Some three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the
fate of that beleaguered country remains in the balance. It is dicult to over-
state the pivotal consequences that the outcome of the largest armed conict
in Europe since the Second World War will have. The physical future, politi-
cal freedom and economic well-being of Ukraine’s population is at stake,
as is the existence, sovereignty and integrity of the Ukrainian state.
1
At the
European level, the outcome will either blunt or sharpen Russia’s pursuit of
its broader aim to reverse the strategic eects of the break-up of the Soviet
Union in 1991 and to recreate a laer-day Russian empire by limiting the
sovereignty of the states lying east of the Oder–Neisse line. This was the
clear objective in the draft treaties that Russia proered to the United States
and NATO in December 2021, in the run-up to the February 2022 invasion.
2
A Russian victory against Ukraine would entail massive increases in the
burden borne by NATO’s current members to preclude the fullment of the
objectives laid out in those treaties. Notwithstanding the costs of the war,
Russia’s armed forces are larger than they were at its onset, and bale-tested
in a way that NATO’s armies are not.
At the global level, a territorially diminished Ukraine would likely put
an end to successful post-Second World War eorts to counter the unilateral
War or Peace in Ukraine: US
Moves and European Choices
François Heisbourg
François Heisbourg is IISS Senior Adviser for Europe.
Survival | vol. 67 no. 1 | February–March 2025 | pp. 7–22 https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2025.2459009
