🧵 Why is it so important to properly understand the nature of this war and the definition of victory?
Trump sees the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a war over territory. Russia occupies the entire Luhansk region and about 80–85% of the Donetsk region, which leads him to conclude that Ukraine has already lost the war and is only unnecessarily prolonging its inevitable end
Trump cannot (or does not want to) understand that this is not a war over territory but over Ukrainian statehood. Russia seeks to subordinate Ukraine, and so far this war has been a strategic failure for Moscow. Hence, there is no reason to believe that Russia is winning
Faulty assumptions about the nature of this war inevitably lead to faulty definitions of victory, which then end up completely misaligned with the realities of the war on the battlefield. Trump is consistent in pressing Ukraine, but Ukraine has no reason whatsoever to capitulate
No politician wants to invest their political capital in a lost cause. Trump is mistaken in believing that Ukraine is a lost cause, but that is what he believes, and so far no one has convinced him to adopt any definition of victory in Ukraine other than the "territorial" one
From the mistaken assumption that this is a territorial war follow the logic of American negotiators, whose objective is effectively to compensate both sides for a territorial compromise. The US wants to pay Ukraine off (in various forms) for ceding a piece of land to Russia
The Trump administration applies the same logic to Russia - various prospects of economic cooperation are meant to pay Russia off for agreeing to abandon its pursuit of occupying the entire Donetsk region
This approach has been doomed to fail from the very beginning, yet the US continues down this path. That is also why Trump regularly blames Zelensky rather than Putin - because, according to this flawed logic, the outcome of the war has already been decided in Russia's favor
That is why it is so important for Europe to develop its own definition of victory in Ukraine - so that European politicians do not grope in the dark like the US and understand that supporting Ukraine is an investment in a cause that very much still has prospects for success
For a definition of Ukraine's victory, I refer readers to my own @PISM_Poland report:
[END] pism.pl/publications/d…
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