Opinion: Why does Putin need a truce

Editor’s note: David A. Andelman, CNN Correspondent, 2x Deadline Club Award Winner, French Légion d’Honneur, Author “Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy and the History of Wars That May Still Happen” and blogs on Andelman is free. Previously, he was a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. view more opinion on CNN.


Paris
CNN

A truce in the war in Ukraine would mean victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

David A. Andelman

Nine months later, Russian hopes of a quick takeover have been utterly dashed, with their army largely on the defensive in more than 600 miles of battle formation along Ukraine’s eastern and southern fringes.

Indeed, a truce or negotiations may be the only way to victory currently possible for the Russian leader; its manpower is depleted and its arms stocks are depleted.

At the same time, the will of the West is weakening, which could be no less dangerous for Ukraine, and on which Putin is almost certainly counting.

“The only thing a premature truce does is allow both sides to rearm,” Michael Kofman, Director of Russian Studies at CNA a think tank and leading expert on the Russian military told me in an interview.

“And since Russia is now the most disadvantaged, it will benefit Russia the most, and then resume the war. So everything you buy for a truce is the continuation of the war. It would not solve any of the main problems of the war,” he added.

Russia is already beginning to rearm, experts say. “The availability of ammunition” was one of the “most decisive aspects of this war,” Kofman said. “If you burn 9 million cartridges, you won’t be able to make them in a month. So the question is, what is the pace of ammunition production and what can be mobilized?” he added.

Kofman cited available information showing that the production of munitions, hitherto a staple along the Ukrainian frontline, had been reduced from two and at some factories to three shifts a day in Russia. This suggests that “they have the parts, otherwise they won’t be working double and triple shifts,” he said.

However, some senior American and Western officials appear eager or at least willing to push for a truce and negotiations at this point.

“When there is an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, do not miss it. Seize the moment,” General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. said recently.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not buying into this. “We will not let Russia wait and build up its forces,” he said. said G-20 meeting in Bali earlier this month.

As Ukrainians weather the brutal winter of Russian attacks on critical energy infrastructure, it’s no wonder they fear diplomatic disputes.

At a pharmacy in Lviv, a man uses the backlight on his phone to help a pharmacist find groceries during rolling blackouts on November 16.

“Imagine how Ukrainians understand the negotiations,” former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. said Council on Foreign Relations on Monday. “You are sitting in your own house, the killer comes to your house and kills your wife, rapes your daughter, takes the second floor, then opens the door to the second floor and says: “Okay, come here. Let’s agree. What would be your reaction?

The reality is that any truce has no real value, whether it involves negotiations or not. The truce gives Russia, with its back against the wall militarily, a vital respite.

“In addition to giving the Russians time to regroup and rearm, it is important that it would reduce the pressure on their forces at the moment,” Gen. Mick Ryan, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me in an e-mail correspondence. “They worked hard for nine months. Their powers are depleted.”

This feeling was announced last month Jeremy Fleming, head of the top-secret British electronic spy agency GCHQ. “We know – and the Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and ammunition are running low,” Fleming said.

Since then, things have not improved for the Russians. On Monday, the UK Department of Defense, which provides some of the most up-to-date and accurate intelligence on Russian military forces in Ukraine, informed that “Russia’s defensive and offensive capabilities continue to be hampered by an acute shortage of ammunition and qualified personnel.”

And the French newspaper Le Monde undertook basic analysis using ground-based video and satellite imagery showing “Russian arms and ammunition stockpiles badly dented by Ukrainian pinpoint attacks.”

The images show that “in total, since the end of March 2022, at least 52 Russian ammunition depots have been hit by the Ukrainian military.” According to the report, this is a significant part of the 100-200 Russian warehouses, which, according to analysts, are located on the Ukrainian front.

The problem is that the Russians have pretty much dealt with this threat. “The Russians seem to have adapted to the presence of HIMAR [American-supplied artillery] on the battlefield, putting their large ammunition depots out of reach,” Chris Dougherty, a senior defense program scientist and co-director of the Games Lab at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, told me in an interview.

It’s “basically any big command post or ammunition depot that they divert outside of the 80-kilometer range,” he explained. And in many cases, it was on the territory of Russia, which Ukraine provided to Washington. guarantees it will not be targeted by US-supplied missile systems.

Dougherty and many other experts, however, believe that truce or no truce, the West must scale up Ukraine’s capabilities.

“Otherwise, Russia will just wait,” Dougherty said. Now, after being pushed back by the Ukrainian army in the autumn offensive, “they have a smaller front” to defend.

And, he added, the Russians are “ready to exchange mobilized soldiers and artillery shells.” The Russians expect that “over time, NATO, Western allies and Ukrainians will not want to continue such deals. And in the end it will push them to negotiate. I am completely sure that this is Putin’s bet, ”Dougherty said.

However, history shows that any non-negotiated truce with Putin will prove pointless. As Poroshenko remarked: “From my personal experience with Putin: point number one, please don’t trust Putin.” Definitely not sticking to any agreement that doesn’t fit with his ultimate goal of taking over Ukraine.

The reality is that the US and the Western alliance must look as far into the future as Putin and those in the Kremlin who could replace him. The key question here is: how long will the commitment to the fight last?

According to Daugherty, the Russians think like this: “We can stabilize the front and wait for the Ukrainians. We’ll wait for NATO, we’ll wait for the United States.”

But at some point they will get tired of this war, he added. And Russian thinking can become “we may not have everything we wanted. But we will have a large piece of Donbass, which we will attach to Russia, and we will save Crimea. And I think that’s kind of their bet right now.”

At the same time, a truce would also allow the West to restore fast depleting arsenals which are drained by the materiel sent to Ukraine, let them modernize what was delivered.

But if the war resumes in a few months or years, the real question will be whether the US and its allies will be ready to return to a conflict that many are beginning to wish has already ended.