Russian President Vladimir Putin held his strongest strategic hand on Feb. 23, 2022, the day before his ill-judged and catastrophic invasion of Ukraine. He stood on the edge of extracting concessions from Ukraine and the West and, if he had turned his troops around, would have convinced the world that U.S. and British intelligence were crying wolf. He squandered this chance. Since then, he has lost a significant portion of his military forces, called Russian martial prowess into question, and become a pariah (at least in the West). His partial (and stealth) mobilizations and crackdowns on dissent have set what remained of Russian civil society back years. Ukraine never posed a danger to Russia, and Putin’s invasion was predicated on his own imperial ambitions and distorted view of history. Every day the war drags on sees more Russians dead and costs tens of millions of dollars. So why won’t he cut his losses?
There have been many calls, including a nonbinding United Nations resolution, for Putin to turn his forces around and leave Ukraine. There may have been a time for that, perhaps when his initial conquest of Kyiv failed to materialize. He could have used his domestic propaganda machine to convince his subjects that his “special military operation” had brushed back NATO, put Ukraine’s alleged Nazis on notice, and disabled their ability to harm Russia. Other states have accomplished this: For instance, China abandoned its punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979 after just under four weeks after taking thousands of losses, but nevertheless declared victory.
