Russia’s War on Ukraine Will Walk the Korean Route

Despite a peace conference, some Ukrainian success on the battlefield and at sea, and the Wagner Group’s short-lived uprising against Moscow, the Ukraine war is nowhere close to being settled. As we have written in our reports for clients ever since the outbreak of the conflict, we expect the war will culminate in a frozen conflict, with an agreement between the warring parties — such as the one signed between North and South Korea in 1953 — being the best-case scenario for now. Seoul and Pyongyang are still officially at war, and the armistice signed at the time left almost all political issues unresolved, but the weapons have (largely) remained silent for seven decades.

The attitude of the West will contribute significantly to this most likely scenario, with Europe and the U.S. supplying enough weapons to sustain Kyiv, enabling it to be a good match for Moscow, albeit too little and too late to give Ukraine a realistic shot at victory. Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to President Biden, actually admitted in so many words in June 2022 that Washington is not really aiming for a resounding victory for Kyiv: “We have in fact refrained from laying out what we see as an endgame.”

At this point, neither side has the capabilities to defeat the other party, and this will not happen in any event for the time being. But a settlement is also highly unlikely. The two sides remain threats to each other due to their proximity. There is no progress whatsoever in terms of a compromise over the territorial claims of both sides. Putin cannot afford to make concessions, and the crimes committed by Russians in Ukraine are almost certainly too fresh and far-reaching for Zelenskyy to compromise. If the armed struggle comes to an end at all, it will most likely be without a solution to the territorial dispute.

Frozen fight

Historical data also point to a protracted conflict.

Wars between countries in the period 1946-2001 ended within a month in 26% of cases and within a year in 25% of the conflicts. However, if the battle lasted longer than a year, the war spanned more than a decade, on average.

And such wars do not usually fizzle out; negotiations are inevitable if the warring parties are to lay down arms. Incidentally, during negotiations — which will take a great deal of time — a lot of gunpowder will, literally, still be fired. The talks that led to the Korean Armistice Agreement dragged on for two years and 158 meetings. Much of the fiercest fighting in the war took place during that time, with the U.S. losing 40% of the soldiers it would end up mourning during the five-year war.

Fixed Vlad

Of course, Putin's disappearance from the scene could offer a way out. However, the likelihood of this happening in the short term seems slim – despite the Wagner rebellion – and even if he were to leave, it would very much remain to be seen if Russia would steer a more peaceful course.

Authoritarian leaders rarely lose power during a war initiated by them. Moreover, the regimes of authoritarian leaders who have long been in power will generally survive when the leader exits. After the Cold War, for example, almost 90% of authoritarian regimes survived following the death of long-serving dictators. Moreover, whenever a regime collapsed along with its leader, a new authoritarian regime would invariably emerge from the chaos. And if we focus not only on cases in which the leader died but on all the instances when a long-ruling dictator left, an authoritarian regime continued to hold sway in 76% of cases following the Cold War.

There are more data that confirm that, first of all, we should not count too much on a quick exit by Putin and, secondly, that, if Putin leaves, the likelihood of a far more benevolent Moscow is not very high. After the Cold War, more than a half-dozen authoritarian leaders who had been in the saddle for at least 20 years lost power due to mass protests; three times, this resulted in democratic elections within two years (of which, incidentally, one was in Tunisia, and this country is once again in the hands of a man with quite a few dictatorial traits). And not once did a country make the transition to democracy if such a long-term ruler died in harness or if they were overthrown through a coup or civil war.

In short, it is safe to assume for now that Putin is not going anywhere, that Ukraine's offensive will yield only moderate success at best, and that the conflict will continue to drag on the next few quarters to years.

Andy Langenkamp is senior political analyst at ECR Research and ICC Consultants