1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Program
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 26
Frederick W. Kagan
March 26, 4:30 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.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain maps that ISW
produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map
archive monthly.
ISW is publishing an abbreviated campaign update today, March 26. This report
discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued efforts to seek complete victory
in Ukraine, which he appears confident that he can attain over time. Putin seems to reject
the idea increasingly prevalent in Western discourse that the current military realities
require or support a negotiated resolution of the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor the West
has persuaded him that he must consider accepting any sort of off-ramp or compromise
settlement. Putin instead remains focused on achieving his initial war aims through
protracted conflict in which he wins either by imposing his will on Ukraine by force or
by breaking Ukraine’s will following the West’s abandonment of Kyiv. Multiple
successful Ukrainian counter-offensives are almost certainly necessary but not sufficient
either to persuade Putin to negotiate on acceptable terms or to create military conditions
on the ground favorable enough to Ukraine and the West that continued or renewed
Russian attacks pose acceptable threats to Ukraine or NATO.
The outcomes of wars often are, in fact, determined on the battlefield with negotiations
that merely ratify military realities. Putin likely has one such example vividly in his
mind—World War II in Europe. That war ended only when Allied forces had completely defeated
the German military and Soviet troops stood in the wreckage of Berlin. Japan surrendered a few months
later after the US had demonstrated what appeared to be the ability to destroy the country completely—
and only after the Japanese military had lost the ability to do more than impose casualties on the US in
the process of losing. Going further back in history the peaces that ended the three Wars of German
Unification, the American Civil War, and the Napoleonic Wars also merely ratified realities created by
decisive military victories. Even the most recently ended war adhered to this pattern. The US
withdrawal from Afghanistan was followed by a decisive Taliban military victory that has ended that
conflict (for now) without any formal treaty or accord ratifying this outcome. History offers many
counter-examples, to be sure, including the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian conflict and the
resolution of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. But it is simply not the case that all wars end in negotiated
settlements, particularly if by “negotiated settlements” is meant mutual recognition of the impossibility
of achieving desired aims through military force.
Putin initiated the current war and is the key actor who must decide that he cannot
achieve his aims by military power and must instead engage in a negotiated resolution of
the conflict if the war is to end in this fashion. The war will protract as long as Putin believes
that he can impose his will on Ukraine by fighting or by breaking the Ukrainians’ will to fight following
their abandonment by the West.
Putin continues to make clear by word and deed that he has come to no such conclusion
yet despite the failures of his major military efforts this winter. His efforts to freeze Ukraine
and Europe into surrendering over the winter came to nothing, and the Russian winter-spring
offensives that were supposed to secure the borders of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts are
