Russian invasion of Ukraine
| Russian invasion of Ukraine | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Russo-Ukrainian War (outline) | |||||||
 Map of Ukraine as of 11 March 2025[update] (details): Continuously controlled by Ukraine Currently controlled by Russia Formerly controlled by Russia or Russian territory controlled by Ukraine | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Belarus[lower-alpha 3] |
 Ukraine | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
| Order of battle | Order of battle | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
|
Pre-invasion at border: 169,000–190,000[lower-alpha 4][7][8][9] Pre-invasion total: 900,000 military[10] 554,000 paramilitary[10] In February 2023: 300,000+ active personnel in Ukraine[11] In June 2024: 700,000 active personnel in the area[12] |
Pre-invasion total: 196,600 military[13] 102,000 paramilitary[13] July 2022 total: up to 700,000[14] September 2023 total: over 800,000[15] | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Reports vary widely, see § Casualties for details. | |||||||
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sharply escalating the Russo-Ukrainian War that had begun in 2014. Russian forces attacked from Russia, Belarus, occupied Crimea and the Donbas, initially attempting to seize Kyiv and compel a rapid political settlement. Ukraine resisted, Russia withdrew from the north in April 2022, and the invasion evolved from an attempted quick war into a prolonged, heavily attritional conflict fought on land, at sea, in the air and increasingly through long-range missiles and drones.[16][17]
The invasion produced the largest European war in generations, extensive military and civilian casualties, mass displacement, destruction of cities and infrastructure, and a confrontation between Russia and the West under the shadow of nuclear escalation. It also transformed military practice: inexpensive reconnaissance drones, first-person-view attack drones, electronic warfare and rapidly adapting counter-drone systems became routine at a scale unprecedented in a major interstate war.[18]
Why Russia chose a full-scale invasion in February 2022, why a war so destructive to both belligerents has continued, and how it may end remain subjects of major scholarly and political debate. This article summarizes the war while directing detailed treatment to Justapedia's daughter articles on its causes, prelude, timeline, Russian strategy, battlespaces, foreign involvement, information war, casualties, war crimes, impacts, nuclear risk and peace negotiations.
How did two brotherly nations end up at war?
This article focuses primarily on the full-scale invasion that began on 24 February 2022. The 2014–2021 war is summarized only insofar as it explains the invasion; for the umbrella conflict from 2014 to the present, see Russo-Ukrainian War. For the broader historical background and the detailed course of the conflict from 2014 through 2021, see Russo-Ukrainian War#How did two brotherly nations end up at war? and Russo-Ukrainian War#History.
Russia and Ukraine nevertheless share a much older historical inheritance in Kievan Rus. The medieval and early-modern divergence is treated in broad histories by Serhii Plokhy and Paul Robert Magocsi.[19][20] A 2026 study of competing national-memory claims was titled "Kievan Rus Is Ours!"[21] The historical geography is equally easy to oversimplify: it is misleading to say simply that Sloboda Ukraine and Novorossiya "became Ukrainian in 1918." Their incorporation into Soviet Ukraine emerged through the revolutionary and civil-war period of 1917–1922 rather than a single uncomplicated transfer.[22][23]
Euromaidan, Crimea and Donbas: the war begins in 2014
.jpeg)
The post-Soviet relationship combined close social and economic ties with unresolved strategic disputes. The 2001 census recorded Russian as the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population, with especially high concentrations in Crimea and the Donbas; language, however, did not mechanically determine political loyalty.[24] Crimea, Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet were recurrent points of friction after 1991, even though most disputes were managed diplomatically.[25] Russia and Ukraine both joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1994, while their 1997 friendship treaty recognized the inviolability of their borders and respect for territorial integrity.[26][27]
The relationship nevertheless deteriorated through a succession of disputes. The 2003 Tuzla Island confrontation demonstrated continuing sensitivity over borders in the Kerch Strait.[28] The 2006 and 2009 gas crises intertwined commercial disputes with geopolitical competition.[29][30] Yanukovych's election in 2010 produced a partial thaw, but Kyiv continued balancing between the European Union and Russia-led integration projects rather than joining the Customs Union.[31] In 2013 Ukraine prepared to sign an association agreement with the European Union, but Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations after Russian pressure and domestic political calculation, triggering the Euromaidan protests.[32][33] On 27 February 2014, armed personnel without identifying insignia took control of government and other strategic sites in Crimea; Russia initially denied that they were Russian troops, while Putin later stated that Russian servicemen had participated in the operation. Following a referendum held in Crimea in March 2014, Russia incorporated the peninsula into the Russian Federation. Ukraine rejected the referendum and the change of status, and the United Nations General Assembly affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity and called on states not to recognize a change in Crimea's status. Armed conflict subsequently developed in the Donbas between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatist formations, with Russian military involvement becoming a central issue in the conflict.[34][35][36][37][38][39]
Before the 2014 conflict, voting patterns in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts differed markedly from those in much of central and western Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in Donetsk, received 93.54% of the vote in Donetsk Oblast and 91.24% in Luhansk Oblast in the 26 December 2004 repeat presidential runoff.[40] In the 2012 parliamentary election, the Party of Regions received 65.09% of the party-list vote in Donetsk Oblast and 57.06% in Luhansk Oblast; the Communist Party of Ukraine received a further 18.85% and 25.14%, respectively.[41][42] These results demonstrated sustained electoral support in the Donbas for parties and politicians favoring closer relations with Russia, greater status for the Russian language, and opposition to some policies associated with pro-Western governments in Kyiv.
Minsk and the unresolved 2014–2021 conflict
_06.jpg)
The Minsk agreements were intended to halt the fighting in eastern Ukraine and create a political framework for resolving the conflict that had begun in 2014. The first agreement, signed in September 2014, was followed by the more detailed Minsk II package in February 2015 after renewed fighting. The accords combined ceasefire and withdrawal provisions with political measures including decentralization, special status for parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, local elections and eventual restoration of Ukrainian control over the international border.[43]
The agreements reduced the intensity of fighting at different periods but never produced a durable political settlement. Paul D'Anieri later analyzed the failure as a second-order commitment problem in which implementation itself could shift the future balance of power.[44] The Steinmeier Formula also provoked "No to capitulation" demonstrations among Ukrainians who feared that elections before Russian withdrawal would legitimize Moscow's influence.[45] Implementation repeatedly stalled over ceasefire violations, disagreement about the sequence of political and security measures, the status of the separatist-controlled territories and the role of Russia. Kyiv generally insisted that meaningful political implementation required improved security conditions and effective Ukrainian control over the affected territory, while Moscow pressed for constitutional and political provisions to be implemented before the restoration of the border.[46] The later public statements of several participants became part of the dispute over what Minsk accomplished. Angela Merkel said that the Minsk agreements had given Ukraine "valuable time" to become stronger.[47] François Hollande argued that the agreements gave Ukraine time to strengthen its armed forces.[48] Zelenskyy's approach also evolved from an early emphasis on personal diplomacy and compromise toward a firmer reliance on Western military support as negotiations stalled and Russian pressure increased.[49] The December 2019 Normandy summit produced ceasefire and exchange commitments without resolving the sequencing dispute over security, elections, special status and border control.[50] By 2021 analysts increasingly described the process as deadlocked, while Russia's spring and autumn military buildups made a wider war more plausible.[51][52][53]
For fuller treatment of the Minsk agreements, the low-intensity Donbas war and diplomacy during 2015–2021, see Russo-Ukrainian War#History.
Why did Putin choose to invade Ukraine—and why at that time?
The central puzzle is not why relations deteriorated, but why the Kremlin chose a full-scale invasion in February 2022 after eight years of more limited war. The explanations concern different parts of that decision. Strategic accounts emphasize NATO enlargement, Ukraine's westward military integration and a changing regional balance. Ideational accounts emphasize Russian nationalism, imperial conceptions of Ukraine and Putin's historical beliefs. Domestic accounts focus on regime security, personalist rule and the information reaching the Russian leadership. Bargaining and preventive-war theories address why Moscow concluded that force should be used at that particular moment, while studies of miscalculation explain why the expected costs appeared bearable.
These mechanisms can operate together. One synthesis groups the literature into imperial worldview, domestic or regime-security factors, and external strategic pressures; each illuminates part of the decision, but the invasion emerged from their interaction.[54] A 2025 study by Gabriel A. Pierzynski and Jonathan Joseph explicitly seeks to move beyond a simple NATO-expansion-versus-Putin's war binary, proposing patrimonial imperialism as an internal structural factor within a broader causal taxonomy.[55] The sections below therefore proceed from the international setting to leadership beliefs and finally to timing and prediction.
NATO enlargement: cause, catalyst or pretext?
The post-1991 chronology above is central to this debate: Russia and Ukraine initially entered NATO partnership structures in parallel, but successive enlargement and Ukraine's increasingly separate alignment turned that common beginning into a widening security dispute. One difficulty with accounts that treat Russian opposition to NATO as timeless is that Putin's position changed markedly during his first years in office. In March 2000, asked by David Frost whether Russia itself might join NATO, Putin replied, "Why not? Why not?", provided Russia were treated as an equal partner.[56] NATO Secretary General George Robertson publicly welcomed the positive tone while stating that Russian membership was not then on the alliance's agenda.[57]
Putin was also initially relaxed about Ukraine's own relationship with the alliance. In May 2002, after Kyiv moved toward closer NATO integration, he said that the decision ultimately belonged to NATO and Ukraine and was "a matter for those two partners." Political scientists Robert Person and Michael McFaul cite this statement as evidence that hostility to Ukrainian NATO membership was not a fixed feature of Putin's early presidency.[58]
Russia and NATO also developed substantial institutional ties. The NATO–Russia Council, established in 2002, brought Russia and NATO members together "as equal partners" on security issues.[59] Russian membership was discussed publicly but never formally negotiated. In 2000 Putin answered "Why not?" when asked whether Russia might eventually join NATO. Putin later recounted that Bill Clinton initially reacted positively to the idea but, after consulting advisers, told him that it was "not possible now"; this was Putin's retrospective account, not evidence of a formal accession negotiation.[60] Contemporaneous NATO statements were less categorical: in November 2000 Secretary General George Robertson said Russian membership was "not on our immediate agenda" but "may just happen one day."[61] Earlier, Clinton had said that all former Soviet republics invited into Partnership for Peace had been told that participation could lead to eventual NATO membership if they wished and if circumstances warranted it.[62]
The relationship deteriorated sharply after NATO's 2008 Bucharest summit declared that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members of NATO".[63] Missile defence added another dispute: Washington described planned installations in Poland and the Czech Republic as protection against threats outside the Euro-Atlantic area, while Moscow feared that future expansion could erode its deterrent. Putin warned in 2008 that a NATO-member Ukraine hosting such systems could become a target for Russian nuclear missiles.[64] The 2014 revolution, Russia's seizure of Crimea and the Donbas war then transformed NATO–Russia relations into sustained confrontation. Earlier warnings about enlargement later became central to debate over the post-Cold War security order. George F. Kennan warned in 1997 that enlargement risked inflaming nationalist and anti-Western tendencies in Russia.[65] In 2008 William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador in Moscow, issued what was often rendered as the warning that Ukrainian membership was "the brightest of all red lines". His exact wording was: "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin)."[66] Later that year former U.S. ambassador Jack Matlock publicly opposed NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia and argued that continued pursuit of it would make genuine strategic cooperation with Moscow nearly impossible.[67] These warnings documented serious expectations of Russian opposition; they did not establish that a later war was inevitable.On 7 September 2023 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explicitly linked Putin's decision to go to war to opposition to further NATO enlargement. Recalling Russia's late-2021 demands, Stoltenberg said Putin had sought a commitment to "no more NATO enlargement" and that NATO rejected it. He then summarized Putin's motive: "So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders."[68] This is a significant statement by NATO's secretary general about Putin's demands and Stoltenberg's interpretation of his motive; it does not by itself establish NATO enlargement as the sole cause of the invasion.
Offensive realism: was a collision predictable?
Offensive realists, especially Mearsheimer, place NATO enlargement and the attempt to draw Ukraine into the Western security orbit near the centre of the causal story. In 2014 Mearsheimer argued that the United States and its European allies had helped produce the Ukraine crisis by pursuing NATO and EU expansion and supporting Western-oriented political change in Ukraine.[69] His warning became especially conspicuous after 2022 because the danger was often summarized as the West "wrecking" Ukraine. In a 2015 University of Chicago lecture he used the fuller wording: "But I actually think that what’s going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path. And the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."[70] Stephen Walt, approaching the problem through defensive realism and the security dilemma, likewise argued before the invasion that NATO's 2008 promise had raised Russian fears and made an avoidable confrontation more likely.[71]
Realist explanations do not by themselves account for the scale and precise timing of the 2022 invasion. Nor did the invasion reverse NATO enlargement: Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024, while Ukraine became more deeply integrated with Western militaries. The literature therefore includes arguments that security concerns were real but insufficient on their own, and that they interacted with Russian leadership beliefs, nationalism, domestic politics and expectations about the changing military balance.
A Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse?
A vivid version of the security argument describes Russo-Ukrainian War as a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. Former U.S. diplomat and historian William R. Polk used that phrase in 2014 to compare Russia's reaction to Western strategic movement toward its frontier with the American reaction to the Soviet attempt to place nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962.[72] The analogy is imperfect: NATO had not placed nuclear missiles in Ukraine. Its relevance lies in the argument that great powers may treat a rival's military alignment on a sensitive frontier as qualitatively different from the same alignment farther away.
The analogy also helps explain the timing argument advanced by preventive-war and commitment-problem theories. After 2014, Ukraine's armed forces became larger, more experienced and more closely connected to Western training, intelligence and weapon systems. If Moscow expected that trend to continue, waiting could appear to make coercion more difficult rather than easier. Russia's December 2021 draft security treaties demanded not only Ukrainian non-membership in NATO but restrictions on NATO's military posture across Eastern Europe.[73] In this interpretation, February 2022 represented a closing window in which a very risky war could be preferred to a future strategic environment regarded as still worse.
After the invasion, the Cuban analogy acquired a second meaning. In April 2022 Mearsheimer described the confrontation as potentially "more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis", because Russia and the United States were already locked into an escalating contest around a conventional war.[74] The same analogy thus appears in two different parts of the war: first as an explanation of why Ukraine could be viewed in Moscow as strategically exceptional, and later as a warning about nuclear escalation.
Imperialism, nationalism and regime security
Economic and resource explanations have also been proposed, although they are usually treated as supplementary rather than sufficient causes. Ukraine's agricultural, industrial and energy assets, transit infrastructure and deposits of iron ore, coal, titanium, graphite and lithium gave the conflict an additional material dimension.[75] A 2025 study similarly examined the strategic importance of graphite, lithium, titanium and other deposits under Russian occupation.[76]
Another body of scholarship emphasizes Russian nationalism, imperial ideas and Putin's increasingly explicit rejection of a fully separate Ukrainian historical and geopolitical identity. His 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians and speeches surrounding the invasion portrayed Russians and Ukrainians as historically connected peoples and challenged important features of the post-Soviet territorial settlement. Serhii Plokhy, Paul D'Anieri and other historians place these claims within a longer contest over statehood, empire and nation-building.[77][78]
Regime-security explanations focus instead on the political implications of a democratic, Western-oriented Ukraine for an increasingly authoritarian Russian state. Robert Person and Michael McFaul argue that Putin's hostility to Ukraine cannot be explained by NATO alone because the more fundamental danger for the Kremlin was the example of a successful democratic and Western-oriented Slavic neighbour.[79] Security, imperial and regime explanations need not be mutually exclusive: the same leadership could fear military alignment, loss of geopolitical influence and political demonstration effects at the same time.
Was Putin's decision rational?
In International Relations theory, rational does not mean sane, humane, lawful, wise or successful. A rational-actor explanation asks whether leaders selected a policy they believed would advance their objectives given their information, expectations and preferences. A disastrous decision can therefore be rational in this narrow sense while resting on badly mistaken assumptions.
Jonas J. Driedger found that Russian willingness to accept risk rose over the Putin era rather than suddenly appearing in February 2022.[80] The invasion can therefore be interpreted as a strategic gamble made under a particular hierarchy of fears: the Kremlin may have judged the expected future cost of an increasingly Western-aligned Ukraine to be greater than the expected cost of war. That calculation was accompanied by major errors about Ukrainian resistance, Russian military performance, the resilience of the Ukrainian government and the scale and durability of Western support.
The increasingly personalist character of Putin's rule provides another explanation for poor decision-making surrounding the invasion. Research on authoritarian decision-making describes a trade-off between competence and loyalty: as repression increases and the political consequences of disloyalty become more threatening to a ruler, an autocrat may increasingly surround himself with loyal subordinates rather than advisers most capable of challenging his assumptions. Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin apply this mechanism directly to Putin's Russia, arguing that a rational authoritarian leader can consequently become trapped in an "informational bubble" in which poor-quality advice increases the probability of major policy mistakes. They use the invasion of Ukraine as a prominent application of the model, while explicitly cautioning that their theory is "not a theory of war" but a theory of authoritarian regimes prone to major policy mistakes.[81]
A related but distinct explanation concerns the Kremlin's growing willingness to accept risk. Jonas J. Driedger finds that Russian risk acceptance in the use of offensive military force increased progressively from the mid-2000s through the Russo-Georgian War, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and finally the 2022 invasion. He argues that the extraordinarily risky decision of February 2022 cannot be reduced simply to miscalculation and finds the pattern consistent with prospect theory, under which decision-makers who perceive themselves to be operating in a domain of losses can become more willing to gamble on dangerous courses of action.[82] Thomas Dörfler develops this interpretation specifically for the 2022 invasion, arguing that Putin and his core advisers increasingly framed developments after the annexation of Crimea as accumulating losses and that groupthink amplified this loss frame, making a high-risk attempt to reverse the perceived deterioration more likely.[83]
Why February 2022?
The invasion's timing reflected a convergence of developments. By late 2021 the Minsk process had reached an impasse, while Ukraine's armed forces were considerably more capable than they had been in 2014 and military cooperation with the United States and other NATO states had expanded through training, exercises, arms transfers and efforts to increase interoperability. Russia had assembled a large military force around Ukraine, giving Moscow a capability for coercion or invasion that could not be maintained indefinitely. In December 2021 Russia attempted a final diplomatic escalation, proposing treaties with the United States and NATO that would have excluded further NATO enlargement, including Ukrainian membership, and restricted NATO military deployments and activities in Eastern Europe. Washington and NATO agreed to discuss issues including arms control, transparency and risk reduction but rejected Russia's demand for a veto over future NATO membership.[84]
A preventive war interpretation gives particular importance to the changing military balance. In this account, Putin did not necessarily believe that Ukraine already posed an offensive military threat to Russia; rather, he increasingly feared that Ukraine's westward political trajectory, improving armed forces and growing practical integration with NATO would become progressively more difficult and costly for Russia to reverse. Western military assistance after 2014 had strengthened Ukrainian intelligence, command-and-control, anti-tank and conventional capabilities, while multinational exercises and training increasingly connected the Ukrainian armed forces with NATO standards and militaries. A 2025 study in International Security argues that Putin consequently perceived a closing window of opportunity: delaying military action risked confronting a stronger Ukraine that was still more closely integrated with NATO. In this preventive-war interpretation, the calculation was essentially "war now" rather than "war later."[85]
This interpretation does not establish that preventive motives were the sole cause of the invasion, nor does it identify a single event that made 24 February inevitable. The International Security study itself cautions that preventive-war theory cannot determine the exact moment at which a war will begin. Imperial and nationalist conceptions of Ukraine, Putin's increasing willingness to accept military risk, expectations of a rapid Russian victory, the failure of coercive diplomacy in late 2021 and early 2022, and the availability of a large invasion force may therefore have combined with the perceived closing strategic window.[86]
Who saw it coming?
The invasion permits comparison of prewar predictions with subsequent events. Mearsheimer had warned for years that the geopolitical struggle over Ukraine could end disastrously. In his 2014 Foreign Affairs article and a widely viewed 2015 University of Chicago lecture, he argued that attempts to draw Ukraine decisively into the Western security orbit would provoke increasingly forceful Russian resistance and could ultimately "wreck" Ukraine rather than make it secure.[87][88] Stephen Walt likewise warned during the 2021–2022 crisis that the interaction between NATO enlargement, Russian threat perceptions and Western attempts to strengthen Ukraine exhibited the logic of a security dilemma, in which measures one side regarded as defensive could appear threatening to the other.[89]
Yet correctly identifying the danger of a confrontation was not the same as correctly predicting that Putin would order a full-scale invasion. Many Russia and security-policy specialists—including analysts who expected Moscow to use military threats and coercion—judged an all-out invasion improbable because its foreseeable military, economic and political costs appeared vastly disproportionate to its likely benefits. Jonas J. Driedger and Mikhail Polianskii, reviewing the pre-invasion expert literature, summarized the balance of forecasts with the phrase "many, if not most"; their full wording was that "many, if not most expert predictions argued Russia would not all-out invade Ukraine." These forecasts were not wrong about the likely costs: they anticipated prolonged resistance, heavy economic sanctions, international isolation and damage to the Russian regime's interests with considerable accuracy. What they underestimated, Driedger and Polianskii argue, was the Putin regime's increasing willingness to accept risk and its inadequate processing of information about Ukrainian and Western intentions and responses.[90]
From a failed Blitzkrieg to a war of attrition
Russia's initial campaign combined advances toward Kyiv from Belarus with attacks from Crimea, Russia and the Donbas. A Royal United Services Institute study based partly on Ukrainian operational data concluded that the original Russian plan envisaged an invasion lasting approximately ten days, followed by occupation and political control, and depended on speed, deception and the rapid seizure of Kyiv.[91] The failure to seize Kyiv forced Russia to withdraw from northern Ukraine and transformed an attempted quick victory into a prolonged war of attrition.
The invasion plan and the battle for Kyiv
In 2021 and early 2022 Russia massed forces around Ukraine, including in Belarus and Crimea, while demanding changes to the European security order and limits on further NATO enlargement. On 21 February 2022 Putin recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics; on 24 February he announced what the Kremlin called a "special military operation", stating, "I made a decision to carry out a special military operation,"[92] and Russian forces attacked from Russia, Belarus, Crimea and the Donbas.
Russian forces reached the outskirts of Kyiv but failed to capture the capital or overthrow the Ukrainian government. Logistical failures, unexpectedly effective Ukrainian resistance, the failure to secure Hostomel Airport as planned, and Russian command and intelligence errors contributed to the withdrawal from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions by early April.[93]
From manoeuvre to attrition
After the withdrawal from northern Ukraine, Russia concentrated on the Donbas and the southern land corridor to Crimea. The siege and capture of Mariupol, artillery-intensive fighting around Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and later battles such as Bakhmut increasingly tied battlefield success to manpower, ammunition, fortifications, industrial production and the ability to replace losses. RUSI described the war as having moved from an attempted blitzkrieg toward attritional warfare,[94] while CSIS emphasized the growing importance of artillery, drones, defensive belts and industrial capacity.[95]
The soldiers' war: exhaustion, desertion and draft evasion
Strategic maps can obscure what attrition means to soldiers in trenches under artillery and drone attack. Former Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatyev's memoir ZOV described confused objectives, inadequate equipment, exhaustion and poor medical care. After being wounded, he published the account and fled Russia.[96][97] Though not representative, it exposes the human machinery behind attrition.
Ukrainian soldiers described parallel exhaustion. Reports documented wounded or exhausted servicemen going absent without leave, sometimes after orders to return to combat, while front-line units complained of too few replacements and ever longer rotations.[98] By August 2025 authorities had opened more than 250,000 proceedings for military-discipline offences, mostly unauthorized absence. OSW interpreted the surge as evidence of growing discipline problems and declining mental resilience; the number was not a count of unique deserters, and many soldiers later returned.[99]
Draft evasion became a related manpower problem. Under martial law most military-age men faced exit restrictions, while mobilization generally applied to fit men aged 25–60. Methods included hiding from recruiters, false medical or educational exemptions, bribery and clandestine border crossings. A 2025 UN study found criminal networks facilitating irregular exits, including fraudulent health and family exemptions.[100] A September 2025 British review repeated figures originally compiled from neighbouring countries through 31 August 2023: about 19,740 men had illegally crossed borders to avoid the exit restrictions and more than 21,000 had been caught trying to leave.[101] OSW reported continuing corruption and found that 58% of respondents in a March 2025 survey expressed understanding for evaders.[102]
In July 2026 EU governments agreed that new applicants for temporary protection should show compliance with Ukrainian military obligations; existing beneficiaries were unaffected.[103] Individual asylum claims remained possible, but ordinary draft evasion alone normally did not establish persecution.
Russia also hosted a large Ukrainian displaced population. UNHCR reported that Russian authorities had recorded about 1.21 million refugees and displaced persons from Ukraine, including Donetsk and Luhansk, by June 2023.[104] The figure combines legal and displacement categories, voluntary flight and transfers from occupied territory described in some cases as forcible. Formal Russian asylum statistics were far smaller; the total does not show that all, or even most, chose Russia through an ordinary asylum process.
Surrender provides another measure of battlefield strain. More than 2,000 defenders of the encircled Azovstal complex entered Russian captivity after being ordered to cease resistance following an 86-day siege.[105] The UN Commission of Inquiry documented killings or woundings of surrendering or captured Ukrainians by Russian forces and earlier incidents involving Ukrainian forces firing on surrendering or captured Russians.[106] Attrition is not only depletion of ammunition and equipment; it is the cumulative wearing down of human beings on both sides.
Ukraine strikes back: Kharkiv and Kherson
In September 2022 Ukraine launched a rapid counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast. Ukrainian forces broke through thin Russian lines around Balakliia, retook the rail hub of Kupiansk and the strategic city of Izium, and forced a hurried Russian withdrawal from most of the oblast. CSIS described the offensive as a rapid collapse of the Russian front in which Ukrainian forces captured large quantities of equipment and regained thousands of square kilometres in a matter of days.[107]
The Kharkiv operation coincided with a slower Ukrainian campaign against the Russian bridgehead west of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast. Ukrainian forces used precision strikes to damage bridges, ammunition depots and command posts, making the Russian position on the western bank increasingly difficult to supply. Russia withdrew from Kherson city in November 2022, giving Ukraine its second major operational success of the year. Dara Massicot's 2026 comparative study of the two counteroffensives attributes their success partly to understrength Russian formations and, in Kherson, Russia's decision to hold unfavourable terrain; she cautions that those conditions were not repeated in later Ukrainian offensives.[108]
The two victories briefly restored manoeuvre to a war already becoming attritional. They also shaped expectations in Kyiv and in supporting Western governments that additional offensives might recover still more occupied territory—expectations that the much harder 2023 counteroffensive did not fulfil.
The drone revolution: from flying cameras to an industrialized battlefield
The war transformed drone technology rapidly. In early 2022 the best-known systems were the Bayraktar TB2, Russian Orlan-10 reconnaissance aircraft and commercial quadcopters adapted for observation or bombing. By 2024–2026 the front was crowded with cheap FPV drones, loitering munitions, electronic warfare, interceptors and increasingly automated platforms. By 2025, RUSI described millions of FPV drones as a defining feature of the battlefield and documented the integration of UAVs into ordinary tactical operations.[109]
Commercial quadcopters first made surveillance nearly ubiquitous and shortened artillery's sensor-to-shooter cycle. FPV drones then gave precision attack to small units at a fraction of the price of conventional guided weapons. Both armies responded with jammers, nets, decoys and changing frequencies. Fibre-optic-controlled FPV drones reduced vulnerability to radio-frequency jamming, while developers also experimented with machine-vision and automated terminal guidance. RUSI's 2025 fieldwork found that such automated terminal guidance still had important limitations and was not generally preferred when operators could maintain a live video feed.[110][111]
The scale has also changed. Russia expanded mass production of Lancet loitering munitions, FPV drones and long-range one-way attack systems, while Ukraine developed a decentralized network of military units, start-ups, volunteer groups and manufacturers. Both sides increasingly integrated drones into ordinary infantry tactics rather than treating them as specialist aviation assets. Long-range Ukrainian drones also pushed the war hundreds of kilometres into Russia, striking refineries, airfields, depots and logistics facilities; Russian Shahed-derived and domestically produced systems became a central part of repeated attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure.
Ukraine's long-range campaign also reached economic infrastructure. Attacks in 2025 struck Russian energy facilities around Ryazan, Tuapse, Kirishi, Saratov, Syzran and Volgograd.[112] In July and August 2026 more than twenty warehouses associated with Wildberries and Ozon were attacked; Reuters estimated that fire severely damaged at least 1.9 million square metres. A 26 August strike destroyed about 100,000 square metres at a Wildberries centre in Tambov Oblast and injured two people.[113]
The drone transformation extends beyond the land front. Ukraine's explosive unmanned surface vessels challenged Russia's initial naval superiority in the Black Sea, damaging vessels and contributing to the relocation and altered operating patterns of the Black Sea Fleet.[114] The war therefore became a major interstate conflict in which inexpensive unmanned systems were used on a mass scale in the air, in land warfare and at sea, while both militaries continuously redesigned tactics in response to the other's latest innovation.[115]
Is it World War III yet?
The invasion began as a war between Russia and Ukraine, but rapidly acquired the military supply chains, intelligence networks, sanctions coalitions and geopolitical alignments of a much larger confrontation. Ukraine has depended heavily on the United States, European states and other partners for weapons, ammunition, intelligence, training and finance; Russia has drawn on Belarusian territory, Iranian drones, North Korean ammunition and missiles, and later North Korean troops. Yet the nuclear great powers have deliberately stopped short of formally entering a direct NATO–Russia war. The result occupies an uneasy space between an interstate war, a proxy conflict and a wider great-power confrontation.
A proxy war—but whose proxy?
The language of proxy war is contested. Russia portrays Western weapons, intelligence and financing as evidence that it is fighting the "collective West".[116] Some analysts likewise use proxy-war theory to describe a relationship in which Western states obtain strategic benefits from Russian military losses while Ukraine bears most of the direct battlefield costs. Research on external intervention shows that sponsors can change belligerents' capabilities, bargaining expectations and termination incentives.[117][118]
The label can also mislead. Ukraine is not merely an instrument of an outside sponsor: it is the state invaded, has its own war aims and has repeatedly disagreed with supporting governments over weapons, escalation, negotiations and territorial compromise. Calling the conflict simply a NATO proxy war can therefore erase Ukrainian agency just as describing it as purely bilateral can understate the decisive material role of outside powers. The most neutral description is that an interstate Russian-Ukrainian war has developed a major proxy and great-power-competition dimension without becoming a formal NATO–Russia war.
The arsenal of the West, without Western armies
Ukraine's ability to resist depended heavily on outside assistance. The Ukraine Support Tracker of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy records hundreds of billions of euros in military, financial and humanitarian commitments since 2022.[119] The United States and European governments supplied artillery, HIMARS, air defence, armour, long-range missiles, aircraft, intelligence and training, while financial assistance kept much of the Ukrainian state functioning. The European Union created the €50 billion Ukraine Facility for 2024–2027.[120]
Assistance nevertheless came with limits intended to manage escalation. NATO governments distinguished support for Ukrainian self-defence from direct belligerency and repeatedly debated which weapons could be supplied and where they could be used.[121] Roy Allison's 2025 study of escalation management describes the Western approach as a mixture of deterrent threats and tacit restraint: restrictions were gradually loosened, but informal boundaries continued to reduce the probability of direct NATO–Russia combat.[122] Delays in American aid in 2023–2024 demonstrated the other side of dependency. After 2025 Europe assumed a larger share of financing and procurement, although U.S.-made weapons remained important.[123]
Russia's international war machine
Russia likewise internationalized its war effort. Belarus provided territory and infrastructure; Iran supplied Shahed-type attack drones and associated technology; North Korea supplied ammunition and ballistic missiles and later sent troops.[124] These relationships did not create a Russian equivalent of NATO, but they reduced Moscow's isolation and increased its ability to sustain an attritional war.
China occupied a more consequential but deliberately ambiguous position. Beijing did not recognize Russia's annexations and repeatedly called for negotiations, yet rejected Western sanctions and expanded trade with Moscow. The war deepened Russian dependence on Chinese markets while giving Beijing a partner in opposition to U.S. predominance. Suisheng Zhao describes the relationship as a balance between Chinese empowerment and the risk of entrapment.[125]
The Global South refuses to choose a camp
The diplomatic map never matched the military map. Many states condemned the invasion or defended Ukrainian sovereignty at the United Nations while refusing Western sanctions, maintaining trade with Russia or offering themselves as mediators. Scholarship therefore warns against treating the Global South as either pro-Russian or anti-Western.[126][127]
India combined calls for diplomacy with continued defence ties and sharply increased purchases of Russian oil, a policy commonly described as strategic autonomy or multi-alignment.[128] Brazil condemned important violations of Ukrainian sovereignty but rejected sanctions and sought a diplomatic role; research based on Brazilian foreign-policy interviews interprets this less as support for Russia than as dissatisfaction with a Western-dominated international order.[129] South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan and others pursued different forms of hedging, mediation or selective cooperation. Turkey supplied Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine and restricted Russian naval access under the Montreux Convention, while declining sanctions and helping broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative.[130]
BRICS consequently neither became a unified pro-Russian alliance nor joined the Western effort to isolate Moscow. Its continued operation and expansion instead illustrated a broader preference among many non-Western states for a more multipolar order and freedom to cooperate selectively with rival great powers.[131][132]
So—is it World War III?
In the conventional meaning of a world war, not yet. Russian and NATO armed forces are not engaged in sustained direct combat, most states remain non-belligerents, and nuclear deterrence has imposed a powerful ceiling on escalation. Yet the answer becomes less comfortable when the war is viewed as a system rather than a declaration of war. Weapons are manufactured across continents; outside intelligence and satellites shape battlefield operations; sanctions and energy flows reach the global economy; Iranian and North Korean weapons support Russia; North Korean troops have fought alongside Russian forces; and NATO states supply the country fighting Russia.
The distinction therefore matters more than the label. Calling the conflict World War III exaggerates the extent of direct great-power warfare; calling it merely a local Russia–Ukraine war understates its international structure. It is better understood as a heavily internationalized interstate war embedded in a wider great-power rivalry, with unusually serious pathways to a larger war. The fact that those pathways have so far been avoided is not evidence that they do not exist.
The information war: who controls the story?
The war has been fought over territory and over the meaning of events. State media, governments, news organizations, Telegram channels and open-source investigators compete to define its causes, responsibility, casualties and victory. Information has become one of the war's battlespaces.[133]
Ukrainian information policy and strategic communication
Ukrainian restrictions on Russian and pro-Russian media preceded 2022. After 2014 authorities restricted Russian television, publications and journalists on security grounds. In 2017 Ukraine blocked widely used services including VK, Odnoklassniki, Mail.ru and Yandex; further Russian websites were sanctioned or blocked in 2020–2021.[134][135]
Domestic media were also affected. In February 2021 sanctions removed 112 Ukraine, NewsOne and ZIK from the air over alleged links to Viktor Medvedchuk. Human Rights Watch acknowledged the propaganda concern but warned that the measure reduced pluralism.[136] Further sanctions affected Strana.ua, First Independent and UkrLive.[137] The U.S. State Department reported other restrictions imposed for alleged pro-Russian views or disinformation.[138]
After February 2022 restrictions became broader. National television was consolidated around the United News TV Marathon, more Russian outlets and websites were blocked, and some opposition-linked broadcasters lost terrestrial access. The government called these safeguards necessary against wartime information operations; Ukrainian and international media-freedom organizations argued that they reduced pluralism and concentrated political influence over television news.[139]
Russian propaganda, censorship and disinformation
Russian censorship was considerably more extensive. Authorities required media to rely on Defence Ministry information and restricted terms such as "war" and "invasion". March 2022 legislation criminalized alleged "false information" and "discrediting" of the armed forces, with sentences of up to 15 years. Numerous independent Russian and foreign outlets were blocked or forced to close, access to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter was restricted, and journalists, opposition politicians and ordinary users were prosecuted for anti-war statements and accounts of military actions.[140][141]
Competing narratives and international reception
Russian state media framed NATO and the United States as the principal antagonists and the invasion as a confrontation with the "collective West";[116] it also portrayed Ukraine's government as illegitimate or extremist and challenged a distinct Ukrainian identity.[142][143] Ukrainian communication instead centred on national survival, resistance to aggression, political identity and appeals for international solidarity and assistance. It found receptive audiences in Europe and North America but encountered Russian narratives about Western hegemony, American unipolarity and anti-colonialism in the Global South.[144] Studies of Indian and South African media found coverage shaped by traditions of non-alignment, post-colonial politics and criticism of Western policy rather than a simple Russia-versus-democracy frame.[145][146]
No single account became globally dominant; audiences encountered different facts, causal stories and moral language according to their media systems and political histories.
The butcher's bill: what has the war cost Russia and Ukraine?
For Ukraine, the war has combined military losses with a continuing civilian emergency. President Zelenskyy said in February 2026 that about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed on the battlefield, while independent estimates have generally been higher and remain uncertain because wartime casualty data are incomplete.[147][148] Civilian losses rose again in 2026. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded at least 437 civilians killed and 2,610 injured in July 2026 alone, the highest monthly civilian death toll since May 2022; missiles and drones were the leading cause of casualties.[149] Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced internally or abroad, while housing, transport, energy, schools, hospitals, cultural sites and industrial facilities have been damaged across the country.
Ukraine's economic and demographic losses extend beyond immediate destruction. The World Bank, the Ukrainian government, the European Commission and the United Nations estimated in their fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment that the invasion had produced profound physical, socioeconomic and environmental damage through the end of 2025 and reconstruction needs that would persist for years.[150] Emigration, military deaths, lower fertility, occupation and displacement have compounded a demographic contraction that began before the invasion.
Russia has borne a different human and economic burden. The war has not destroyed Russian cities on a scale comparable with Ukraine, but Russian military casualties have been extremely high. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in July 2026 that Russian forces had suffered about 1.4 million battlefield casualties, including as many as 400,000–450,000 deaths, between February 2022 and June 2026.[151] Russia has also absorbed sanctions, labour shortages, high military expenditure, losses of equipment and skilled workers, and an economy increasingly reorganized around defence production and redirected trade. Ukrainian long-range attacks have damaged refineries, depots, military facilities and other infrastructure inside Russia, and have also caused civilian casualties, although independently verified civilian totals for Russia are less comprehensive than UN monitoring inside Ukraine.
Who crossed the line? War crimes and attacks on civilians
International organizations, governments, courts and non-governmental investigators have reported alleged and documented violations of international humanitarian and human-rights law by Russian forces, including killings, torture, sexual violence, attacks affecting civilians, mistreatment of prisoners of war, forced transfers and abuses in territories under Russian control. Investigations after the Russian withdrawal from areas around Kyiv documented civilian deaths and other abuses, including in Bucha. Russia has disputed a number of allegations and has challenged some international investigations and conclusions. The UN Commission of Inquiry has described torture by Russian authorities as widespread and systematic and concluded that some conduct amounted to war crimes and, in the case of torture, crimes against humanity.[152]
International investigators have also documented violations by Ukrainian forces. The UN Commission of Inquiry reported a smaller number of violations by Ukrainian armed forces, including likely indiscriminate attacks and two incidents it classified as war crimes in which Russian prisoners of war were shot, wounded or tortured.[153] By June 2025, OHCHR stated that it had verified the execution by Ukrainian armed forces of 26 persons hors de combat, including Russian prisoners of war, since February 2022, with all but one of those cases occurring in 2022 or early 2023.[154]
UN monitoring has found mistreatment of prisoners of war by both sides, while reporting substantial differences in scale and pattern. In October 2024, OHCHR said that 169 of 174 recently interviewed Ukrainian former prisoners described torture or severe ill-treatment in Russian captivity, which it characterized as widespread and systematic. Russian prisoners held by Ukraine generally did not report torture at established internment facilities, but some gave credible accounts of torture or ill-treatment during capture, evacuation or transit before reaching those facilities.[155] OHCHR continued to document such treatment by Ukrainian personnel in 2025; among 95 Russian and third-country prisoners interviewed for its December 2024–May 2025 report, 59 described acts of torture or ill-treatment, principally during the initial stages of captivity or transit.[156]
The transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and Russian-controlled territory became the subject of international investigations, and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and several other Russian officials. The daughter article presents documented violations and allegations concerning both sides, responses by the parties, and findings of international investigative bodies in greater detail.
Why does the war continue, if it brings no benefits to either party, only more deaths and destruction?
The war's persistence is a classic bargaining puzzle: a conflict can be collectively ruinous while leaders on both sides still judge continued fighting preferable to the settlement currently available. By 2026 the central obstacles included incompatible expectations about future power, territorial stakes, commitment problems, domestic political costs, outside assistance and uncertainty over whether any bargain would survive rearmament or political change.[157][158]
Russia has acquired and retained territory but has failed to subjugate Ukraine; Ukraine has preserved its statehood and inflicted very heavy military losses on Russia but has not restored its 1991 borders. The losses are not symmetrical. Because nearly all large-scale ground combat has taken place in Ukraine, Russia has inflicted vastly greater physical destruction on Ukraine than Ukraine has inflicted on Russia: Ukrainian cities, housing, energy infrastructure, industry and transport have suffered destruction on a scale without Russian equivalent, millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, and Ukrainian civilians have borne the overwhelming share of independently documented civilian casualties.[159][160]
This asymmetry makes the puzzle especially sharp. In a simple welfare-maximizing model, a rational national leadership would prefer a tolerable settlement to a course expected to bring its population only more deaths and destruction. War leaders, however, do not necessarily maximize aggregate social welfare; they may value sovereignty, territory, alliance alignment, regime survival, credibility, domestic political survival or expectations of improved future bargaining terms more highly than the immediate reduction of casualties and destruction. Jan Ludvik, for example, argues that a victory-oriented Ukrainian strategy faced severe structural obstacles and that the likely alternatives included a frozen conflict or negotiated termination rather than decisive military victory.[161]
"Let's just fight": the Johnson visit and the spring 2022 negotiations
Russia and Ukraine negotiated in Belarus and Turkey during the first weeks of the invasion. The Istanbul discussions addressed Ukrainian neutrality, outside security guarantees, military limitations and the status of occupied territory. Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko concluded from draft documents and interviews that the parties made substantial progress but still had unresolved disagreements over security guarantees, military limits and territory.[162] Ivan Katchanovski has argued more strongly that the framework came close to finalization.[163]
Davyd Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation, later said that Russia had been prepared to stop the war if Ukraine accepted neutrality and abandoned NATO membership. He also stressed that Kyiv did not trust Moscow, constitutional changes would have been required and the delegation had no authority to sign a final settlement. Arakhamia nevertheless recalled that Johnson came to Kyiv after the Istanbul meeting and said Ukraine should not sign with Russia and, in Arakhamia's words, "let's just fight." The same report also records Arakhamia explicitly denying that the Ukrainian delegation had been ready to sign an agreement or that Johnson had forced Kyiv's hand; he said Western partners gave advice rather than making the decision for Ukraine.[164]
The phrase has nevertheless become shorthand for a contested theory of why the war continued: that some Western governments prioritized weakening Russia even when prolonging the war imposed additional costs on Ukraine—punishing Russia regardless of the cost to Ukraine. Under this interpretation, the failure of Russia's drive on Kyiv transformed the strategic possibilities of the war. Ukraine had survived, Russia had exposed major weaknesses, and Western governments could see a chance not only to prevent Ukrainian defeat but to impose lasting military, economic and reputational costs on Moscow. Johnson's "crocodile" analogy was unusually vivid. He asked, "How can you negotiate with a crocodile when it's got your leg in its jaws?"[165] U.S. defence secretary Lloyd Austin said after an April 2022 visit to Kyiv that the United States wanted "to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." The strategic aim was frequently shortened to Russia being "weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine".[166]
The hypothesis also has a scholarly foundation. David E. Cunningham found that outside states with independent objectives can prolong conflicts because they add bargaining actors while bearing lower direct costs of continued fighting.[167] Principal–agent and proxy-war research likewise shows that sponsors and local partners can share broad objectives while preferring different risks, costs and termination points.[168][169] Applied to Ukraine, the mechanism is a divergence in the distribution of costs: Ukraine bears most of the battlefield deaths, displacement and physical destruction, while outside supporters can obtain the strategic benefit of degrading Russian power without sending their own armed forces into direct large-scale war with Russia.
Ukrainian public opinion, Zelenskyy and the politics of continuing the war
Whether continued fighting remained in the best interests of Ukrainians became increasingly contested as the war lengthened. Alina Nychyk and Paul D'Anieri argue that public opinion itself constrains the bargaining space and document growing willingness to consider territorial concessions as the costs of war accumulated.[170] Gallup found a dramatic change: in 2022, 73% favoured fighting until victory and 22% favoured negotiations as soon as possible; by July 2025, 69% favoured a negotiated end and only 24% favoured continuing until victory.[171]
The shift did not amount to broad acceptance of Russian political control. A 2026 survey experiment by Janina Dill, Marnie Howlett and Carl Müller-Crepon found declining resistance to some territorial concessions and neutrality but continued strong rejection of a Russian-controlled government and continued attachment to political autonomy.[172] This helps explain why Ukrainians could become more critical of an indefinite war without turning toward the political outcome sought by Moscow.
Zelenskyy's own popularity fell far below the extraordinary rally of 2022 but did not collapse. Research on the rally 'round the flag effect found that his approval rose from roughly one third shortly before the invasion to above 90% immediately afterward.[173] By April 2026, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 58% trusted him and 36% did not, while a May–June poll put trust at 61%.[174][175]
Several factors contributed to this resilience: the invasion was widely experienced as a war of national survival; support for negotiations did not necessarily imply support for Russian terms; opposition figures themselves generally supported resistance to Russia; and martial law prevented the normal electoral mechanism through which wartime dissatisfaction might replace a president. Critics nevertheless questioned whether a strategy centred on prolonged military victory still reflected public preferences as support for negotiations increased.
Zelenskyy's legal status after his five-year term reached its scheduled end in May 2024 became contentious. Russian officials called him illegitimate because no election was held.[176] Ukrainian law prohibits presidential elections under martial law, while Article 108 of the Constitution keeps the president in office until a successor assumes office.[177] Most Ukrainian legal analysis therefore treats his continuation as constitutional, although the Constitution is more explicit about extending parliament's wartime term than the president's.[178] Wartime elections also face severe practical obstacles involving soldiers, refugees, occupied territories, campaigning and observation.[179]
"Why hasn't Russia had enough?"
By 2026 Russia's opening attempt to overthrow or neutralize the government in Kyiv had failed. It had suffered enormous casualties and equipment losses, endured years of sanctions and redirected much of its economy toward war, while territorial gains after 2024 were generally slow and costly. Yet none of this produced the conclusion outside observers repeatedly expected: that Moscow would finally say "enough" or decide that it had "had enough".
One explanation is that the Kremlin measures the war's costs not against peacetime prosperity but against the perceived cost of stopping without an acceptable outcome. Toms Rostoks describes a strategy of "outsuffering" the adversary:[180] casualties, sanctions and declining living standards become a strategic resource if Moscow expects Ukrainian manpower, Western patience or foreign assistance to break first. Before the invasion, defence minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly replied to warnings of severe economic costs in words often shortened to "suffer like no one else." The source's fuller wording is "We [Russians] can suffer like no one else".[180] Rostoks cautions that superior tolerance for pain may yield not victory but "suffering without end."[180]
The strategy also rests on different political clocks. Russia's population and industrial base are much larger than Ukraine's, while elections, fiscal pressures and disagreements among Ukraine's many supporters could make Western aid less durable than Russian political commitment. David V. Gioe and Tony Manganello describe a contest in which both Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly believed that time could improve their eventual bargaining position.[181] Russia's attritional theory of victory required no spectacular breakthrough if slow advances could exhaust Ukrainian manpower and ammunition, increase pressure on Kyiv and weaken Western cohesion.[182]
Domestic politics further separate state policy from individual costs. A 2026 NBER study found that escalations increased Putin's support disproportionately in regions with larger ethnic-Russian populations, while battlefield casualties fell disproportionately elsewhere. This distribution partly separates the political benefits of confrontation from its human costs.[183] Repression, censorship and the absence of competitive national elections also make battlefield losses less capable of forcing policy change than in a more electorally vulnerable system.
Russian endurance is not unlimited. By 2026 growth had slowed, inflation and interest rates remained high, labour shortages intensified, recruitment became harder, and Ukrainian long-range strikes imposed growing costs on refineries, logistics and infrastructure. Russian advances remained slow and costly in many sectors. Endurance is a strategy, not proof of inexhaustible resources. Richard Connolly argues that economic pain alone is unlikely to stop the war because sunk costs, security objectives and wartime political values can outweigh ordinary measures of welfare.[184] Jack Watling likewise assessed that stopping may appear politically more dangerous to the Kremlin than continuing its effort to exhaust Ukraine.[185]
Russia therefore continues not because the war is cheap, but because the Kremlin appears to judge the alternatives worse and believes time may transfer the burden to its opponents. As long as Moscow expects Ukraine or its supporters to reach their limit first, the enormous costs already paid can become an argument for continuing rather than stopping: withdrawal would incur the costs of defeat without recovering the blood, money or prestige already spent.
Peace—or just time to rearm?
The commitment problem is especially severe. Ukraine fears that a ceasefire without enforceable guarantees would give Russia time to rearm and attack again. Russia argues that Western guarantees, foreign forces or a heavily armed Ukrainian state could turn a ceasefire into another stage of Ukraine's military integration with NATO. The failure of the Minsk process reinforces Ukrainian distrust, while Moscow portrays NATO's post-2014 military assistance to Ukraine as evidence that temporary settlements can change the balance against Russia. These expectations make a mutually acceptable bargain difficult even when both sides incur heavy losses.[186]
"Pushing Russia into the arms of China"
Another theory concerns the global consequences of weakening Russia. Mearsheimer and other balance-of-power analysts argue that if China is the principal long-term peer competitor of the United States, American strategy should avoid creating a durable bloc between Beijing and Moscow. The historical analogy is Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger exploiting the Sino-Soviet split; the opposite outcome has sometimes been described as a reverse Nixon.
Russia and China were already drawing closer before the invasion, but the argument is often summarized as Western policy having "pushed Russia into the arms of China". Discussing U.S. balance-of-power strategy at the 2024 All-In Summit, Mearsheimer said more exactly, "But what we have done, in effect, is we have pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese."[187] Suisheng Zhao describes Beijing's policy as a balance between empowerment and entrapment: China gains from a strong enough Russia to resist U.S. predominance, while a Russia bogged down in Ukraine becomes more dependent on Chinese markets and support.[188][189]
The result is a strategic paradox: a Russia weakened in Europe may simultaneously become more useful and more dependent as China's junior partner. In balance-of-power terms, a policy can therefore succeed at degrading one adversary while contributing to a less favourable alignment among the United States' two principal great-power competitors.
Could this war go nuclear?
The previous question has a nuclear corollary: if Russia has had enough of conventional war, would it negotiate—or try to change the rules? Nuclear weapons have hovered over the conflict from its first morning. Putin's warnings primarily sought to deter direct Western intervention, but strategists have also considered a Russian leadership facing a battlefield outcome it regards as intolerable. In that scenario nuclear weapons would become instruments of war termination as well as deterrence.
Mearsheimer stated the danger starkly: "I think that nuclear war is most likely if the Russians are losing." He argued that a Ukrainian breakthrough, looming Russian defeat or an intolerably costly stalemate could encourage horizontal escalation or nuclear use if Russian leaders believed vital security interests or great-power status were at stake.[190][191] Campbell Craig likewise identifies tactical nuclear use followed by possible escalation as central to Mearsheimer's analysis of the Ukraine war.[192]
That does not imply that Putin will use nuclear weapons once conventional costs become unbearable. Russia accepted retreat from Kyiv, collapse of its Kharkiv front and withdrawal from Kherson without crossing the threshold. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard argues that Russia's conduct during the acute 2022 crisis weakens simple versions of both the "desperation" hypothesis and what older shorthand called "escalate to de-escalate." Her source terminology is "escalate-to-deescalate".[193] Use would also create enormous uncertainty about NATO's response and could turn an attempt to end one war into a much larger one.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: can nuclear weapons end a war quickly?
On 6 and 9 August 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan announced acceptance of surrender terms days later, and the Pacific War ended shortly afterward. American officials defended the bombings partly as a means of obtaining rapid surrender and avoiding a costly invasion.[194] Historians continue to debate the relative importance of the bombs, the Soviet Union's entry into the war and Japan's internal political and military calculations.[195][196]
In September 2022 Putin invoked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and said the American attacks had "created a precedent." Nuclear scholars Nina Tannenwald and David Holloway interpreted this as a possible legitimating analogy while rejecting the claim that 1945 created an accepted precedent for later nuclear war.[197]
A limited Russian strike might be intended as a coercive shock: not to annihilate Ukraine, but to demonstrate that further resistance risks escalation neither Kyiv nor its supporters are prepared to accept. Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrate why leaders might believe nuclear violence can accelerate war termination. They also warn against equating ending the fighting with creating a lasting peace: coercion could produce a ceasefire or formal agreement while leaving territorial, security and political conflicts unresolved.
The later U.S.–Japan alliance is an especially poor analogy. It reflected Japan's total defeat and occupation, political reconstruction, American economic and security support and the emerging Cold War—not the bombings alone.[198][199] Nothing about a hypothetical strike in Ukraine would reproduce those conditions automatically. A nuclear-induced agreement could leave Russia–Ukraine and Russia–NATO relations hostile for decades; cessation would not ensure reconciliation.
The price of crossing the nuclear threshold
Nuclear use would also threaten Russia's relationships well beyond NATO. China has publicly opposed both the use and the threat of nuclear weapons in connection with the war.[200] Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh told Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu in October 2022 that the prospect of nuclear or radiological weapons use violated the "basic tenets of humanity." His full wording was that it "goes against the basic tenets of humanity."[201][202] These reactions matter because Western sanctions have made continued trade and diplomatic ties with China, India and other non-Western states especially important to Moscow.
A Russian nuclear attack could destroy a major diplomatic asset: the Global South's reluctance to join Western sanctions. Beijing's and New Delhi's responses to a hypothetical event cannot be known, and they would not necessarily impose formal sanctions. Nuclear use could nevertheless force reconsideration of trade, finance, technology transfers, diplomatic cover and other engagement. Even partial Chinese distancing would be especially costly because war and Western sanctions have increased Russia's dependence on Beijing. Possible Chinese, Indian and broader non-Western punishment therefore reinforces the deterrent effects of NATO retaliation and uncontrolled escalation.
The option therefore presents Putin with a brutal paradox. If the outsuffering strategy works, nuclear use is unnecessary; if it fails badly, Russia would consider its most dangerous weapon precisely as its position deteriorated. A strike might shock Ukraine into negotiations; it might instead stiffen Ukrainian resistance and trigger U.S. or NATO retaliation. NATO has deliberately left the response ambiguous: Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg promised "severe consequences" while distinguishing Ukraine from a NATO member protected by collective defence.[203][204] Analysts have discussed responses short of automatic nuclear retaliation. David Petraeus, for example, proposed a hypothetical U.S.-led conventional attack on Russian forces in Ukraine and Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet; this was his assessment, not NATO policy.[205] Nuclear use could also strip Moscow of support from states that had resisted isolating it. Russia could not reliably select only the coercive outcome.
The danger is not limited to deliberate weapons use. Combat around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, attacks affecting electricity supplies to nuclear facilities and military activity near other plants created recurrent risks of radiological emergency. Deterrence has so far helped keep NATO and Russia out of direct large-scale war while defining the outer boundary within which both sides tested escalation. Ukraine, however, is not nuclear-armed: it relinquished the weapons stationed there after the Soviet collapse.
The uncertainty itself is a central restraint on deliberate escalation. The question of why Russia has not stopped despite mounting costs therefore has no reassuring nuclear answer. If Moscow concludes that it cannot outlast Ukraine and the West conventionally, negotiation is one response—but escalation is another. That Hiroshima and Nagasaki were followed rapidly by the end of the Pacific War shows why nuclear coercion can tempt leaders seeking a dramatic end to a costly conflict. That nuclear weapons have not been used in war since 1945 shows how exceptional—and how dangerous—crossing the threshold has become.
How may this war end?
Wars rarely end with the clarity implied by the word victory. Interstate conflicts usually terminate through some combination of battlefield decision, negotiation, ceasefire, exhaustion, political change or a slide into lower-intensity conflict. Tim Sweijs and Mattia Bertolini, reviewing interstate wars after 1945, found that only about one fifth ended in decisive victory, about 30% in ceasefires and about one sixth in formal peace agreements; many negotiated settlements later broke down.[206] For Ukraine, the central distinction is therefore between stopping large-scale fighting and resolving the underlying territorial and security conflict.
A negotiated settlement
A comprehensive settlement would require more than agreement on a ceasefire line. The parties would need arrangements concerning territory, prisoners, sanctions, Ukraine's armed forces and external alignment, security guarantees, reconstruction and the status of occupied regions. The 2022 Istanbul talks demonstrated that substantial bargaining was possible but also exposed the difficulty of converting broad formulas into credible guarantees.[207] Paul D'Anieri argues that the central obstacle is a commitment problem: a bargain acceptable today may be rejected tomorrow after rearmament or a change in the balance of power.[208]
Public opinion constrains this route. Alina Nychyk and Paul D'Anieri found growing Ukrainian willingness to contemplate territorial concessions as the costs of war increased, while also emphasizing the political difficulty of implementing a settlement that lacks public legitimacy.[209] A 2025 experiment among transatlantic security elites by Felix Bethke, Tobias Bunde, Jonas J. Driedger and Anton Peez found areas of overlap on some settlement terms but continued disagreement over security guarantees, territory, sanctions and reconstruction.[210]
Armistice without peace
An armistice could stop most fighting without producing a final peace treaty. The Korean Armistice Agreement is often cited as a model: organized combat stopped while the political conflict and territorial division persisted. The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies notes that ceasefires have been substantially more common than decisive outcomes in post-1945 interstate wars.[211] Such an outcome in Ukraine would require a line that both sides could defend, mechanisms for monitoring violations and some understanding of how rearmament and external military support would be handled.
A frozen conflict or long war
A lower-intensity but unresolved conflict is another frequently discussed outcome. John Lough's 2024 Chatham House study set out four broad scenarios: a long war, frozen conflict, Ukrainian victory and Ukrainian defeat.[212] Jan Ludvik argues that the Russia–Ukraine conflict can already be understood as a frozen conflict dating from 2014–2015 that was violently reactivated in 2022; he concludes that even a stronger Ukrainian battlefield performance would not necessarily have resolved the underlying political dispute.[213] Under this scenario, large-scale operations might diminish while periodic strikes, rearmament and unresolved sovereignty claims continue for years.
Russian or Ukrainian battlefield victory
A decisive change on the battlefield could alter bargaining positions. Lough's Chatham House scenarios explicitly include both Ukrainian victory and Ukrainian defeat, while Bernard Finel's 2025 study examines plausible pathways to Russian victory or defeat through coercion and military effectiveness.[214] A Russian breakthrough could force Ukraine toward concessions if Western assistance or Ukrainian manpower became insufficient. A major Ukrainian breakthrough could improve Kyiv's bargaining position, although Mearsheimer has argued that a severe Russian battlefield defeat is precisely the condition under which nuclear escalation would become most plausible.[215]
Exhaustion and a mutually hurting stalemate
War can also end when leaders conclude that further fighting is unlikely to improve the eventual bargain. I. William Zartman described this as a mutually hurting stalemate, in which both sides perceive continued conflict as costly and no longer expect a decisive way out.[216] Stephen Walt argued in March 2022 that Russia's failed attempt at rapid victory could produce a grinding stalemate in which compromise became possible only after the parties accepted that they could not obtain all of their original objectives.[217]
Exhaustion does not require both societies to suffer equally. It requires enough decision-makers to believe that the opponent is no longer likely to break first. In a long attritional war, heavy enemy losses can perversely encourage continued fighting if each side interprets them as evidence that one more campaign may finally improve its terms.
Settlement induced by outside powers
Ukraine's ability to continue fighting depends heavily on Western weapons, finance and intelligence; Russia's ability to sustain the war is affected by sanctions and by economic and military relationships with China, Iran and North Korea. Outside states can therefore alter the bargaining range by increasing or withholding aid, changing sanctions, supplying security guarantees or pressing for particular negotiating terms. The same leverage can support opposite outcomes: it can prevent defeat and make a negotiated settlement more balanced, or it can sustain a war beyond the point at which local resources alone would have forced compromise. Research on external intervention, proxy relationships and principal–agent problems provides the theoretical basis for both possibilities.[218][219]
Political change
Leadership change, electoral shifts, elite conflict or changes in public tolerance can alter war aims without a decisive battlefield event. Lough's scenarios include the possibility that major military outcomes would trigger political change, especially in Russia, while war-termination theory more generally treats domestic political incentives as an important part of leaders' willingness to accept compromise.[220] Political change need not mean regime collapse: governments can redefine victory, abandon previously declared objectives, or accept arrangements that earlier appeared politically impossible.
Ending the fighting versus ending the conflict
The most plausible outcome may combine several mechanisms rather than follow a single dramatic event. Battlefield stabilization can create an armistice; exhaustion can make negotiations more attractive; outside guarantees can make a ceasefire more credible; and political leaders can redefine what counts as an acceptable result. Modern war-termination data support caution about expecting a clean ending: CSIS found that compromise, stalemate, ceasefire or lower-intensity conflict are more common than decisive victory in recent interstate wars.[221]
A ceasefire can end large-scale killing quickly; it cannot by itself determine the future of Crimea and the occupied regions, Ukraine's military alignment, sanctions, reconstruction or the European security order. The war may therefore stop before the conflict that produced it is resolved.
Additional literature
Gault, J. (2026). Russo-Ukrainian War: 2014–???? Why did it start? Why does it continue? How may it end? (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22346484
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic were Russian-backed entities, having declared their independence from Ukraine in May 2014. Several months into the invasion, Russia declared that it had formally annexed both entities in September 2022. They continue to exist as republics of Russia.
- ↑ North Korean troops have widely been reported as fighting in this war since October 2024.[1][2]
- ↑ In 2022, Belarus allowed Russia to use its territory to launch the invasion[3][4][5] and to launch missiles into Ukraine.[6]
- ↑ Including military, paramilitary, and 34,000 separatist militias.
References
- ↑ Graham-Harrison, Emma; McCurry, Justin (2024-10-10). "North Koreans deployed alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, sources say". The Guardian. Retrieved 2024-10-10. Unknown parameter
|name-list-style=ignored (help) - ↑ Uk, Yang (10 February 2025). "North Korea's Military Behavior in 2024 and Choices for 2025". Asan Institute for Policy Studies: 2. Retrieved 3 March 2025.
By mid-October, North Korea had evolved into a blood ally of Russia, sending 11,000 troops to the front lines of the Ukraine war
- ↑ Lister, Tim; Kesa, Julia (24 February 2022). "Ukraine says it was attacked through Russian, Belarus and Crimea borders". Kyiv: CNN. Archived from the original on 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Murphy, Palu (24 February 2022). "Troops and military vehicles have entered Ukraine from Belarus". CNN. Archived from the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "Why is Belarus admitting Wagner leader and backing Russia against Ukraine?". BBC. 26 June 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2025.
- ↑ "Missiles launched into Ukraine from Belarus". BBC News. 27 February 2022. Archived from the original on 2 March 2022. Retrieved 27 February 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ "75 тысяч погибших российских солдат 120 смертей в день – вот цена, которую платит Россия за нападение на соседнюю страну. Новое большое исследование "Медузы" и "Медиазоны" о потерях". Meduza (in русский). Retrieved 2024-02-24.
... численность войск на фронте (если при вторжении ее оценивали в 190 тысяч вместе с «народными милициями ДНР и ЛНР», ...
- ↑ Bengali, Shashank (18 February 2022). "The U.S. says Russia's troop buildup could be as high as 190,000 in and near Ukraine". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 February 2022. Retrieved 18 February 2022. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Hackett, James, ed. (February 2021). The Military Balance 2021 (1st ed.). Abingdon, Oxfordshire: International Institute for Strategic Studies. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-03-201227-8. OCLC 1292198893. OL 32226712M. Search this book on
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 The Military Balance 2022. International Institute for Strategic Studies. February 2022. ISBN 9781000620030 – via Google Books. Search this book on
- ↑ "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 30, 2023". Institute for the Study of War. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
- ↑ "Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 14, 2024". Institute for the Study of War.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 The Military Balance 2022. International Institute for Strategic Studies. February 2022. ISBN 9781000620030 – via Google Books. Search this book on
- ↑ "Ukraine", The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 2023-01-18, retrieved 2023-01-19
- ↑ "Swimming rivers and faking illness to escape Ukraine's draft". BBC News. 2023-11-17. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
- ↑ Brands, Hal (2024). War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-1-4214-4985-2. Search this book on
- ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2023). The Russo-Ukrainian War. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-80206-179-6. Search this book on
- ↑ Kunertova, Dominika (2023). "Drones have boots: Learning from Russia's war in Ukraine". Contemporary Security Policy. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2262792.
- ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2006). The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521864039. Search this book on
- ↑ Magocsi, Paul Robert (2010). A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442610217. Search this book on
- ↑ Klimenko, Ekaterina V. (2026). ""Kievan Rus Is Ours!": Ontological Security, National Memory, and Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". Nationalities Papers.
- ↑ Magocsi, Paul Robert (2007). Ukraine: An Illustrated History. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802094971. Search this book on
- ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2015). The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465050918. Search this book on
- ↑ "All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001: Ethnic and language distribution of population" (PDF). State Statistics Committee of Ukraine.
- ↑ "Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet in Russian-Ukrainian Relations". Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. September 1995.
- ↑ "Signatures of Partnership for Peace Framework Document". NATO.
- ↑ "Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation". United Nations Treaty Collection. 31 May 1997.
- ↑ "Tuzla Island conflict". Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine.
- ↑ "The Russian–Ukrainian gas dispute". Strategic Comments. 18 (1): 75–80. 2009. doi:10.1080/13567880902820276.
- ↑ The Russo-Ukrainian gas dispute of January 2009: a comprehensive assessment (Report). Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. 2009.
- ↑ "Ukraine: between the European Union and the Customs Union". Centre for Eastern Studies. 12 December 2012.
- ↑ "Parliament passes statement on Ukraine's aspirations for European integration". Kyiv Post. 22 February 2013.
- ↑ "European Union Committee - Sixth Report: The EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine". Parliament of the United Kingdom. 10 February 2015.
- ↑ Salem, Harriet; Walker, Shaun; Harding, Luke (27 February 2014). "Crimean parliament seized by unknown pro-Russian gunmen: Gunmen storm Crimea's regional administrative complex in Simferopol and hoist Russian flag above parliament building". The Guardian.
- ↑ "Why the Russo- Ukrainian War Started Already in February 2014". www.ui.se (in svenska). Retrieved 2025-03-10.
- ↑ Brands, Hal (2024-04-02). War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World. JHU Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-4214-4985-2. Search this book on
- ↑ "Putin reveals secrets of Russia's Crimea takeover plot". BBC News. 9 March 2015.
- ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (9 May 2023). The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-1-324-05120-6.
... In an article published on the eve of the referendum, the historian Andrei Zubov, a professor at the elite Moscow Institute of International Relations, compared the planned annexation of the peninsula to Hitler's Anschluss of Austria in 1938. He drew parallels between Hitler's vision of Greater Germany and Russia's reunification rhetoric, pointed out that both acts were justified to the public by the need to protect allegedly persecuted minorities, German (in Czechoslovakia) in the first case and Russian in the second, and mentioned the staged referendum as a sham to provide legal cover for the forcible annexation. ...
Search this book on
- ↑ Žalimas, Dainius (14 March 2017). "Lessons of World War II and the Annexation of Crimea". International Comparative Jurisprudence. 3 (1): 25–36. doi:10.13165/j.icj.2017.03.003. ISSN 2351-6674.
- ↑ "Results of voting in oblasts of Ukraine". Central Election Commission of Ukraine. Retrieved 7 September 2026.
- ↑ "Parties that obtained majority of votes in regions of Ukraine, 2012 parliamentary election". Central Election Commission of Ukraine. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ "Results in the nationwide election district by Communist Party of Ukraine". Central Election Commission of Ukraine. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ Wittke, Cindy (2019). "The Minsk Agreements – more than "scraps of paper"?". East European Politics. 35 (3): 264–290. doi:10.1080/21599165.2019.1635885.
- ↑ D'Anieri, Paul (2023). "Commitment problems and the failure of the Minsk process: the second-order commitment challenge". Post-Soviet Affairs. 39 (4): 257–272. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2022.2158685.
- ↑ "No to capitulation: Why Ukrainians are protesting President Zelenskyy's peace plan". Foreign Policy. 11 October 2019.
- ↑ Åtland, Kristian (2020). "Destined for deadlock? Russia, Ukraine, and the unfulfilled Minsk agreements". Post-Soviet Affairs. 36 (2): 122–139. doi:10.1080/1060586X.2020.1720443.
- ↑ "Merkel says Minsk agreements gave Ukraine 'valuable time'". Reuters. 9 December 2022.
- ↑ Prouvost, Theo (28 December 2022). "Hollande: 'There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground'". The Kyiv Independent.
- ↑ "Zelenskyy's change of approach towards Russia: From soft touch to firm hand". Finnish Institute of International Affairs. May 2022.
- ↑ "Ukraine, Russia, and the Minsk agreements: A post-mortem". European Council on Foreign Relations. 19 February 2024.
- ↑ Potočňák, Adam; Mareš, Miroslav (2023). "Donbas Conflict: How Russia's Trojan Horse Failed and Forced Moscow to Alter Its Strategy". Problems of Post-Communism. 70 (3): 290–301. doi:10.1080/10758216.2022.2066005.
- ↑ "Is the Minsk Process for Eastern Ukraine Dead or Merely Deadlocked?". German Marshall Fund. 2021.
- ↑ "Are Russia and Ukraine Sliding Into War?". Carnegie Moscow Center. 9 April 2021.
- ↑ Götz, Elias; Ekman, Per (2024). "Russia's War Against Ukraine: Context, Causes, and Consequences". Problems of Post-Communism. 71 (3): 193–205. doi:10.1080/10758216.2024.2343640.
- ↑ Pierzynski, Gabriel A.; Joseph, Jonathan (2025). "Patrimonial Imperialism: A Taxonomy of the Causes of the Russo-Ukrainian War". Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 55 (3). doi:10.1111/jtsb.70007.
|article=ignored (help) - ↑ Hoffman, David (6 March 2000). "Putin Says 'Why Not?' to Russia Joining NATO". The Washington Post.
- ↑ "Statement by Lord Robertson, NATO Secretary General, on Acting President Putin's interview with the BBC". NATO. 6 March 2000.
- ↑ Person, Robert; McFaul, Michael (2022). "What Putin Fears Most". Journal of Democracy. 33 (2): 18–27. doi:10.1353/jod.2022.0015.
- ↑ "NATO-Russia Council". NATO.
- ↑ "Russia could have joined NATO in 2000s had US wished for it, says Putin". TASS. 9 February 2024.
- ↑ "Security in the Wider Europe". NATO. 10 November 2000.
- ↑ "Press Conference by Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin". The White House. 14 January 1994.
- ↑ "Bucharest Summit Declaration". NATO. 3 April 2008.
- ↑ Norris, Robert S.; Kristensen, Hans M. (2008). "Russian Nuclear Forces, 2008". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 64 (2): 54–57. doi:10.2968/064002013.
- ↑ Kennan, George F. (5 February 1997). "A Fateful Error". The New York Times.
- ↑ Burns, William J. (2019). The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal. Random House. p. 233. Search this book on
- ↑ "Georgia In NATO Not In U.S. Interest, Says Ex-U.S. Envoy". Reuters. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 24 September 2008.
- ↑ "Opening remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Subcommittee on Security and Defence". NATO. 7 September 2023.
- ↑ Mearsheimer, John J. (2014). "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin". Foreign Affairs. 93 (5): 77–89.
- ↑ John J. Mearsheimer (25 September 2015). Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer (YouTube video). University of Chicago.
- ↑ Walt, Stephen M. (19 January 2022). "Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis". Foreign Policy.
- ↑ Polk, William R. (2014). "Ukraine: The Cuban Missile Crisis in Reverse". History News Network.
- ↑ "Agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. 17 December 2021. Missing or empty
|url=(help) - ↑ Mearsheimer, John J. (18 April 2022). "Transcript of [[Mearsheimer]]'s April 7th Presentation". American Committee for US-Russia Accord. URL–wikilink conflict (help)
- ↑ Johannesson, Jokull; Clowes, David (2022). "Energy Resources and Markets – Perspectives on the Russia–Ukraine War". European Review. 30 (1): 4–23. doi:10.1017/S1062798720001040.
- ↑ "From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the battlefield of the future: The geopolitical fight for Ukraine's mineral wealth". Energy Research & Social Science. 123. 2025. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2025.104043.
|article=ignored (help) - ↑ Plokhy, Serhii (2023). The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. W. W. Norton. Search this book on
- ↑ D'Anieri, Paul (2019). Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War. Cambridge University Press. Search this book on
- ↑ Person, Robert; McFaul, Michael (2022). "What Putin Fears Most". Journal of Democracy. 33 (2): 18–27. doi:10.1353/jod.2022.0015.
- ↑ Driedger, Jonas J. (2023). "Risk acceptance and offensive war: The case of Russia under the Putin regime". Contemporary Security Policy. 44 (2): 199–225. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2164974.
- ↑ Egorov, Georgy; Sonin, Konstantin (2026). "Why did Putin invade Ukraine? A theory of degenerate autocracy". American Journal of Political Science. doi:10.1111/ajps.70039.
- ↑ Driedger, Jonas J. (2023). "Risk acceptance and offensive war: The case of Russia under the Putin regime". Contemporary Security Policy. 44 (2): 199–225. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2164974.
- ↑ Dörfler, Thomas (2025). "Prospect Theory, Groupthink, and Amplified Frames of Loss: Making Sense of Russia's Decision to Invade Ukraine". Foreign Policy Analysis. 21 (3). doi:10.1093/fpa/oraf018.
|article=ignored (help) - ↑ Driedger, Jonas J. (2023). "Risk acceptance and offensive war: The case of Russia under the Putin regime". Contemporary Security Policy. 44 (2): 199–225. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2164974.
- ↑ "Putin's Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine". International Security. 49 (3): 7–49. 2025. doi:10.1162/isec_a_00501.
- ↑ Driedger, Jonas J. (2023). "Risk acceptance and offensive war: The case of Russia under the Putin regime". Contemporary Security Policy. 44 (2): 199–225. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2164974.
- ↑ Mearsheimer, John J. (2014). "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin". Foreign Affairs. 93 (5): 77–89.
- ↑ John J. Mearsheimer (25 September 2015). Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer (YouTube video). University of Chicago.
- ↑ Walt, Stephen M. (19 January 2022). "Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis". Foreign Policy. Missing or empty
|url=(help) - ↑ Driedger, Jonas J.; Polianskii, Mikhail (2023). "Utility-based predictions of military escalation: Why experts forecasted Russia would not invade Ukraine". Contemporary Security Policy. 44 (4): 544–560. doi:10.1080/13523260.2023.2259153.
- ↑ Zabrodskyi, Mykhaylo; Watling, Jack; Danylyuk, Oleksandr V.; Reynolds, Nick (30 November 2022). "Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ "Address by the President of the Russian Federation". President of Russia. 24 February 2022.
- ↑ Zabrodskyi, Mykhaylo; Watling, Jack; Danylyuk, Oleksandr V.; Reynolds, Nick (30 November 2022). "Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022". Royal United Services Institute. Missing or empty
|url=(help) - ↑ Danylyuk, Oleksandr V. (21 October 2022). "Russian Total War in Ukraine: Challenges and Opportunities". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ Jones, Seth G.; McCabe, Riley; Palmer, Alexander (27 February 2023). "Ukrainian Innovation in a War of Attrition". Center for Strategic and International Studies.
- ↑ Filatyev, Pavel (2023). ZOV: Inside Putin's Corrupt War on Ukraine—A Dissident Soldier's Story. Translated by Anna Aslanyan. Profile Books. ISBN 9781800817906. Search this book on
- ↑ Roza, David (30 May 2023). "Russian-Speaking Airmen Translate Rare Account of Ukraine War Through Invader's Eyes". Air & Space Forces Magazine.
- ↑ "'Everybody is tired. The mood has changed': the Ukrainian army's desertion crisis". The Guardian. 31 January 2025.
- ↑ "Another massive Russian air strike on Kyiv. Day 1287 of the war". Centre for Eastern Studies. 2 September 2025.
- ↑ Key findings in facilitation of illegal border crossing and draft evasion (PDF) (Report). United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 2025.
- ↑ "Country policy and information note: military service, Ukraine". UK Home Office. September 2025.
- ↑ "Army at a crossroads: the mobilisation and organisational crisis of the Defence Forces of Ukraine". Centre for Eastern Studies. 14 March 2025.
- ↑ "EU countries agree to extend temporary protection for those fleeing Ukraine until March 2028". Council of the European Union. 15 July 2026.
- ↑ UNHCR Monthly Digest: Russian Federation, March 2025 (PDF) (Report). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. March 2025.
- ↑ "Surviving Azovstal: Ukrainian soldiers recall Mariupol siege three years on". Euronews. 21 May 2025.
- ↑ Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine (Report). United Nations Human Rights Council. 2025.
- ↑ "Mapping Ukraine's Military Advances". Center for Strategic and International Studies. 22 September 2022.
- ↑ Massicot, Dara (2026). "Ukrainian Counter-Offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson June–November 2022". Russia's War in Ukraine and Modern Warfare: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology. Oxford University Press. pp. 266–282. doi:10.1093/9780198970903.003.0016. Search this book on
- ↑ Bronk, Justin (4 August 2025). "NATO Should Not Replace Traditional Firepower with 'Drones'". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ Kunertova, Dominika (2023). "The war in Ukraine shows the game-changing effect of drones depends on the game". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 79 (2): 95–102. doi:10.1080/00963402.2023.2178180.
- ↑ Watling, Jack (23 October 2025). "Emergent Approaches to Combined Arms Manoeuvre in Ukraine". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ "Russian energy facilities targeted by Ukraine's drones". Reuters. 19 March 2025.
- ↑ "Fire destroys drone-hit Wildberries warehouse in Russia's Tambov region, governor says". Reuters. 26 August 2026.
- ↑ Sutton, H. I. (February 2024). "Ukraine's Maritime Drones Have Transformed Naval Warfare". Proceedings. U.S. Naval Institute.
- ↑ Bronk, Justin (4 August 2025). "NATO Should Not Replace Traditional Firepower with 'Drones'". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ 116.0 116.1 Krusch, M. W. (2024). "Repress, coopt, persuade? Russia's counterinsurgency warfare from Kabul to Kyiv". Small Wars & Insurgencies. 35 (6): 949–983. doi:10.1080/09592318.2024.2351628.
- ↑ Cunningham, David E. (2010). "Blocking resolution: How external states can prolong civil wars". Journal of Peace Research. 47 (2): 115–127. doi:10.1177/0022343309353488.
- ↑ Pfaff, C. Anthony (2024). Proxy War Ethics: The Norms of Partnering in Great Power Competition. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-50458-7. Search this book on
- ↑ Antezza, Arianna; Bomprezzi, Pietro; Bushnell, Katelyn; Frank, André; Frank, Pascal; Franz, Lukas; Kharitonov, Ivan; Kumar, Bharath; Rebinskaya, Ekaterina; Schramm, Stefan; Trebesch, Christoph. The Ukraine Support Tracker: Which Countries Help Ukraine and How? (Report). Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
- ↑ "Ukraine Facility". European Commission.
- ↑ "Relations with Ukraine". NATO.
- ↑ Allison, Roy (2025). "Averting acute escalation in Russia's war against Ukraine". International Affairs. 101 (5): 1769–1791. doi:10.1093/ia/iiaf137.
- ↑ Mills, Claire (13 August 2026). "Military assistance to Ukraine: What has changed since January 2025?". House of Commons Library.
- ↑ Eslami, Mohammad (2022). "Iran's Drone Supply to Russia and Changing Dynamics of the Ukraine War". Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. doi:10.1080/25751654.2022.2149077.
- ↑ Zhao, Suisheng (2025). "Empowerment Versus Entrapment: Beijing's International Anti-Hegemonic United Front Strategy Amid Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". Journal of Contemporary China: 991–1007. doi:10.1080/10670564.2025.2464423.
- ↑ Kutlay, Mustafa; Öniş, Ziya (2024). "A Critical Juncture: Russia, Ukraine and the Global South". Survival. 66 (2). doi:10.1080/00396338.2024.2332055.
- ↑ Rabel, Roberto (2025). "Global South and western divergence on Russia's war in Ukraine: implications for world order". International Affairs. 101 (3): 1005–1021. doi:10.1093/ia/iiaf008.
- ↑ Verma, Raj (2024). "Multi-alignment and India's response to the Russia–Ukraine war". International Politics. doi:10.1057/s41311-023-00480-6.
- ↑ "The Russo-Ukrainian War and the Brazilian Perspective on the International Order". Politische Vierteljahresschrift. 2024. doi:10.1007/s11615-024-00552-z.
- ↑ Cheterian, Vicken (2023). "Friend and Foe: Russia–Turkey relations before and after the war in Ukraine". Small Wars & Insurgencies. doi:10.1080/09592318.2023.2185443.
- ↑ Schirm, Stefan A. (2023). "Alternative World Orders? Russia's Ukraine War and the Domestic Politics of the BRICS". The International Spectator. 58 (3). doi:10.1080/03932729.2023.2236937.
- ↑ Brosig, Malte; Verma, Raj (2024). "The war in Ukraine, the Global South and the evolving global order". Global Policy. 15 (4): 740–745. doi:10.1111/1758-5899.13366.
- ↑ Golovchenko, Yevgeniy; Hartmann, Marek; Adler-Nissen, Rebecca (2018). "State, media and civil society in the information warfare over Ukraine: citizen curators of digital disinformation". International Affairs. doi:10.1093/ia/iiy148.
- ↑ "Ukraine: Freedom on the Net 2017". Freedom House. 2017.
- ↑ "Ukraine: Freedom on the Net 2021". Freedom House. 2021.
- ↑ "In Ukraine, taking three pro-Russia channels off the air raises complex issues". Human Rights Watch. 11 February 2021.
- ↑ "Ukraine: Nations in Transit 2022". Freedom House. 2022.
- ↑ "2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Ukraine". U.S. Department of State. 2022.
- ↑ "2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Ukraine". U.S. Department of State. 2023.
- ↑ "Russia Criminalizes Independent War Reporting, Anti-War Protests". Human Rights Watch. 7 March 2022.
- ↑ "Russia: Freedom on the Net 2023". Freedom House. 2023.
- ↑ Oates, Sarah; Ramsay, Gordon Neil (2024). "Russian Strategic Narratives and the War in Ukraine: From Neo-Nazis to NATO". Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News. Oxford University Press. pp. 142–171. doi:10.1093/oso/9780197696422.003.0006. Search this book on
- ↑ Quelle, Dorian (2024). "Strategic Storytelling: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the Ukraine War". International Journal of Public Opinion Research. 36 (3). doi:10.1093/ijpor/edae028.
|article=ignored (help) - ↑ Appel, Hilary (2024). "Competing narratives of the Russia–Ukraine war: Why the West hasn't convinced the rest". Global Policy. doi:10.1111/1758-5899.13431.
- ↑ Kumar, Ashok; Thussu, Daya Kishan (2024). "Primetime narratives on Russia–Ukraine conflict on India's Republic TV". International Communication Gazette. doi:10.1177/17480485231220143.
- ↑ Ndlovu, Musawenkosi (2024). "The South African broadcasting corporation's coverage of the Russia–Ukraine war". International Communication Gazette. doi:10.1177/17480485231220148.
- ↑ "Fifty-five thousand Ukrainian soldiers killed on battlefield, Zelenskiy tells French TV". Reuters. 4 February 2026.
- ↑ "Russia's Grinding War in Ukraine". Center for Strategic and International Studies. 2026.
- ↑ "Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict — July 2026". UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. 12 August 2026.
- ↑ Ukraine - Fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5): February 2022 - December 2025 (Report). World Bank; Government of Ukraine; European Commission; United Nations. 28 February 2026.
- ↑ Jones, Seth G.; McCabe, Riley (1 July 2026). "Russian Blood and Treasure: The Ballooning Costs of Putin's War". Center for Strategic and International Studies.
- ↑ "Ukraine: Torture by Russian authorities amounts to crimes against humanity, says UN Commission of Inquiry". United Nations in Ukraine. 30 October 2024. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ "War crimes, indiscriminate attacks on infrastructure, systematic and widespread torture show disregard for civilians, says UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine". United Nations in Ukraine. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ "Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, 1 December 2024 – 31 May 2025". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 30 June 2025. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ "Briefing by Head of Mission on the treatment of prisoners of war and human rights situation in Ukraine". UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. 1 October 2024. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ "Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, 1 December 2024 – 31 May 2025". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 30 June 2025. Retrieved 30 August 2026.
- ↑ Fearon, James D. (1995). "Rationalist Explanations for War". International Organization. 49 (3): 379–414. doi:10.1017/S0020818300033324.
- ↑ D'Anieri, Paul (2025). "Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me: Security Guarantees, Commitment Problems and the Problem of Peace through Victory in Ukraine". International Negotiation. 30 (1): 72–96. doi:10.1163/15718069-bja10117.
- ↑ Ukraine - Fifth Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5): February 2022 - December 2025 (Report). World Bank; Government of Ukraine; European Commission; United Nations. 28 February 2026.
- ↑ "Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict — July 2026". UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. 12 August 2026.
- ↑ Ludvik, Jan (2026). "Victory or frozen conflict? Assessing the feasibility of Ukraine's victory-oriented strategy to conflict termination". European Journal of International Security. doi:10.1017/eis.2026.10041.
- ↑ Charap, Samuel; Radchenko, Sergey (16 April 2024). "The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine". Foreign Affairs.
- ↑ Katchanovski, Ivan (2026). "The Russia-Ukraine War or Peace?". The Russia-Ukraine War and its Origins: From the Maidan to the Ukraine War. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 277–307. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-98724-3_12. Search this book on
- ↑ "Head of Ukraine's leading party claims Russia proposed 'peace' in exchange for neutrality". Ukrainska Pravda. 24 November 2023.
- ↑ "Boris Johnson casts doubt on possibility of negotiated peace in Ukraine". The Guardian. 20 April 2022.
- ↑ Ryan, Missy; Timsit, Annabelle (25 April 2022). "U.S. wants Russian military 'weakened' from Ukraine war, Lloyd Austin says". The Washington Post.
- ↑ Cunningham, David E. (2010). "Blocking resolution: How external states can prolong civil wars". Journal of Peace Research. 47 (2): 115–127. doi:10.1177/0022343309353488.
- ↑ Salehyan, Idean; Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede; Cunningham, David E. (2011). "Explaining External Support for Insurgent Groups". International Organization. 65 (4): 709–744. doi:10.1017/S0020818311000233.
- ↑ Pfaff, C. Anthony (2024). Proxy War Ethics: The Norms of Partnering in Great Power Competition. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-50458-7. Search this book on
- ↑ Nychyk, Alina; D'Anieri, Paul (2026). "Ukrainian public opinion and the path to peace with Russia". East European Politics. 42 (1): 40–62. doi:10.1080/21599165.2025.2538481.
- ↑ Vigers, Benedict (7 August 2025). "Ukrainian Support for War Effort Collapses". Gallup.
- ↑ Dill, Janina; Howlett, Marnie; Müller-Crepon, Carl (2026). "Do Ukrainians still prefer self-defense against Russia at any cost?". Journal of Peace Research. 63 (2): 269–278. doi:10.1093/jopres/xjaf019.
- ↑ Kizilova, Kseniya; Norris, Pippa (2024). ""Rally around the flag" effects in the Russian–Ukrainian war". European Political Science. 23 (2): 234–250.
- ↑ "Dynamics of trust in President V. Zelenskyy: results of a survey conducted on April 20-27, 2026". Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. 4 May 2026.
- ↑ "Trust in President V. Zelenskyy and other public figures: results of a survey conducted on May 7-June 3, 2026". Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. 2026.
- ↑ "Putin says legitimacy of Ukraine's Zelenskiy is over". Reuters. 24 May 2024.
- ↑ "Constitution of Ukraine". Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
- ↑ "President. The war. Legitimacy". Centre of Policy and Legal Reform. 2024.
- ↑ "Democracy in Ukraine". Chatham House. 23 November 2023.
- ↑ 180.0 180.1 180.2 Rostoks, Toms (2023). "Russia's Strategy of Outsuffering and the War in Ukraine". Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies. 16 (2): 48–72. doi:10.22215/cjers.v16i2.4130.
- ↑ Gioe, David V.; Manganello, Tony (2024). "A Tale of Two Clocks: A Framework for Assessing Time Pressure and Advantage in the Russo-Ukrainian War". Armed Forces & Society. doi:10.1177/0095327X221145690.
- ↑ Hamel, Tewfik (28 August 2026). "Russia's Attritional Theory of Victory in Ukraine". US Army War College Press.
- ↑ Gorbuntsova, Alena; Khanna, Gaurav; Mehmood, Sultan (April 2026). The Domestic Political Economy of War: Evidence from Russia (Report). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w35107.
- ↑ Connolly, Richard (28 January 2026). "Why Economic Pain Won't Stop Russia's War". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ Watling, Jack (23 February 2026). "Russia's Aggression in Ukraine Will Persist Through 2026". Royal United Services Institute.
- ↑ D'Anieri, Paul (2025). "Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me: Security Guarantees, Commitment Problems and the Problem of Peace through Victory in Ukraine". International Negotiation. 30 (1): 72–96. doi:10.1163/15718069-bja10117.
- ↑ John J. Mearsheimer; Jeffrey Sachs (16 September 2024). John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs (All-In Summit 2024).
- ↑ Zhao, Suisheng (2025). "Empowerment Versus Entrapment: Beijing's International Anti-Hegemonic United Front Strategy Amid Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". Journal of Contemporary China: 991–1007. doi:10.1080/10670564.2025.2464423.
- ↑ Wishnick, Elizabeth (2025). "The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the Sino-Russian Partnership". Not Just Another Cold War: The Global Implications of the US-China Rivalry. Oxford University Press. pp. 193–218. doi:10.1093/9780197799932.003.0015. Search this book on
- ↑ "John Mearsheimer: Ukraine war is a long-term danger". Other News. 22 August 2023.
- ↑ Mearsheimer, John J. (17 August 2022). "Playing With Fire in Ukraine: The Underappreciated Risks of Catastrophic Escalation". Foreign Affairs.
- ↑ Craig, Campbell (2025). "The normative problem of nuclear war in the thought of Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer". International Relations. doi:10.1177/00471178251334947.
- ↑ Bruusgaard, Kristin Ven (2026). "Losing without using: Russian conventional defeat in Ukraine and nuclear weapons". Defense & Security Analysis. doi:10.1080/14751798.2026.2635158.
- ↑ "Atomic Diplomacy". Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.
- ↑ Yoshida, Fumihiko; Yamaguchi, Hibiki; Compel, Radomir (15 September 2019). "What role did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Soviet entry into the war play in Japan's decision to surrender in the Pacific War? Conversations with Tsuyoshi Hasegawa". The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
- ↑ Kivimäki, Timo A. (2026). "Saving lives by killing: the premises of the argument of the meritorious bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki". Frontiers in Political Science. 8. doi:10.3389/fpos.2026.1734037.
- ↑ Tannenwald, Nina; Holloway, David (14 October 2022). "The precedent the world—and Russia—has rejected". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
- ↑ Buckley, Roger (1992). US-Japan Alliance Diplomacy 1945–1990. Cambridge University Press. Search this book on
- ↑ Otsuki, Tomoe (2015). "The Politics of Reconstruction and Reconciliation in U.S-Japan Relations—Dismantling the Atomic Bomb Ruins of Nagasaki's Urakami Cathedral". The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 13 (32).
- ↑ "Nuclear Zeitenwende? The consequences of Russia's invasion of Ukraine for nuclear policies around the world". The Nonproliferation Review. 2024. doi:10.1080/10736700.2024.2437290.
- ↑ "Telephonic conversation between Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh & Defence Minister of Russia Mr Sergei Shoigu". Government of India, Press Information Bureau. 26 October 2022.
- ↑ "Telephonic conversation between Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh & Defence Minister of Russia Mr Sergei Shoigu". Government of India, Press Information Bureau. 26 October 2022.
- ↑ "Press conference by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg following the meetings of NATO Defence Ministers". NATO. 13 October 2022.
- ↑ "Interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg". NATO. 18 October 2022.
- ↑ "Petraeus: US would destroy Russia's troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine". The Guardian. 2 October 2022.
- ↑ Sweijs, Tim; Bertolini, Mattia (2 May 2022). How Wars End: War terminations — insights for the Russia-Ukraine War (Report). The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
- ↑ Charap, Samuel; Radchenko, Sergey (16 April 2024). "The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine". Foreign Affairs.
- ↑ D'Anieri, Paul (2025). "Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me: Security Guarantees, Commitment Problems and the Problem of Peace through Victory in Ukraine". International Negotiation. 30 (1): 72–96. doi:10.1163/15718069-bja10117.
- ↑ Nychyk, Alina; D'Anieri, Paul (2026). "Ukrainian public opinion and the path to peace with Russia". East European Politics. 42 (1): 40–62. doi:10.1080/21599165.2025.2538481.
- ↑ Bethke, Felix; Bunde, Tobias; Driedger, Jonas J.; Peez, Anton (2025). Preferences for Peace between Ukraine and Russia: Experimental Evidence from Transatlantic Elites (Report). doi:10.31219/osf.io/zpm8r_v2.
- ↑ Sweijs, Tim; Bertolini, Mattia (2 May 2022). How Wars End: War terminations — insights for the Russia-Ukraine War (Report). The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
- ↑ Lough, John (16 October 2024). Four scenarios for the end of the war in Ukraine (Report). Chatham House.
- ↑ Ludvik, Jan (2026). "Victory or frozen conflict? Assessing the feasibility of Ukraine's victory-oriented strategy to conflict termination". European Journal of International Security. doi:10.1017/eis.2026.10041.
- ↑ Finel, Bernard (2025). War termination in the Russia-Ukraine War: assessing coercion dynamics and military effectiveness (Report). Finnish National Defence University.
- ↑ Mearsheimer, John J. (17 August 2022). "Playing With Fire in Ukraine: The Underappreciated Risks of Catastrophic Escalation". Foreign Affairs.
- ↑ Zartman, I. William (2000). "Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond". International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War. National Academies Press. pp. 225–250. Search this book on
- ↑ Walt, Stephen M. (29 March 2022). "The Realist Case for a Ukraine Peace Deal". Foreign Policy.
- ↑ Cunningham, David E. (2010). "Blocking resolution: How external states can prolong civil wars". Journal of Peace Research. 47 (2): 115–127. doi:10.1177/0022343309353488.
- ↑ Pfaff, C. Anthony (2024). Proxy War Ethics: The Norms of Partnering in Great Power Competition. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-50458-7. Search this book on
- ↑ Lough, John (16 October 2024). Four scenarios for the end of the war in Ukraine (Report). Chatham House.
- ↑ Jensen, Benjamin; Macias, Jose M. III (8 November 2024). "Peace, Ceasefire, or Stalemate? How Wars End and the Road Ahead for Ukraine". Center for Strategic and International Studies.
.png){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}