One year on: how will the Ukraine war end?

In early October 2021 President Joe Biden, the CIA director William Burns and other top members of the US’s national security team gathered in the Oval Office to hear a disturbing briefing from US military chief General Mark Milley. ‘Extraordinary detailed’ intelligence gathered by western spy agencies suggested that Vladimir Putin might be planning to invade Ukraine. According to briefing notes that Milley shared with the Washington Post, the first and most fundamental problem facing Biden was how to ‘underwrite and enforce the rules-based international order’ against a country with extraordinary nuclear capability ‘without going to World War 3’. Milley offered four possible answers: ‘No. 1: Don’t have a kinetic conflict between the US military or Nato with Russia. No. 2: Contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine. No. 3: Strengthen and maintain Nato unity. No. 4: Empower Ukraine and give them the means to fight.’

As the first anniversary of Putin’s disastrous invasion approaches, the US has pushed all four of its own red lines to their very limits. The war remains geographically contained, but the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in December accused the United States and Nato of playing a ‘direct and dangerous role’ in the war, just a shade short of declaring Nato an actual combatant. Nato remains largely united, though cracks are appearing in the alliance. Croatia’s President, Zoran Milanović, recently announced that he was ‘against sending any lethal arms [to Ukraine] as it prolongs the war’ and called the West’s support for Kyiv ‘deeply immoral because there is no solution’. Ukraine’s army is now better equipped than those of most Nato members, but it is struggling to contain Russian advances in the Donbas and could suffer badly from an early spring offensive. 

So as the West crosses the Rubicon of supplying battle tanks to Kyiv, it’s worth revisiting Milley’s first and most pressing conundrum – how to avoid the Ukraine conflict turning into a world war.