Three Truths About Ukraine-Russia

Important background on the conflict for you to know from my time as an arms control negotiator with Russia

Ukraine is popping in the news right now, with a lot of conflicting information and misinformation. I know a lot of people out there want to feel armed to address the situation with some clarity given the heated politics around the issue.

So today I’m going to give you three critical things to know based on the years I spent at the Pentagon representing the US military on interagency policy development groups and arms control delegations overseas with our NATO allies, Ukraine, and Russia.

1. Ukraine did not start this war and Russia had no lawful justification for invading.

When Russia broadened the conflict in Ukraine into full-scale war in 2022, the military campaign was preceded by—and has since been accompanied by—a widescale propaganda campaign amplifying Russian misinformation, namely the lie that Ukraine started the war. Putin is no stranger to propaganda campaigns, long using trolls and bots to sow dissension in the West, but experts assumed that there wasn’t “much convincing he can do in the West. Not much influence he can have to convince people that Russia isn’t the aggressor.”

Turns out the experts were wrong. Because in the last month I’ve repeatedly heard, including from some otherwise serious people, that Ukraine or NATO or the US caused this war. With remarkable accuracy they parrot Russian talking points: that the West was behind the Maidan revolution, that the Ukrainian people are the same as the Russian people so Ukraine is not a “real” country, and that Russia had to invade because the west provoked them and shouldn’t have been meddling in “their” sphere of influence by letting Ukraine get closer to Europe and the West.

None of these are true.

Ukrainians, as a sovereign nation separate from Russia, made the decision that they wanted to have a free and fair democracy and that they wanted to associate with Europe rather than Russia. They proved this by revolting against Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin’s choice to lead Ukraine, not once, but twice.

In 2004, after Putin went to Ukraine, told the Ukrainian people they had to vote for his guy, and then did everything he could to help Yanukovych steal the Presidency through fraud, Ukrainians took to the streets in the Orange Revolution and demanded fair elections.

After the non-Kremlin guy was too corrupt, Ukrainians actually turned around and elected Yanukovych a few years later, but tossed him again in 2014 when he proved that he wasn’t independent by succumbing to Russian pressure to back out of his commitment to sign an association agreement with the European Union. An agreement that the Ukrainian people wanted. Under Russian direction, Yanukovych attempted to maintain power through violence, failed, fled to Russia, and then was legally removed as Ukraine’s president by its parliament.

It's completely understandable that Russia wouldn’t like these results, but under no principle of Jus Ad Bellum, the law of going to war, are they legitimate reasons for invading a neighbor.

It’s like seeing your neighbor mowing his grass in a New England Patriots sweatshirt, walking over to his yard, and smashing him with a baseball bat because you don’t like the Patriots and think they are cheaters.

Putin’s own words in the speech he gave upon the invasion show that he invaded not because he had to, but because he wanted to: “The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape,” he said.

Simply put, the people of Ukraine did not start this war by making their own decisions for their own future within their own borders under their own laws. This war was started by the country that massed its forces on its neighbor’s border because they didn’t like their neighbor’s decisions and then crossed that border with military force. That was Russia.

2. Russian statecraft is based on realpolitik and the rest of the world, including anyone trying to bring peace to the region, must act with that in mind. Realpolitik statecraft means that Russia’s policies and actions are based solely on increasing its own power or preventing the reduction of its own power relative to other states. Moral or ethical considerations or principles do not influence their decision-making, no matter how much the rest of the world wishes that they did.

I saw this at every level of negotiation I was a part of while serving at the Pentagon, including while seated across the table from high-ranking Russian Generals and Admirals and even their Deputy Foreign Minister.

On the far right, representing the US opposite Major General Pavel Zolotarev of Russia, far left

I’m going to give you an example of how Russian realpolitik played out during that time and then an example for how America could use Russia’s realpolitik to achieve tangible gains.

How it played out:

In order to increase their power relative to other parties, including the US, Russia consistently violated all of the treaties and agreements I worked on at the Pentagon. This included the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and the Vienna Document, and also ones I was adjacent to such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Each of these treaties, transparency arrangements, and confidence and security measures are now dead because of Russian violations.

But the death of the agreements is not the takeaway.

The takeaway is that Russia spent years violating the agreements and simultaneously giving lip-service to coming back into compliance with them—stringing everyone else along and enticing them to continue following the rules. This effectively converted what were supposed to be peace-building agreements and limitations on military equipment and deployments into one-sided restrictions that gave Russia, who did not restrict itself, an asymmetric edge in developing power, deploying troops, and then going to war.

Remember, when dealing with a realpolitik state, it’s important to realize that moral judgments and chastisement do not change its behavior.

Yet I spent years at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe watching the European community fail to influence Russian behavior through moral coercion, as Russia continued to violate more and more agreements and take advantage of European dedication to a rules-based order. The Europeans believed so strongly in that rules-based order that they had decided Russia must believe in it, too, and that if they could just find common ground with Russia on the rules, Russia would come back on board. Which, of course, never happened.

That’s not to say there is no way to work with a realpolitik-based state. Their policy is based on a classic methodology with deep levels of logic and clear power-based levers. But accepting that the other party has a different outlook and methodology is critical to making decisions that lead to favorable outcomes in international relations or any other area where realpolitik is rampant (current US politics, for example).

How the US could use Russia’s realpolitik to achieve tangible gains:

A recent example where the US could have applied leverage for a desirable outcome vis-à-vis Russia is the suspension of aid to Ukraine. (We are going to ignore the politics and domestic/personal agendas that might have played into that decision).

Since 2022, western countries have consistently criticized Russia for human rights violations for missile strikes on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, hoping to shame Russia into modifying its behavior. This shaming hasn’t achieved any results because Russia believes that the capability to bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure is a component of its power and, as we discussed, morality is not a part of realpolitik. Russia isn’t going to voluntarily reduce its own power in the conflict just to feel good.

The largest tactical component of the recently suspended aid, and really the only irreplaceable part of US aid, was the Patriot missile defense systems. These systems made it so that Russia has to launch massive amounts of missiles in order to get any hits, significantly increasing the cost for the power they gain from being able to strike civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

The US was exerting a cost on Russia that it has been struggling to bear. No matter what other reasons existed for suspending the aid, this was a clear opportunity for a no-cost concession from Russia by conditioning that suspension of aid on a reciprocal response from Russia. For example, conditioning the suspension on Russia stopping or even just limiting its missile strikes would have let America achieve a tactical/human rights objective in addition to whatever else we are trying to achieve in suspending the aid. Recognizing that Russia will always cheat if they think it will gain them relative power, there would need to be a power-based trigger hanging over their head in order to keep the agreement in place. Something like aid resuming after a certain number of strikes, or aid being held in reserve in case Y happens.

Pausing intelligence sharing with Ukraine likewise could have come with real concessions from Russia, considering the depth of our intelligence apparatus there.

In the first case above, the reason it works is because Russia is trading power (strikes on civilians) for power (no Patriot missile systems), in a way that incentivizes them to behave according to Western wishes (not striking civilians) and that keeps them from breaking the agreement (because then the opposing power will re-appear).

This must be the framework for any agreement with Russia, including any agreement that purports to achieve lasting peace. Russia is not going to commit to long-term peace unless it believes that it secures more relative power by ending the war than it does by continuing the war (and, I should add, Putin must feel more secure in his regime, because right now Putin=Russia). That does not mean more territory, or even keeping the territory they currently occupy in Ukraine. It simply means that Russia must feel like they have more power through the ultimate deal than if they didn’t make the deal.

But that end-state will be extremely difficult to achieve if we continue to unilaterally take leverage off the table and Russia is presented with opportunities to grow its power at low to no cost.

3. Our European allies bear a lot of responsibility for this war and should be covering more of the cost.

I get that this might not be popular with everyone reading this, because the issue has become politically polarized, but I experienced it firsthand on arms control negotiations with our allies.

I consistently met with my military counterparts at NATO countries and presented significant intelligence on Russian military buildups and activities and asked their countries to take hard positions on Russia. Over and over, they responded that they understood the military situation but were unable to take a hard position on Russia because of the domestic politics in their countries.

In short, these European countries were buying gas from Russia and didn’t want to jeopardize that “low cost” energy. The problem, of course, was that in the grand scheme of things the cost of that energy was much higher than the sticker price. Because Russia was taking the profits from its gas sales to Europe and using them to modernize its military and prepare to invade its neighbors.

This wasn’t a secret, we all saw it, but the European solution, rather than to spend their energy savings on security to counter the Russian military threat they were funding, was to ask the US to send over more troops and equipment to protect them. Which we did. Under presidential administrations from both parties.

I’ve always believed that US money spent in Ukraine was important, because long term it is significantly less costly to keep the war in Ukraine than for Russia to succeed and then make an attempt at a NATO country. But it really is a shame that the American middle class and the people of Ukraine have had to subsidize Europe’s energy needs by covering major costs of a war, in money for the US and blood for the Ukrainians, that European energy purchases made possible.

It’s also a shame that now that Europe is being rapidly pushed toward the realization that they need to do something, they are talking about re-militarizing Germany and expanding their nuclear umbrellas. An expansion that would require increasing the number of nuclear armed states, because the arsenals of the UK and France are considered insufficient to cover European security. Nuclear proliferation is a huge step backward, not a step forward.

There are have been many tools at our disposal for more than a decade to get Europe to take greater responsibility for the situation, but we never used them (under any party or any President). And now, ultimately, it seems we are headed toward the worst possible result in all ways: a more militarized Europe, nuclear proliferation, an appeased Russia, an ongoing reliance on gas for European energy, a return to US gas company partnerships in Russia, and any savings from US spending in Ukraine going straight to the richest Americans through tax cuts for corporations and the highest wealth individuals.

It's not too late for other outcomes, but the current trajectory isn’t promising.

I hope you found this information on the conflict in Ukraine useful and that it helps you with your own thoughts and conversations. If you have any other questions about my experiences and the conflict in Ukraine, or thoughts of your own, please let me know in the comments.

As always, if there is anyone who you think might find this useful, please share it with them!

Lucas

The views expressed in this Substack are those of the individual only and not those of the Department of Defense. Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform do not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.