Point of No Return

Strategic Vision vol. 11, no. 54 (October, 2022) Point of No Return

Seeking to define Putin’s ‘point of no return’ in Russia’s war against Ukraine

Dmytro Burtsev

When Russian forces attacked the independent nation of Ukraine in February, many expected the war to be over in a matter of days.

photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has raised many questions, from the implications it will have on the international system to the basic reasoning and motivation of the regular Russian troops who crossed the Ukrainian border, to the perceptions of the conflict among Russian citizens, the latter of whom appear to support their government’s act of aggression.

The general political motivation is obvious and can perhaps best be described as an act of international revenge-seeking by post-Soviet elites. These elites appear to be pushing back against changes in the social and international order that began to emerge during the first decade of the Russian Federation, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Initial attempts to change the operation of the political system and regime in Moscow by adopting, and adapting to, liberal values ended in failure. Attempts at a decentralization of power collapsed under the pressure of a corrupt political regime, which reverted to old methods of controlling the masses using brute force exerted by security, defense, and law enforcement agencies, shored up by propaganda disseminated by a compliant media and an ideology of dominance based on the purity of the Russian culture.

The Russian Federation became the primary successor state after the collapse of the Soviet Union in a succession that included the transfer of financial, political, military, and nuclear assets. On the latter issue, Russia inherited the lion’s share of the USSR’s stockpile of nuclear warheads, with an estimated 35,000 nuclear weapons remaining in locations across the vast former empire. Of the fifteen successor states to the Soviet Union, fourteen are nuclear free today.

An anti-terrorist operation being conducted in eastern Ukraine. The Russian invasion is a continuation of the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 can therefore be seen not as something new, but rather as a continuation of the hybrid invasion which started in 2014 that resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea and apparent Russian support for separatists in Donbas. For this reason, an analysis of the current state of hostilities cannot be divorced from the events of 2014.

Indeed, the roots of Moscow’s current revanchist mindset go back farther than that, and can perhaps first be perceived in the speech given by President Vladimir Putin in Munich in February 2007, in which the Russian leader expressed his distrust of the American-dominated unipolarity that defined global geopolitics in the postCold War era. Even then, Putin identified NATO expansion as a potential red line for Moscow, but Western leaders evidently chose to ignore these warning signs. Likewise during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, when Russian forces supported separatist militias in the selfproclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia against the Georgian military. The West, failing to appreciate the perceived importance Moscow has historically placed on Transcaucasia to serve as a buffer zone between Russia and the Middle East, failed to impose any costs on Russia’s aggressive behavior, offering only tepid verbal admonitions.

In 2014, Putin essentially followed the same playbook he used in Georgia, only this time it was directed against Ukraine and resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea. Finally, the world seemed to be developing a hunch that maybe something was going wrong in relations with Russia. Unfortunately, it took a full-scale invasion for the world to finally understand that Russia was not a silent challenger who uses the rules of the system to circumvent international regulations, but a hostile force with disdain for the polite rules of international diplomacy in the civilized world.

Russian diplomacy is intelligent and strong, and if Ukraine had fallen during the first weeks of the invasion, who knows what Putin might have been motivated to follow it up with. The ostensible reasons for the invasion—denazification and demilitarization—would no doubt have included a campaign of repression among Ukrainian citizens of all social groups and the absolute destruction of everything that can be called Ukrainian.

National unity

At the time of writing, Ukraine is still fighting, but this is only thanks to the strong sense of national unity, and of course to foreign aid. This fact makes Russian leaders even angrier: how dare the Ukrainian nation keep fighting for its survival in the face of the regional hegemon, and the only force for spiritual purity and traditional values that has as its mission to stand against Western decadence? This question does not need an answer, because the Russian Federation positions itself as the last fortress in the fight against a corrupted Western civilization, with the goal of defending true humanitarian values. For proof of this fanatical zeal, one need look no further than the recent comments by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now serving as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, who likened Moscow’s fight in Ukraine to a sacred battle against Satan, warning that Russia could send “all our enemies to fiery Gehenna.”

Moscow’s goal, according to media reports quoting Medvedev, is to “stop the supreme ruler of hell, whatever name he uses—Satan, Lucifer or Iblis.” Moreover, the Westerners, who are sending aid to the “crazy Nazi drug addicts” defending Ukraine, were reprobates with “saliva running down their chins from degeneracy.” In such an existential—indeed apocalyptic—struggle, all means to achieve victory are acceptable. Ukraine, in shifting closer toward a Western orbit, was positioning itself as a threat to the very existence of Russia and the Russian worldview.

The modern, multipolar international order has been destroyed; it was executed in Ukraine. The main question that remains is: has Russia already passed the point of no return on the road to the deployment of nukes as a final argument? Putin gave a speech on September 21, 2022, in which he proclaimed that he would mobilize his troops. That speech contained another detail of importance; the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used.

Ukrainian strikes on targets in Russian-occupied Crimea have revealed Moscow’s weak grip on the peninsula.

photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

Ukrainian forces have called on the West to provide more heavy armor to help retake and hold new territory gained in counter offensives.

photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

The only acceptable option for Russia is the unconditional surrender of Ukraine. No other options are acceptable but the submission to Russia of total control over Ukraine. Otherwise, the Russian Federation will not be able to prove its superiority. Given his total control over the Russian regime, Putin alone will make the final decision of whether to use nukes, just as he was the final arbiter of every aspect of the invasion of Ukraine. The military high command, politicians, and Kremlin officials understand that most of the world will be hostile to Russia for several generations. Given such an understanding, what would be the point of no return for such people?

Unconventional expansion

In that case, Russian nuclear blackmail in Ukraine will only serve to enrich its aims. If successful, the nuclear-weapons gambit will become yet another weapon in the arsenal for unconventional expansion and threatening other international actors. If Ukrainian forces continue to liberate occupied territories such as Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which hosted an illegal referendum on whether to join the Russian Federation, it could lead to even more terrible events—precisely the events that the world escaped when cooler heads prevailed and the promise of mutual assured destruction made a nuclear exchange unthinkable during the Cold War.

Another critical argument which sounds regularly from Russian authorities is the possibility of the construction and usage of a dirty bomb by the Ukrainian side. This argument sounds fantastical, as the use of any such weapon by Ukraine would have a catastrophic effect. Clearly this is propaganda being deployed by Moscow in an attempt to forestall Western support for Kiev, and is a false-flag that is about as believable as Russia’s ostensible justification for its initial attack: that of denazifying the country. Were the allegations true, it would swiftly bring an end to the provision of weapons and tech from Ukraine’s Western partners. More than this, Ukraine would forever be marked as a violator of numerous nuclear non-proliferation treaties and would become an international pariah, destroying any remaining hopes of winning the war—to say nothing of having dramatic consequences for Ukrainian statehood.

Russian national security doctrine says that nuclear weapons can be used in case of the “existence of a threat to the Russian Federation.” However, Ukraine and major international actors do not recognize Crimea and other occupied regions as the legal territory of the Russian Federation. Moreover, speaking ideologically, the very existence of an independent Ukraine is a threat to Russia.

The situation appears even more urgent because of the claims of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who claimed that Great Britain is ready to respond to the use of nuclear weapons without any coordination with other NATO member states, in the event of usage of weapons of mass destruction by the Russian Federation in Ukraine. This leads only to the further development of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the growing risk that it will conflagrate into a global conflict—a possibility that has heretofore been evaluated as low, yet ever-present.

Russian control of Ukrainian nuclear facilities in the territories occupied by Russian forces is another problematic factor, especially as regards the issue of nuclear security. Another related problem is that the area around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern part of the country is being used as an artillery firing position and a storage site for heavy munitions. This fact raises the possibility of a nuclear incident that would have much more dire consequences than Chernobyl.

Now the issue is at another point. Do the Russian president and military high command still consider weapons of mass destruction—of any scope, tactical or strategic—as a last-ditch effort to forestall a total Russian defeat in the Ukrainian campaign? After the demonstration of American strategic bombers in Poland, and the placement of the US Army’s elite 101st Airborne Division in Romania, just miles from the Ukrainian border, it is obvious that Western countries are preparing for a devastating conventional response to an upsurge in Russian hostility, such as the use of Russian nukes in Ukraine, or an incident at a nuclear power plant occupied by Russian forces. Given the state of affairs as discussed herein, and the fact that the war in Ukraine shows no signs of coming to an end in the immediate near-term, it seems as if Russia has indeed crossed the point of no return.

An anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine being conducted by Ukrainian armed forces personnel.

photo: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

Dr. Dmytro Burtsev is a visiting scholar from Ukraine currently attached to the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica. He can be reached for comment at: dmytro_burtsev@yahoo.com