin hadn’t made any such statement to resurrect the Soviet Union. Instead, he explicitly contradicted it. Efforts to attribute Moscow’s war aim as empire-seeking often try to decipher and interpret the opaqueness and emotion found in Russia’s romanticism with its imperial history. This leads to selective and unwarranted causal stories that only confirm a preexisting bias. In short, there’s no clear or convincing evidence, at least not in any public record, that Putin rationalized the invasion of Ukraine for the purpose to reconstitute the Soviet Union. Still, the hyperbolic rhetoric—axiomatically, a Napoleonic-level ambition, no less—continued to fall off the lips of political elites, media personalities, and the punditry class.

In hindsight, U.S. officials blame the cautious hesitancy in Europe in hindering its deterrent efforts to prevent war. But in employing a denial campaign by proxy war, the threat inflation that was necessitated for such a strategy had worked to resolve those previous problems. The notional fear that a Russian land army might bulldoze through Ukraine and then roll over the rest of Eastern Europe quickly shaped the early discourse over the war—this, despite the basic and intelligible recognition that it didn’t possess the wherewithal to pull off such a feat.

The benefits of threat inflation induced a proactive and united front among Western governments and spurred a previously timid Europe to adopt aggressive measures in confronting the alleged danger. Equally important, it awarded political leaders the domestic support back home to incur a higher degree of cost and risk to participate in a proxy war against Russia. However, threat inflation is a double-edged sword. As some have warned, its overuse will create the global perception that the Americans employ the same disinformation tactics as the Russians, which will undermine the credibility of U.S. intelligence and threat assessments in the future.

The Malpractice of Crisis Diplomacy

Since the start of the invasion, U.S. policymakers have publicly stated, incessantly, that Russia’s war was “unprovoked.” Their aim is to portray Russia’s aggression as offensively-oriented, rather than a defensive reaction to a perceived and growing threat. Not only does it enable political and popular support for the U.S. and the West to push back against Russia, it also deflects any domestic blame for their own provocative actions and failures to de-escalate the crisis.

In the big picture, the path to war is a tragedy of unintended consequences. It more accurately reflects the demons of escalatory spirals, that which precipitated World War I, but not the bid for regional hegemony that spurred World War II. Contrary to the Western consensus, Russia’s invasion wasn’t abetted by the failure to deter an aggressor, but by the malpractice of crisis diplomacy—on all sides.

Upon closer scrutiny, provocations were abundant. In fact, if Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine’s borders defines when the precipitating crisis started, Moscow’s initial deployment began as a reaction to Kyiv’s incitement. Moreover, the buildup wasn’t the result of a single or unilateral decision by the Kremlin, but rather an iterated and yearlong escalation process. As such, provocative measures by Ukraine and its Western partners were required to intensify the crisis beyond the breaking point—first by prompting, then enlarging, and finally sustaining Russia’s troop mobilization.

The first batch of Russia’s military buildup, approximately 3,000 troops, arrived on the border area on February 21, 2021. Of course, this force wasn’t intended to invade Ukraine. But unbeknownst to many in the West, this earliest deployment was in direct response to provocative actions unilaterally taken by Zelenskyy’s government.

By the start of 2021, having lost the wave of popularity that ushered him into office, Zelenskyy embarked on a risky political strategy to rescue his failing presidency. To shore up the support of Ukrainian nationalists—and cajole engagement from the newly arrived Biden administration in Washington—his government shifted to get tough on Russia. In a range of provocative steps, his crackdown on the Russophone opposition in Ukraine involved shutting down rival media outlets, seizing their assets, and arresting pro-Russian elites on the basis of treason.

In Moscow, Zelenskyy’s campaign represented a political purge that furthered the country’s drift into the Western orbit. But its warning failed to elicit the desired behavior in Kyiv.

Instead of backpedaling after the first Russian deployment, the Ukrainian leader upped the ante. On February 26, Zelenskyy signed a decree that would officially roll out a new government initiative on March 24 to de-occupy and reintegrate the Crimean Peninsula. This prompted Russia, which annexed the territory in 2014, to send a stronger signal so as to draw the West’s attention. This time, it was a massive military deployment to the border area.

Still, Washington didn’t reign in Kyiv’s behavior. Instead, it supported the hard-hitting pivot against Moscow. While it was a bilateral dispute in its embryonic stage, the crisis soon escalated and recklessly revived a strategic threat to Russia’s security.

In response to Putin’s escalation, Zelenskyy upped the ante again. In early April 2021, he publicly renewed Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. In turn, more Russian troops arrived at the border area. But instead of recognizing Russia’s longstanding security concerns, the NATO summit in Brussels issued a communiqué on June 14 that reasserted the controversial decision reached in the 2008 summit in Bucharest. Back then, NATO dismissed Russia’s warnings and invited Ukraine and Georgia to eventually join the alliance. Months later, it precipitated the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

For its part, Washington mistakenly perceived the source of Moscow’s aggression as offensive, not defensive. As a result, the White House naively pursued a hard-nosed deterrent strategy. To its detriment, it neither sought to acknowledge nor accommodate Russian concerns over NATO’s eastward expansion to incorporate Ukraine.

Despite Russia’s repeated and explicit warnings over NATO enlargement, the U.S. continued to reaffirm its commitment and ongoing support to bring Ukraine into the alliance. In fact, just a month prior to the invasion, the Biden administration not only unequivocally rejected the Kremlin’s key concern, but even barred the issue from being placed on the diplomatic agenda. Effectively, this torpedoed European efforts to find an accommodation, which reportedly was gaining traction.

For many months prior to war, the U.S. doubled down on a foolhardy approach, cajoling its Western partners to follow its lead. In an exemplary feat of cognitive dissonance, the U.S. tried to coerce a nuclear-armed Russia to relinquish a core security interest, all the while thinking it could extend deterrence over a non-treaty partner for which it was bound to never send troops to defend in the first place.

This was a colossal blunder of crisis diplomacy. Not only was the U.S. deterrence scheme ineffectual, but putting it into practice had perpetuated the opposite of what it intended to prevent. Indeed, when a crisis is driven by a security dilemma, the very act of showcasing strength and resolve doesn’t deter war. Instead, it aggravates insecurities, thereby fueling an escalation cycle to spiral upward and out of control.

In spite of worsening tensions, NATO’s large-scale military exercises in Europe didn’t do much to buttress deterrence over the spring and summer of 2021. In fact, it sustained the Russian mobilization to project its strength and reassert its resolve in kind. Moreover, the deepening military partnership between NATO and Ukraine hastened the diplomatic hourglass to reach its expiration date.

At one level, the military assistance caused tensions to intensify in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, overburdening a fragile ceasefire. Fears grew that the NATO-supplied hardware and ongoing training might, sooner or later, be repurposed by Kyiv to revise the status quo and reclaim full control over the breakaway provinces. At another level, it emboldened Ukraine and weakened Russia’s coercive leverage to achieve its aims, diplomatically. More strikingly, it made Moscow’s reserved military option grow costlier with time, thereby closing the door on further rounds of negotiations.

Ultimately, Biden’s definitive refusal to concede and close NATO’s open-door policy to Ukraine is what likely cemented Putin’s decision to resort to his military option. “I don’t accept anyone’s red line,” Biden said in December 2021, to head off Putin’s intent later that month to formally request a permanent ban on NATO membership for Ukraine. Mistakenly, and rather foolishly, the only outcome deemed unacceptable for Washington was a diplomatic solution that favored Moscow’s stated security concerns. In this crisis, it was accommodation, not deterrence, that constituted the correct approach to starve off the prospect of war.

The Fallacy of the Maximum Aim Assumption

Since the 2014 Maiden Revolution, which toppled a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv, Russia’s principal aim has been to reorient Ukraine as a neutral state. For Russia, neutrality in Ukraine is envisioned in both the de jure and de facto sense of the term. Not only does this involve legal guarantees and mechanisms to ensure Ukraine is prohibited from joining rivaled spheres of influence—such as NATO and the European Union—but also insists on a demilitarized relationship with the West given NATO’s growing role since 2014. This strategic interest is not a recent invention. In fact, Russia’s interest in Ukraine’s non-alignment predates Putin’s rise to power. Furthermore, neutrality was prominently featured and its mechanisms to ensure it were integrated within the stalled and now defunct Minsk II treaty, co-signed in 2015 by Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany to resolve the war in the Donbas region. But efforts by Moscow in the subsequent years—and even up till the final week prior to war—to compel the implementation of its concerned provisions had hit a dead end. For Ukrainian nationalists, Minsk II was too hard of a pill to swallow, casting it as a death warrant for the country’s sovereignty.

Contrary to the media’s popular depiction, the war isn’t—and never was—about conquering Ukraine. Since its onset, the invasion hasn’t entailed the scope, scale, or conduct that is akin to a maximum war aim to vanquish the state and subjugate society. Across all of Russia’s invading fronts, the variation of the expended resources by ground and air power within Ukraine—in addition to where it has demonstrated the greater will to fight—contradicts a military strategy that places the capital city as its centerpiece. Indeed, whatever the criteria or metric, the war’s center of mass has been anchored in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.

In contrast to U.S. forewarnings, Russia hadn’t commenced a national-wide bombing campaign, let alone one tied to a discernable strategic objective. In fact, its military delivered fewer sorties and missiles in Ukraine in nearly the first month of the war than the 2003 U.S. campaign in Iraq did on just the first day. “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched,” said a U.S. intelligence analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity over three weeks after the war began. “For whatever reason, clearly the Russians have been reluctant to strike inside the urban megalopolis of Kyiv.”

Despite the tremendous conventional firepower at Russia’s disposal, there are clear signs of restraint. For example, on the first day of the war, “32 civilian objects” were damaged, according to the Ukrainian government; however, nearly all were accidental. Of course, more would be damaged or destroyed in the coming months. But, by and large, they do not appear to be intentional. And while data is still murky, the information available on noncombatant deaths tracks with those of combatant deaths. This suggests that civilians are largely caught in the crossfire within contested areas, not targeted through a parallel military campaign intended to inflict civilian punishment. Proportionally, civilian fatalities are on par, or even lower, than the ratio experienced in U.S. air campaigns in the Middle East. In fact, according to one report citing U.S. intelligence and military observers, Russian air power has “almost exclusively been in direct support of ground forces.” Indeed, west of the Dnieper River, which splits the country into two halves, has been largely divorced from the intensity and carnage exhibited in the east, where contestation exists.

Thus far, there isn’t an aim to cripple Ukraine’s infrastructure to quicken state collapse. Until now, no systematic campaign has been attempted to target transportation and communication networks, both of which remain intact. Also, there hasn’t been a deliberate effort to wipe out the electrical grid by leveling Ukraine’s power plants or critical distribution nodes. While some were damaged, those appear to be due to close proximity to military installations or contested battlefields rather than by intention. Moreover, airfields in uncontested areas were “still operable” and some even remained untouched, including in major cities.

As for designs to upend and overturn the Ukrainian government, there’s no credible indication that foreign-imposed regime change was the pursued goal, let alone a political objective considered feasible by Russian leaders. What’s more, from a military perspective, neither the conditions in Ukraine nor Russia’s own capacity to overcome those obstacles supports the conventional wisdom of an intent to conquer it.

For instance, the reported estimates of Russia’s mobilization on the eve of war ranged from 100,000 to 190,000 personnel. Even at its peak deployment, it remains too small of a force to achieve conquest in Ukraine, let alone sustain a military occupation to safeguard a puppet regime in Kyiv. A modern country of 44 million, Ukraine is also the largest landmass after Russia on the European continent. In addition, its military was more recently upgraded—rebuilt, armed, and trained by NATO. With active military personnel at 200,000 and even a larger reserve force to boot, it can inflict tremendous costs, especially when under the belief they are fighting for the country’s survival. In the event of toppling the regime, the potential for a potent Ukrainian insurgency composed of military veterans is certain. Not only is nationalism a powerful political force in Ukraine—and anti-Russian in its ideological orientation—but it also borders multiple NATO states, which could lend support against a Russian occupying power.

To put it mildly, such conditions render a military occupation of Ukraine more arduous and taxing than the U.S. military experience in Iraq. In fact, this gap isn’t even close.

On top of the gargantuan military obstacles, their political counterpart also deems regime change an implausible goal. In fact, there’s no genuine sign Russia was even attempting to organize a political project to install in Ukraine in the first place. Moscow had neither tried to form an alternative government in exile nor was there any semblance of political opposition inside Ukraine ready to take the reins of governance. All the more, no part of the existing security apparatus of Ukraine, or any state institution for that matter, could realistically be co-opted in partnership with a Russian occupation. By itself, this nullifies the model of leadership decapitation alleged by U.S. and UK officials as Russia’s plan to install a puppet government. In Ukraine, any effort to impose regime change would require a purge and recreation of the state in its entirety.

Despite these Herculean obstacles, the notion that the Russian military aimed to overrun Ukraine and overturn its political system continues to be reproduced, not only by policymakers and pundits but also by journalists. They contend that Russian leaders must’ve miscalculated—or somehow were unaware of the challenges of pulling off regime change in a country that was next door. To this effect, they say Moscow committed the liberators-not-occupiers error in its pre-war assumptions, mistakenly believing their military would be widely welcomed by the Ukrainian population, thereby permitting the pursuit of a maximum aim.

This theory finds receptive ears in the West. Nevertheless, the argument, to say the least, is nonsensical. Unbeknownst to its proponents, as the track record shows, it’s the universal values espoused by the liberal internationalism in the West—not the realpolitik in Russia—that makes military adventurism more susceptible to committing this sort of error. For starters, the belief this miscalculation applies to this case stems from confirmation bias. Its attribution helps rationalize and reconcile Russia’s audacious decision to invade, while reinforcing and keeping intact the overall belief that it sought to conquer Ukraine.

More pointedly, Moscow never bought into a wildly optimistic outlook of the Ukrainian population, let alone enough to construct its invading gamble on. Despite the fear and antagonism fueling the crisis, it’s hard to believe the intensification of anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine was a blind spot. In fact, Putin explicitly stated his pessimistic predisposition of Ukraine’s population. “Ukrainian society is faced with the rise of extreme nationalism,” he said, just days prior to launching the invasion, “which quickly took the form of aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism.” Since 2014, a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv was overthrown, Russia annexed Ukrainian territory, a war was fought against pro-Russian separatists, the Ukrainian language was publicly mandated to suppress the use of Russian, the Moscow-favored Minsk II accord was popularly resisted, and anti-Russian rhetoric from Ukrainian elites surged. Moreover, such misplaced optimism would contradict Russia’s stated concerns that Ukraine’s far-right, which is staunchly anti-Russian, held too much sway in its government and society.

As far as its popular support goes, the Russia-friendly segments of society represent a small minority. Moreover, their geographic presence is concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine. This alone constrains any political endeavor hoping to leverage societal forces to govern much of the country, most especially west of the Dnieper River, which is fervently nationalistic. Deprived of the requisite support of locals, the costs of conquering Ukraine are compounded, astronomically.

A War to Bargain, Not Conquer

For Russia, a maximum aim was not only out of reach, but it never even attempted the preparations to grasp it. Upon closer scrutiny, its invasion reflects a limited-aims war waged as an extension of Russian statecraft. In essence, Russia seeks not to conquer Ukraine, but to coerce it. Its use of military force is a mechanism to gain bargaining power so as to strong-arm Kyiv’s compliance and coxswain Ukraine’s orientation, whereby it doesn’t threaten Russia’s security or its geopolitical interests.

In the opening salvo of the invasion, Russia’s northern front, operating from Belarus, deployed a small but rapid military force that quickly arrived at Kyiv’s doorstep. In real-time, U.S. officials publicly proclaimed the maneuver was intended to “seize” the capital city of 3 million people and “decapitate” the Ukrainian government in 48 hours. In the West, the mad dash straight toward Kyiv had all but confirmed the purported theory that Russia’s intent was to enact regime change. And henceforward, the Western media fallaciously adopted it as an empirical fact.

The assertion, however, was an artifact of American distortion. Such a military endeavor was impossible with the size and type of forces deployed. Kyiv is a vast city of “broad, sweeping avenues, bisected by narrower streets often paved with lumpy cobblestones,” with “extensive basements and cellars” inhabiting many of its structures. By itself, this renders any task to establish control over the city to be a bloody slog, lasting many weeks, if not months. “None of our leaders, neither the president nor anyone else, has ever said that we would like to capture Kyiv,” said Russia’s ambassador to the U.K., “I do not believe that it is possible to capture or occupy Kyiv. It is a big city.”

In reality, Russia’s military maneuver toward Ukraine’s capital was about coercive signaling, not conquering it. The military invasion, in fact, paralleled a diplomatic track, which explicitly sought to coerce Kyiv to promptly enter into negotiations. The goal of Russia’s Plan A was to elicit a conditional-based surrender favoring its terms, while keeping the bulk of its mobilized forces on the horizon. In exchange to comply early, Ukrainian leaders could avoid a destructive and devastating war that plays out on their soil.

Furious and disappointed with NATO’s initial hesitancy to offer support, Zelenskyy, in fact, publicly signaled (and threatened) on February 25 that he might accept Putin’s delivered request earlier that day “to talk about Ukraine’s neutral status.” Days later, he called on a national resistance to fight the invader and rejected Russia’s proposed talks in Belarus, where a delegation from Moscow waited. Yet, he was forced to send a delegation the next day since his public rejection gave Putin a propaganda victory. Nevertheless, no agreement emerged, but further rounds of negotiations were expected, and each sought to improve their bargaining position on the battlefield.

In the West, Zelenskyy’s bravado was heroized. But this rash defiance wasn’t driven by an abrupt change in personal conviction. Instead, it was motivated by a Western commitment, along with unprecedented actions by Europe, to assist in Ukraine’s defense. Quite possibly, it represented an overpromise given the Ukrainian leader’s subsequent and public frustrations with the actual level of support delivered.

To be clear, Moscow’s plan for a so-called “quick-and-decisive victory” wasn’t about capturing the flag; it was about expediting, under duress, a negotiated settlement over neutrality. In effect, Plan A wasn’t spoiled by a military defeat, but rather because it failed to coercively extract political compliance. Immediately thereafter, Moscow initiated its Plan B, which sought to enhance its bargaining power.

But with the faulty assumptions of an unprovoked and maximum-aimed invasion still intact, Western observers initially perceived Russia’s follow-on military behavior as an effort to “double-down” on still conquering Ukraine. Later on, it was said to have “downgraded” its earlier ambition and now seeks control over partial territory as opposed to the entire country. Both of these misinterpretations are driven by confirmation bias, given the misplaced certainty in the prevailing narrative.

Thus far, there’s no indication that Moscow has relegated its original war aim. Plan B, in fact, seeks the same principal goal in shaping Ukraine’s orientation as Plan A. Essentially, the change hasn’t so much occurred in the substance of Russia’s primary aim, but rather in the type of military strategy to secure it. Having preferred to obtain an agreement and avoid a costly war, Russia has been in the process of inflicting those costs to force the desired submission.

As already demonstrated, Russia’s contingency plan embarked on the arduous endeavor to establish hard facts on the ground to first position its bargaining power. This parallels a separate coercive campaign to build pressure and squeeze the acquiesce of Kyiv (and the West) to begrudgingly comply with Moscow’s terms for peace. Having targeted global food and energy supplies, the compellence phase is likely to expand and exploit other vulnerabilities. This can include attacks on infrastructure in parts of the country largely left untouched, which could extend to targeting civilians.

Nevertheless, the plethora of contradictions on the battlefield hasn’t forced a reevaluation of the axioms that underpin the distorted interpretation of the war. Despite the persistent confusion over the Russian military’s behavior, the tendency in the West has been to uphold the maximum aim of conquest and then erroneously attribute any shortfalls and irregularities as symptoms of Russian ineptitude, irrationality, or weakness.

For example, the miles-long Russian military convoy, which entered Ukraine in late February from Belarus, was expected to encircle and enforce a siege of the capital and topple the government. Despite arriving promptly outside Kyiv, Western observers were then baffled by the convoy’s perpetual stagnation. Appearing to be “sitting ducks,” the convoy was alleged in the media to have been impeded by “logistical problems” and “fierce resistance.”

In reality, the purpose of the Russian convoy wasn’t to seize Kyiv. Instead, it served as a decoy operation to facilitate the efficacy of the contingency plan, initiated after Zelenskyy rejected talks.

Stationary-like, maintaining the convoy in striking distance from the capital city kept the Ukrainian military divided. Unable to prioritize and concentrate its maximum strength to defend against the other invading fronts, the decoy allowed Russian forces to make territorial advances in the south and east. Later on, the convoy’s withdrawal was misinterpreted by the West to be a sign of Moscow relinquishing its aim to “seize” Kyiv. But this optimism, which followed the closure of Russia’s northern front, was also misplaced. The convoy’s role was fulfilled and the purpose of its northern front phased out when it aided the completion of a land bridge that connected Russia’s southern and eastern fronts. With the Crimean Peninsula now reinforced from Russia’s own border, Moscow has hardened and entrenched its staying power, bolstering its bargaining position.

A Course Correction Toward Diplomacy

Today, the situation grows direr for Ukraine’s military. But there’s little appetite in the West to correct the narrative in making a pivot to diplomacy. The West continues to leverage a favorable, but fleeting, discourse to justify its policy of denial. Even as the narrative loses momentum, political elites will continue to propel it forward. “You can already see in the media that interest is going down, and that is also affecting the public, and the public is affecting the politicians,” said Ann Linde, the Foreign Minister of Sweden in July. “So, it is our responsibility to keep Ukraine and what Russia is doing high up on our agenda.”

The interest to preserve the narrative’s tenets prolong efforts to punish and degrade Russia. But it also shapes how victory is defined. Certainly, the war looks abysmal for Putin if his original aim is perceived as maximum. However, if interpreted through the lens of a limited aim, the war’s trajectory is reversed in favor of Moscow, not Kyiv—and advocates of pursuing “victory” ought to take notice.

Either way, the West isn’t winning the war. A decisive victory in Ukraine is neither realistic nor worth the dangers or costs to try to achieve it. Even if more Western support arrives, it won’t stop Russia from escalating in kind. It also won’t do much to roll back the tremendous coercive leverage it has already gained. In reality, Russia’s terms for peace will be difficult to defy in any eventual settlement.

Moreover, prolonging the fight furthers the carnage and could likely worsen Ukraine’s negotiating power rather than boost it. Indeed, Moscow’s aims are, in fact, expanding over secondary interests beyond its primary interest of neutrality. This expansion is not only driven to justify the costs expended in the war but also because of emerging security concerns produced as a result of the war.

For instance, since Ukraine’s possession of newfound military systems, Russia is likely inclined to create a buffer zone that reduces the coercive value of those weapons. “Now, [our] geography is different,” said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister in July, “It is not only the DNR and LNR,” referring to the provinces in the Donbas region, “it is also the Kherson region, the Zaporizhzhia region and a number of other territories.” This would not only harden Moscow’s bargaining power, but also sustain its coercive superiority vis-à-vis Kyiv by reducing the efficacy of the latter’s retaliatory capability. “If Western countries supply long-range weapons to Ukraine,” Lavrov warned, territorial interests “will move even further.”

Inevitably, the misguided U.S.-led approach will be exposed by the merits of a hard and inconvenient truth: Russia’s resolve will likely prevail over the thin veneer of Western unity. As Europe steadily finds itself having to absorb the blowback of a U.S.-driven policy, escalation may accelerate its defection to seek accommodation with Russia. Moreover, NATO’s deepening involvement will only intensify a threat that Russia has deemed existential. This fuels its resolve rather than abates it. As demonstrated by the rattling of its nuclear saber, the vital interests at stake for Russia gives its leadership far more political will than the West in accepting the burdens and perils of escalation.

To end the fighting, recent calls have suggested Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia. But neither a bilateral deal nor redrawing borders alone will bring about a lasting peace. This is because Ukraine is entangled in a proxy war. Its casus belli cannot be simplified as a territorial tiff between neighbors. Although such disputes played a role in the crisis, the taproot of the instability remains NATO’s living commitment—issued in 2008 and reiterated in 2021—to bring Ukraine into the Western alliance.

As such, the West must be a party to negotiations and a signatory to any lasting settlement. Without a multilateral agreement over Ukraine’s strategic orientation, the war could settle into a ‘frozen’ or recurring conflict. Putin may be content with either scenario. If diplomacy with the West remains an intractable path to pacify its security concerns, Russia will continue to hold Ukraine hostage in the broader dispute with NATO, as it has with Georgia. Doing so preserves a backdoor mechanism to obstruct Ukraine’s admission into the alliance, indefinitely.

A negotiated settlement is in the best interest for all parties. However, diplomacy has long stalled behind the scenes and given the multiple layers of actors on the Western side of the ledger, the prerequisite conditions will be slow and stubborn. Indeed, despite their perilous position, Zelenskyy’s domestic and foreign backers are adamant to prolong the fighting until a final victory is achieved. But for diplomacy to gain traction sooner rather than later, the U.S. and Europe must pivot in unison to pressure and empower him to seek the compromise that is necessary with Putin, which also requires the West to formally relinquish its position to bring Ukraine into NATO.

Before all else, Washington must come to terms with its role in provoking and now prolonging the war. Unfortunately, the conventional narrative dampens that realization and delays the course correction.

This reckless obduracy from afar will only add to Ukraine’s wrecking.

Ramzy Mardini is an Associate at The Pearson Institute and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago, where he studies the intersection of social networks and civil war dynamics, with a focus on the Islamic State.

Image: Flickr.