Interview with Oxana Shevel | Trojan Horse of the Minsk Accords
Kevin Theriault: Recently, Russia has been signalling— perhaps performatively—that it may be open to peace talks, yet at the same time it launched the largest drone attack on Ukraine since the war began. What do you think Russia intends to achieve with such paradoxical signals?
Oxana Shevel: I do not see Russia’s messaging as all that paradoxical. Putin is open to achieving his goals at the negotiating table and signals his willingness to talk. Negotiating would be much cheaper for him. His hope is that Trump will withdraw support from Ukraine and that Europe will be too divided and too weak to step in. Then Ukraine would be forced to capitulate and agree to Putin’s terms. It is not a paradoxical strategy. Putin is simultaneously pursuing the same goals through different means.
What it boils down to—and we have seen it in recent months when Ukraine did not accept the 28-point plan written by Russia—is that neither Trump, Europe, nor anybody else can force Ukraine to surrender. Nonetheless, Putin holds to a belief that Ukraine can be forced to surrender, because in his mind Ukraine is either some sort of hapless “younger brother” for Russia to boss around, or a puppet of the West. According to his stated logic, if the West is manipulating Ukraine, they can certainly make them lay down their arms and agree to all of Russia’s terms. Russia hopes that Ukraine’s surrender can be induced through negotiations, but this is not happening. How many months and rounds of negotiations have there been between Trump and Putin? Yet Ukraine has not surrendered, and I do not see any realistic possibility that it will.
It is in this context that the unrelenting attacks on Ukraine should be understood. Russia has persisted in Ukraine because Putin believes that if he cannot achieve his goals at the negotiating table, then he must achieve them on the battlefield. Clearly, he does not care how many Russians are lost. Putin’s calculus is that time is on his side, since domestic political pressures and electoral cycles do not constrain him. Russia can simply continue to send people into the “meat grinder.”
In the West, it is a different story. Putin’s likely reasoning is that if Trump cannot be reliably counted on to pressure Ukraine to negotiate, as was perhaps the original hope, he will at least lose interest and withdraw. The belief is that Ukraine will run out of manpower, and Europe will not be able to fill in the gaps if US military aid is lost. Then, Putin can achieve his objectives on the battlefield.
Russia’s goals have remained constant throughout the war. I do not see them having changed since the war started. I’m puzzled that many in the West do not take Putin at his word. From the very beginning, he made it clear that he considers Ukrainians to be essentially Russians and Ukraine as a state to be a “fake” state that by right and history should be a part of Russia. Putin regards the fact that Ukraine is not part of Russia as a geopolitical injustice. The entire invasion was intended to rectify this perceived injustice. Putin seeks to bring Ukraine into Russia’s fold, be it through territorial absorption or a puppet regime in Kyiv.
Then, there are various narratives that scholars of Ukraine will tell you are simply not true. For example, that Ukraine’s turn towards the West, especially after the Euromaidan, is some sort of Western ploy or a Ukrainian nationalist conspiracy against the country’s Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Ukrainian society has changed, and popular preferences have shifted; this process has been going on for many years and has been researched by scholars. Euromaidan was a result of these domestic changes, and its outcome also resulted from domestic political dynamics—in particular Yanukovych’s political party breaking ranks and abandoning his regime. It was neither a Western conspiracy nor a domestic coup. Putin refuses to acknowledge the reality of these changes, and it is unfortunate that many outside Russia buy the “Maidan coup” narrative that is just not based on facts.
When Putin launched his war, he attempted to take Kyiv directly. This is important, because if the goal was to “protect” Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas, why try to decapitate Zelensky’s government in the capital? The reality is that Putin’s problem was with Kyiv, not the Donbas. He wanted to install a compliant puppet government, similar to that of Belarus, which could be de jure sovereign but de facto fully subservient to Russia.
Any talk about wanting to protect Russian speakers is ludicrous, since it is Russian-speaking regions that are suffering the most from Russia’s bombs. The number of Russian speakers that Putin has killed far exceeds the casualties that resulted from its war in the Donbas between 2014 and 2022. Russia also mendaciously blames all of the casualties on Ukrainian “nationalist” forces, but between April 2014 and December 2021, the UN documented a total of some 14,400 deaths in Donbas, the large majority of them being military on both sides. Of the 3,404 civilian fatalities, also on both sides, over 3,000 were killed in 2014–15, while only 25 civilians died in 2021. The notion that Ukraine was committing “genocide” in the Donbas and Russia invaded to save civilians is completely ludicrous.
Unfortunately, many in the West have fallen for Putin’s gaslighting. The current American administration and, to some extent, some other Western politicians believe that the problem lies with NATO, and that if Ukraine stays outside of NATO, the war can be ended and would not have started in the first place. They believe that this must be Putin’s underlying grievance, because direct security threat is a more rational explanation than vague grievances over historical injustice rooted in 19th-century imperial thinking.
Nonetheless, the evidence very clearly does not support this line of argument. Ukraine was attacked as a neutral country. Unfortunately, there never has been a consensus on Ukraine’s membership within NATO (and only minor support for NATO in Ukraine before 2022)—so Ukraine’s NATO membership was not going to happen, and no invasion was necessary to prevent it. And Putin of course knew this. The notion that Russia feared the NATO threat and the hypothetical possibility of NATO moving closer to Russia’s border is what triggered the invasion is completely unsupported by the facts. I do not even think that Putin is truly afraid of NATO, given how he reacted to Finland and Sweden joining the alliance. With Finland joining, NATO’s border with Russia is now much larger and also much closer to Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. And what did Putin do? After Finland joined NATO, Putin withdrew troops from the Finnish border to fight in Ukraine. That was not a move by someone worried about NATO attack.
There is much stronger evidence to conclude that Putin is fighting this war to subjugate Ukraine, to restore what he believes to be the “true” Russia, and, additionally, to increase Russia’s geopolitical reach and power and weaken the “evil West.” All of this makes much more sense, given the observable evidence, than the notion that this whole conflict is about preventing Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Why is Russia spending enormous effort and resources to eradicate any signs of Ukrainian identity and culture in occupied Ukraine? Brainwashing Ukrainian children in schools and through sending them for “re-education” in Russia, destroying Ukrainian books and monuments, and arresting people who dare to speak in Ukrainian? What does it have to do with security threats from NATO? Exactly nothing, and yet this is what Russia has been prioritizing.
It is telling that Vladimir Medinsky—Putin’s aid, curator and author of revisionist history textbooks and lead negotiator at the spring 2025 meeting between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul—invoked Russia’s 21-year war against Sweden in the 18th century, insisting that Russia can continue its fight indefinitely. This statement only makes sense if one is thinking in grand-historical geopolitical terms. The reference to the Northern Wars with Sweden is a nod to the Russian Empire’s territorial claims, which were not initially recognized by other powers of the time. Two hundred years later nobody is questioning Russia’s control over Saint Petersburg. Putin believes a similar scenario can play out regarding Ukraine (or parts of Ukraine he gets to capture) over time. : new reality will eventually be created, and new/old borders will eventually become recognized. He seemingly considers himself a new Peter the First who will correct a historical wrong. After all, according to Putin, Peter was not conquering anything but rather returning Russian lands. If you take his historical thinking seriously—as twisted as his view of history may be—all his actions make a lot of sense.
If you try to dismiss this reasoning as empty rhetoric and look for a rationale that Western politicians can relate to, you end up with a complete mismatch. Who in Europe or in the US still thinks in terms of 19th-century dreams of empire or some quasi-apocryphal events centuries ago? This simply does not make sense to a modern Western politician. However, the question of NATO membership is something they can understand. This is why, I think, there is such a mismatch between Russian and Western modes of thinking about the war.
After taking office, Trump seemingly believed that a ceasefire would be possible if Russia got de facto control over the territory it has illegally invaded and occupied. However, de-facto territorial control of a sliver of Ukraine is insufficient for Putin, because as long as the government in Kyiv (the “mother of Russian cities” in Putin’s mind) stands sovereign the “root causes” of the war remain unaddressed. This is why I think—despite months of intense negotiations since the start of last year—that a peace settlement remains elusive. Russia is interested in a settlement, but only the type that would help it to achieve its chief goal of dominating Ukraine, and territory is important only inasmuch as it can bring this larger goal closer. For Ukraine, surrendering sovereigntyis unacceptable, and a compromise between these essentially irreconcilable views of Ukrainian sovereignty remains out of reach.
Theriault: Russia has ambitions beyond Ukraine’s borders. For example, Russia is heavily investing in influencing voter behaviour in Moldova. Georgia is also falling more into the Russian orbit. What do these interventions reveal about Russia’s strategy towards Ukraine and the post-Soviet space more broadly?
Shevel: It is very important to ask why Ukraine is so special. When discussing our book (Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States) about the root causes of the war, McGill University political scientist Maria Popova and I often talk about the concept of concentric circles of imperialism—the notion that while Ukraine is special for Putin’s view of Russia’s “true self,” Russia also seeks to project its influence beyond Ukraine to other parts of the former Soviet and empirical space. There are also historical narratives at play. For instance, Russia has long insisted that Georgia “voluntarily joined” the Russian Empire rather than being conquered. Parts of Moldova are also included in the so-called “Novorossia” (New Russia) historical imaginary, and it is quite probable that had Russia managed to capture Odesa at the start of the full-scale invasion, they would have also gone into Transdniestria. However, Ukraine truly does occupy a special place. As far as Putin is concerned, Ukraine is a part of Russia, like a part of the body. In this manner, it perceives Ukraine as critically important to its neoimperial ambitions.
The outcome of the war on Ukraine will have broader consequences, for it directly impacts Russia’s ability to project power in Georgia, Moldova, Belarus—and even further west, in countries like Romania or Bulgaria. If Russia is denied its goals in Ukraine, and especially if it is defeated—namely, the Russian economy collapses or there is some sort of Prigozhin-like mutiny or internal coup—it would seriously reduce Russia’s capability to destabilize its neighbours and undermine Western democracies.
For the entire post-Soviet region, the consequences would be far-reaching. For example, if Putin’s regime were to fall somehow, the days of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus would likely be numbered, given how much it relies on Russia for economic and military support. Likewise, civil society in Georgia is strongly pro-Western, but the Georgian ruling elite is heavily dependent on Russia. Whether the pro-democracy forces succeed or the pro-Russian regime is able to crush them may depend on what happens in Ukraine.
If Russia succeeds militarily in Ukraine and the West abandons Ukraine, that would result in a completely different geopolitical reality in Europe. Russia would not only be emboldened psychologically, but in a material sense it would control more people, territory, and resources. The rules-based international system which has been weakened already would be even more hollowed out, and this would make the world a more dangerous place for Europe and beyond. I believe it is very true when analysts say that Ukraine serves as a bastion or defensive shield that protects other countries.
Consider the Baltic states. What if Putin prevails in Ukraine and intervenes in northern Estonia, where in Narva, 90% of the population are Russian speakers? He could find a pretext—say, something like a dispute over monuments, or something else that could be framed as aggression against compatriots—and declare that he has a duty to protect them. Would NATO’s Article 5 really hold? On the one hand, NATO failing to protect its members may seems unimaginable, and so far Russia has not directly attacked a NATO country. So in some way, Article 5 has not been tested, at least not in Europe. But given how NATO has been so careful to avoid direct confrontation with Russia out of fear of nuclear escalation, if Russia prevailed in Ukraine and then provoked a skirmish along the border in northern Estonia, would NATO commit troops to fight Russia over tiny Estonia? And add to this US current disengagement from Europe and Trump’s uncertain at best commitment to support European . If I were a Baltic official, I would be privately concerned about such a scenario.
Ukraine is central to Russia’s strategy in the region. This is a war between Russia and Ukraine, but its implications extend far beyond Ukraine, impacting the immediate post-Soviet space. The war’s outcomes also affect Russia’s capacity to project its destructive influence beyond Europe and globally.
Theriault: You mentioned the Prigozhin rebellion, which exposed potential cracks in Putin’s regime. What are your observations about the current stability of the Russian government?
Shevel: The Russian regime is so closed that it is extremely difficult even for people who are well-connected and have studied the country closely for many years to really know what’s going on. The regime’s decision-making circle is very small, speaking out against the regime is dangerous or even deadly, and so there are good reasons to question information from sources such as opinion polls, media reports, or statements by officials. This question reminds me of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nobody predicted it—at least, nobody I can think of. However, once it collapsed, there was no shortage of theories about how it was inevitable. To me, when speculating about Russia’s future, we are in a similar situation.
On the one hand, it seems like any real opposition in Russia has been eliminated, arrested, or exiled. There is no institutional independence. In Ukraine, even during the more authoritarian rule of Yanukovych, there were always some institutional centres of opposition. The parliament was one, with opposition parties and deputies, and the judiciary was controlled by but not 100% reliably pro-Yanukovych. In Russia and Belarus, authoritarianism has been entrenched for a much longer period, so these centres of opposition simply do not exist. So there seem to be no obvious threats to the regime from either society or from within the regime itself.
On the other hand, there is some discontent among the elite, particularly around the economy. Trump unexpectedly called Russia a “paper tiger” last summer, and economists may agree with this characterization. There are substantial fault lines in the economy: high inflation that the Central Bank is trying to control through high interest rates, which affects consumers. Dwindling economic reserves, labour shortages, reduced revenues from oil and gas, militarization of the economy. Putin cites GDP growth figures as evidence of great overall economic success, but the growth is limited to the military-industrial sector (where much of what’s produced, like bombs, drones, and weapons gets destroyed in the war), while the civilian sectors stagnate. The question is how long can Russia sustain its militarized economy without squeezing the population or resorting to another mobilization—risky measures that could fuel societal discontent. These actions would disrupt the informal social contract that the Russian regime has with its population, which promises a baseline or even improving standard of living in return for a politically passive citizenry. This type of social contract is very important for autocrats, and when it cannot be sustained, the situation can quickly become unhinged, as seen in the example of the late Soviet period, when the economy began to collapse.
I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball to predict how long the regime will last. It could be another 20 years, or however long Putin lives, before we see any substantial change. On the other hand, there are clearly political and economic points of tension within the system. However, from the Ukrainian standpoint, one should not count on the Putin regime collapsing in the near future. If things go downhill in Russia, that’s great for Ukraine, but I don’t think we can count on it with any degree of certainty.
Theriault: Trump claims he wants to secure some form of a peace deal. However, there is an unpredictable relationship between Washington and Kyiv—including, most recently, cancelled arms shipments that are now resuming. How should we understand American policy in the region?
Shevel: I believe it is fair to say that Trump personally, and many in his administration, ultimately does not care about Ukraine and does not know much about Ukraine. The Trump administration wanted quick results, and if the Ukrainians signed on to occupation or annexation, Trump I think would have been okay with it and would try to take credit for “stopping the killing” and “ending the war.” Trump’s promise to solve the war in 24 hours may have been an election campaign soundbite, but I can see how Trump may have thought a quick solution was feasible, rather like a real estate deal in which two sides meet somewhere in the middle. The idea, broadly speaking, seems to have been that Ukraine and Russia can be made to agree to a durable ceasefire along the current front line—that Russia would get to control the land it captured and receive sanctions relief, while Ukraine would remain independent but de facto lose some territory. There is some evidence that this is what Trump and his circle had in mind. But a compromise that leaves Ukraine a functioning and fully independent state, not subjugated by Russia, is of no interest to Putin. I don’t know if this US administration will eventually learn this and will draw the necessary conclusion that for lasting peace to be reached, it is necessary to pressure Russia, not Ukraine.
Hopes that a compromise with Putin can be reached were once shared in Ukraine, too. Zelensky has thought this way. When he ran for office in 2019, his position was that the conflict in the Donbas was terrible, but Ukraine should be able to find a middle ground with Russia – “meet in the middle” as he once said. Only once he assumed office and began talking to Russian leadership did he realize how maximalist their goals are and that there isn’t really any compromise to be found. You either have a sovereign Ukraine or a vassalized Ukraine, and there isn’t any way to square this circle. In 2014-2021 Putin tried to vassalize Ukraine through the Minsk peace agreements, in particular by securing for his proxy “people’s republics” in Donbas a constitutionally enshrined “special status.” This would have allowed Russia, via its Donbas proxies, to control the policies of the government in Kyiv, essentially in perpetuity. This loss of sovereignty was not acceptable to Ukraine, and Russia escalated to a full-scale invasion once it became clear that the Trojan Horse of the Minsk Accords’ “special status” would not be entering the gates of Kyiv. Once the invasion failed to accomplish this goal, a peace agreement written to favor Russia may now be regarded in Moscow as another mechanism through which its non-changing maximalist goals can be achieved.
So, going back to American policy, if you don’t fully understand what this conflict is about and dismiss Putin’s talk about history as mere rhetoric, then you might indeed think of this conflict in terms of a real estate deal, where each side is negotiating in good faith, and each gets something. But Putin is absolutely not interested in negotiating a deal that would leave Ukraine viable and sovereign. That’s why we’re seeing demands such as the reduction of the size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and limits on western military assistance, the ceding of fortified territory in the Donbas that Russia has not been able to conquer for over ten years, but that would make Ukraine more vulnerable to renewed attack, as well as opposition to peacekeepers in Ukraine. The goal is to leave Ukraine weaker, less able to defend itself, and thus easier to subjugate. NATO is a red herring, as Ukraine’s membership has been and remains a non-issue; what is actually at stake is Ukraine’s ability to protect itself and consolidate its independent identity.
If we look back at the dynamics since the start of the Trump presidency, the Ukrainians made it clear that they would not agree to Russia’s maximalist demands. The US has pressured Ukraine on more than one occasion, and I think that Russia ultimately hoped, and likely still does, that the US would do so and that its pressure would be effective. After all, if Ukraine is allegedly a puppet of the West, the master can make the puppet do its bidding. But Ukraine hasn’t caved (to the annoyance not just in Moscow but also in Washington), and the Trump administration’s thinking may have changed to some extent as a result. There is now a realization in the Trump administration that this war is actually very difficult to solve, recognition that Ukraine can’t just be pushed around, but what is needed is an acknowledgement that Russia is a real obstacle to peace. Optimistically, if Putin continues to refuse a ceasefire and ultimately rejects the peace plan that the US, Ukraine, and Europeans have been working on in recent weeks that does not deliver a vassalized Ukraine, the Trump administration may conclude that it needs to support Ukraine and pressure Russia. Pessimistically, Trump will continue to engage in erratic policymaking that has analysts scratching their heads but ultimately remain deferential to Putin. While some sort of a breakthrough cannot be excluded, I would not be surprised if nothing much changes in the short and medium term, despite intense diplomatic activity in recent weeks and months. .
Theriault: We have seen Ukraine become a more influential and persuasive actor on the international scene over the last few years. It has demonstrated its military strength and strengthened its identity and political institutions, but we are still seeing the limits of its influence, as evidenced by tensions with the United States and some opposition to economic and military aid in Europe. What message do you think Ukraine needs to convey to secure the required assistance it needs?
Shevel: Ukrainian leadership has been making the case that it has tangible assets to offer, including cutting-edge technological innovations in warfare and a capable armed force with extensive battlefield experience. I recall an analysis that showed how less than a percent of Western GDP spent on Ukrainian aid has destroyed roughly half of Russia’s military capacity. This is a fantastic return on investment. Because this administration is very transactional, Ukraine has been emphasizing economic benefits US could derive from supporting Ukraine, such as various investment opportunities, for example, access to rare Earth minerals. But it is also sad and frankly morally disgusting that a country attacked by a murderous autocracy has to “sell” itself to a democratic ally in order to keep support. Ethical arguments for supporting Ukraine are plentiful and self-evident. We know what happens under Russian occupation. The findings of a recent European Court of Human Rights ruling and the latest UN report are horrendous and need to be publicized. Occupation is not peace. Rewarding aggression breeds more aggression.
As discussed above, what happens in Ukraine affects the likelihood of Russia’s damaging action in Europe. Some western commentators are quick to say that because Russia cannot take Kharkiv, there is no way they can threaten Berlin. It is true that Russia cannot directly threaten Berlin now, but Russia is already threatening Europe through hybrid warfare, and the chance of Moscow being able to threaten Western capitals in the future increases significantly if Russia prevails in Ukraine. This can be difficult to convey to Western Europeans if they value immediate comforts more than they fear future threats. An additional challenge is that the European Union is not a single voice; it comprises many countries with individual interests, with different proximity to and perceptions of Russia. Some, such as the Baltic countries, clearly understand the threat, but others need to be more strongly persuaded.
Ukraine has been leveraging various economic arguments to secure continued assistance. . Ukraine has proved to be remarkably resilient, despite immense suffering and economic devastation. Its people and businesses have adapted to the war. There is a vibrant art scene and ongoing economic and military innovation. Western countries can invest in businesses now and see a return, without waiting for the war to end. We already see some such initiatives, especially in the defense-industrial field. Some new technologies Ukrainians have developed for war needs could also be adapted to benefit economies more generally and also immediately. This means not putting everything on hold until the war ends for good but instead seeking economic and social opportunities to develop and improve lives in Ukraine and generate profit for Western partners in the present. Building on these economic successes could be another way for Ukrainians to attract continued support.
Theriault: Do you think Europe can fill the gaps in support that the United States might leave behind?
We can certainly say that Putin hopes they won’t. I believe that is a key part of his calculation. Putin views American-European relations similarly to how he sees his relationship with former Soviet countries—smaller states are meant to be vassals to superpowers. The US is the dominant power that influences Europeans, and if the US can be made to support what Russia wants, Europe will either fall in line or will be incapable of effective autonomous action. The US is clearly very significant, given its size and military strength. However, it is just not true that the Western European democracies are Washington’s puppets. They have their own democratic systems, electoral politics, and possess their own economic capabilities. European democracies have been trying to fill in the gap left by the decline in US support for Ukraine, while simultaneously trying to persuade Trump that standing with Europe and supporting Ukraine is in the US national interest. It seems to me that it remains to be seen if they will succeed in the latter and if they can pull off the former. Putin, for his part, hopes that Europe cannot deliver, and he has been busy trying to destabilize West European democracies—through hybrid warfare activities ranging from sabotage of critical infrastructure to cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns to influence public opinion, weaponized migration, and more. The overall goal is to undermine democratic institutions, strain resources, and fracture unity.
European support remains critical for Ukraine, all the more so with the current realities in the US. At the same time, there are certain things that only the US can provide, like Patriot missile interceptors. As far as I understand, Europe does not yet produce them. Clearly, it would be very bad if the US stopped all military support for Ukraine. At the same time, the situation today is not nearly as dire as it was in 2022. Europe has been re-evaluating its relations with the US and Russia, and rethinking its priorities, including investment in defence. But more investments in defence require the money to come from elsewhere, like social services and healthcare. Previously, this was a non-starter politically. However, Western politicians and part of the Western public now understand that we are living in a different environment, where Russia is an evident threat and US is an uncertain ally. Supporting Ukraine has costs, but allowing Russia to win would cost Europe even more (there are financial analysis showing actual costs of different scenarios) Within democratic processes, there is a rebalancing of priorities and budgetary needs. Europe has been able to ween itself off major dependence on Russian energy, and Putin’s predictions that EU will freeze without Russian gas failed. Last year ,Europe has stepped in to compensate for reduction in US assistance, and in 2025 overtook the US in total financial, humanitarian and military support for Ukraine, although military aid allocations still fall short of what would be needed to replace missing US support
Ukraine is also becoming more capable and powerful in its own military production. Forty percent of its own supply is now produced domestically. Europe supplies another significant portion. Even if the US completely checks out—which I still think is an unlikely scenario—if Russia hopes that Ukraine completely collapses while Europe does nothing, it will be disappointed. If we look at the evolution of the European political class’s thinking since 2022, abandoning Ukraine is highly unlikely. At the same time, from the Ukrainian perspective the political dynamics of European democracies can be frustrating to watch; there is deliberation, bickering, and disagreement. A recent EU agreement to lend Ukraine €90 billion was a case in point, as it was a torturous agreement, struck at the last-minute and after the EU failed to agree on using frozen Russian assets. But still, the union pulled together and came through.
Theriault: How do you foresee the war ending? What is the most realistic option on the table right now?
Shevel: When we recorded this interview in July, I said that if I had to put my money on a prediction for the next year, I would say we’re going to see more or less what we are seeing now. Now, at the start of 2026, I am still of the same opinion. Barring something extraordinary, if you examine, as we discussed above, why things are where they are, what Russia’s demands are, what Ukraine’s red lines are, and the capabilities of the two sides, it is hardly surprising, in my opinion, why a negotiated end to the war has not taken place.
There has been a lot of diplomatic activity this year, but, it’s difficult for me to envision a scenario where Putin will agree to terms that leave Ukraine fully sovereign and free to pursue policies it sees fit. I also find it equally difficult (again, barring a major shock of some kind) for me to envisage any democratically elected Ukrainian government caving to Russia’s maximalist demands. So I fear that the war will not end as long as Putin remains in power. His goals have remained the same, and he has staked his future and geopolitical legacy on this war.
Theriault: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing Ukraine right now?
Shevel: Manpower and mobilization are a big problem. Russia has many, many more people. As the Ukrainian commanders are saying, if you’re sitting in a trench with five people and 20 people are attacking, the math is not in your favour. I think this is exactly what Putin is counting on—the side with more people will ultimately prevail. Given that Ukraine obviously cannot increase its population, it’s a problem, but I don’t think that in modern wars everything can be simplified to population numbers. If this were the case, Russia would have long ago conquered Kyiv, but they are light years away from this goal, while the invasion is approaching the 4-year mark, and Russia is at best able to replenish its battlefield losses with recruitment. In this war, for the first time in history, drones are critically important. Ukraine now hits sixty percent of all battlefield targets with drones. Ukraine must continue to explore all technological options to compensate for the imbalance in manpower; additionally, the government also needs to listen to voices from within society and the army on how to make the mobilization system better and fairer. Overall, I would say that Ukraine requires a fairer mobilization process, combined with the adoption of advanced defensive strategies (e.g., fortifications, drone nets), technological innovation, and the removal of red tape.
Another serious challenge for Ukraine is corruption. Corruption and the theft of state resources during wartime are absolutely terrible. Critical voices from Ukraine say that fortifications were built too late or that treasury or donated funds were stolen. If you are a citizen reading such news reports, you might become very cynical and think that everybody is corrupt, and maybe defending such a state is not worth it. And of course, Russian propaganda tries to amplify these feelings. The solution to these problems is transparency and accountability. Acknowledging and investigating such allegations is critically important to keeping society’s trust. Ukraine has been making important progress in this area, so the glass can be seen as half-full rather than half-empty. Civil society mobilized to defend anti-corruption agencies threatened with closure last summer, and the government backed off. The agencies subsequently brought charges against public figures in and close to the government. Fighting corruption in the midst of fighting the war may be doubly difficult, but it’s also doubly important. External threats from Russia and internal threats from graft are both threats to Ukraine’s sovereignty and democracy.
