Institute for the Study of War &
The Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 9
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson,
Yekaterina Klepanchuk, and Frederick W. Kagan
December 9, 6:45 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to discuss negotiations with Ukraine as a
means of separating Ukraine from its Western supporters by portraying Kyiv as
unwilling to compromise or even to engage in serious talks. During a news conference at the
Eurasian Economic Union summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on December 9, Putin clarified his
December 7 statements wherein he suggested that Russia was preparing for a “lengthy” war and stated
that he meant the settlement process would be protracted.
Putin emphasized that the settlement
process will be challenging and take time, and that all participants will need to agree with realities on
the ground in Ukraine (by which he presumably means recognizing Russian control of any territories it
has annexed), but that at the end of the day, Russia is open to negotiations.
Putin also criticized
statements made by former German chancellor Angela Merkel that the 2014 Minsk Agreements were
an attempt to “buy time for Ukraine” and accused Merkel and the West of propagating distrust in
negotiating future settlements.
Putin remarked that based on this understanding of the Minsk
Agreements, perhaps Russia should have begun military operations earlier.
Despite the constant
employment of adversarial rhetoric regarding the settlement process, Putin continued to claim that
Russia remains open to the possibility of negotiations.
Putin has consistently weaponized invocations of the negotiation process to isolate Ukraine from
partner support by framing Ukraine as refusing concessions and likely seeks to use any ceasefire and
negotiation window to allow Russian troops time to reconstitute and relaunch operations, thus
depriving Ukraine of the initiative. A ceasefire agreement that occurs soon enough to allow Russian
forces to rest and refit this winter is extremely unlikely, however. Negotiating a protracted, theater-
wide ceasefire takes time. Russia and Ukraine are extremely far apart on the terms of any such
agreement, and it is almost impossible to imagine a ceasefire being agreed to, let alone implemented,
for some months, which would deprive Russia of the opportunity to pause Ukrainian winter counter-
offensives and reset before spring.
Putin may be overly optimistic about the prospects for a more immediate cessation of hostilities, but
that is also unlikely given his rhetoric as well as statements by Ukrainian leaders and the West, of which
he is well aware. It is more likely that Putin is fanning discussions of a ceasefire primarily as part of an
information operation designed to expand cleavages between Ukraine and its backers by portraying
Kyiv as unwilling to talk. Putin is likely secondarily setting conditions for actual negotiations sometime
in 2023, presumably after Russian forces have secured more of the territory he claims to have annexed.
Putin’s positioning in the Russian information space continues to oscillate between
supporting the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and backing the nationalist and pro-
war milblogger community. Putin stated that the Russian MoD “behaves transparently” and
properly reflects the “stable” progress of the “special military operation” in its daily reports.
Putin,
however, then proceeded to undermine the Russian MoD when responding to a question about
persistent problems with supplying the army and mobilization, noting that the Russian MoD informed
