The war in Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia — and nothing suggests a change of course in 2023

The holiday season is a time for soul-searching — even in times of war.

At a time when it’s supposed to be about peace on Earth and good will for all, many Russia watchers are wondering how much soul-searching Moscow will do in the next few weeks – how much Russian leaders are willing to contemplate the disaster ahead. acquitted itself by launching major hostilities with Ukraine almost a year ago.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent comments show that he knows the war he’s fighting is going to be a long one. But nothing said so far suggests a full reset will begin in 2023, said Leigh Sarty, a former diplomat and East European expert, now an adjunct professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University.

He said it would be wise to be skeptical of claims that Putin and his advisers “think and understand how … bad they have done, and how much they have fallen short of their initial aspirations.”

Sarty said he believes it is in the Russian character to plow through adversity, regardless of the cost, and that “they will hunker down and do anything to get something they can call victory.”

Those blood types are a feature of the war in 2022 and could be a hallmark of the conflict in 2023, said Sarty, who is doing two assignments at the Canadian embassy in Moscow.

By withdrawing from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson, he said, the Russian military showed tactical awareness.

Since then, Russia has switched to a strategy of holding the line on the ground while pounding Ukrainian cities and infrastructure from above with a brutal campaign of missiles and drone strikes. The “failed” shift, Sarty said, showed Moscow could adapt — but it was still playing from an old playbook, an echo of its city-slaughtering, civilian-slaughtering tactics in Chechnya and Syria.

If anyone is reflecting this season in Moscow on Putin’s invasion policy, it is likely that Russian government officials, technocrats and business leaders are concerned about the damage the war is doing to the country’s economy and politics and society.

Sarty said he sees glimmers of awareness of how things are going among Russian leaders — coupled with cosmetic efforts to address political messaging.

Independent Russian news outlet The Moscow Times reported in mid-December that the Kremlin had instructed regional governors to create a “positive” agenda of news and events that Putin could follow.

And on December 17, the Russian president was photographed with the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov, the Minister of Defense General Sergei Shoigu and General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the joint forces group operating in Ukraine.

It is an attempt to show Putin and the military leadership that they are standing together, united and resolute, according to analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which produces a daily summary of key events in the conflict.

Moscow’s overall strategy for the long war is to bridge the gap between Ukraine and the western countries that support it with weapons and money.

So far, NATO countries have remained firm and remained on the same page. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s recent trip to Washington to address the US Congress is a sign of continued unity and support.

Matthew Schmidt, an eastern European expert at the University of New Haven, Connecticut, said the political stakes for US President Joe Biden were raised by the trip – because it meant the US could not allow Ukraine to fall.

“America is now everything and the loss of Ukraine will damage US security now, because the next 30 years US policy in the region will depend very much on our relationship with Kyiv,” Schmidt said.

The big question leaders in allied capitals will be asking themselves this holiday season is whether Europe will hold steady through a long, cold winter and into 2023 in the face of high inflation, energy market upheaval and disrupted supply chains.

But with Russia’s gross domestic product set to shrink by five percent, another burning question is who will blink first – the West or Russia.

“That’s the six billion dollar question, isn’t it?” said former Canadian ambassador to NATO Kerry Buck. The Russian people have a history of suffering a great deal of pain and suffering, reinforced by the horrors that ordinary Russians experienced during World War II.

But the “special military operation” in Ukraine (as the Kremlin insists on calling it) is not a war of national security. It is a war of choice.

“The problem is, it’s not a concentrated war. It’s not an acute threat to Russia,” Buck said, arguing a point driven home by the sight of hundreds of thousands of draft-age men fleeing the country when conscription is limited. announced.

The chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, former president Dmitry Medvedev, tried to drive wedges between NATO allies in mid-December by publishing a list of what he described as legitimate military targets – which included “the armed forces of other countries that have officially entered the war” in Ukraine.

Medvedev asked rhetorically whether Western military aid to Ukraine turned donor countries into co-belligerents, making NATO members legitimate military targets.

Retired US Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said the chances of Russia deliberately dragging NATO into war remain slim.

“If Russia can’t defeat Ukraine, the last thing we want is a full-blown conflict with the Alliance,” he told CBC News.

Despite persistent rumors of a winter offensive – which may not involve Ukraine’s northern neighbor, Belarus – Hodges said he does not see Moscow achieving a clear victory on the ground because of the disjointed way the military has conducted the campaign.

Nor did he see any signs that Russia had learned anything from the experience.

“I don’t think there’s been a single day since February 24th where the Russians have had a joint operation,” Hodges said. “The Black Sea Fleet, they did it themselves. The [Russian] The Air Force seems to be doing things unrelated to ground operations.

“Fortunately, they don’t seem any closer to fixing it than they did 10 months ago.”

Beyond coordination, Hodges said he doubted Russia could put together a large enough force for a winter push, one “with real combat capability, because of the logistics it would require.”

Russians aren’t stupid, Hodges said, but he’s still puzzled by the lack of reflection in Moscow.

“Any serious person should be able to see that it’s a disaster,” he said.