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15 June 2024

How to Convince Putin He Will Lose

Dan Altman

Two ideas dominate discussions about how to bring the war in Ukraine closer to an end: the West should either pressure Ukraine to make concessions to Russia or support Ukraine’s efforts to win on the battlefield. Both approaches rightly recognize that negotiations will remain futile until changing circumstances compel one side to accept peace terms that it rejects today. Nonetheless, neither approach is likely to end the war.

Withholding arms from Ukraine could eventually force it to offer concessions to Russia as part of a desperate attempt to end the war, but advocates of this approach overlook how it would also affect Russia’s war aims. Moscow would react to its newfound military advantages by doubling down on its most extreme demands—further territorial gains in places such as Kharkiv and Odessa, regime change, demilitarization, and more. Any willingness in Kyiv to make concessions would be offset by Moscow’s newly expanded war aims. The result would be Russian gains on the battlefield, not peace.

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