By Nataliya Bugayova, Frederick W. Kagan, with Kateryna Stepanenko 

March 27, 2024

Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West – and will likely lose – if the West mobilizes its resources to resist the Kremlin. The West’s existing and latent capability dwarfs that of Russia. The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of NATO countries, non-NATO European Union states, and our Asian allies is over $63 trillion. The Russian GDP is on the close order of $1.9 trillion. Iran and North Korea add little in terms of materiel support. China is enabling Russia, but it is not mobilized on behalf of Russia and is unlikely to do so. If we lean in and surge, Russia loses.

The notion that the war is unwinnable because of Russia’s dominance is a Russian information operation, which gives us a glimpse of the Kremlin’s real strategy and only real hope of success. The Kremlin must get the United States to the sidelines, allowing Russia to fight Ukraine in isolation and then proceed to Moscow’s next targets, which Russia will also seek to isolate. The Kremlin needs the United States to choose inaction and embrace the false inevitability that Russia will prevail in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s center of gravity is his ability to shape the will and decisions of the West, Ukraine, and Russia itself. The Russian strategy that matters most, therefore, is not Moscow’s warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as it wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.

Those whose perspective aligns with the Kremlin’s are not ipso facto Russian dupes. The Kremlin links genuine sentiment and even some legitimate arguments to Russia’s interests in public debate. The Kremlin is also an equal opportunity manipulator. It targets the full spectrum of those making or informing decisions. It partially succeeds on every side of the political spectrum. Perception manipulation is one of the Kremlin’s core capabilities — now unleashed with full force onto the Western public as the Kremlin’s only strategy for winning in Ukraine. That is not a challenge most societies are equipped to contend with.

The United States has the power to deny Russia its only strategy for success, nevertheless. The United States has allowed Russia to play an outsized role in shaping American decision-making, but the United States has also made many sound choices regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine. The key successes achieved by Ukraine and its partners in this war have resulted from strategic clarity. Lost opportunities on the battlefield, on the other hand, have resulted from the West’s failure to connect ground truths to our interests quickly enough to act. Fortunately, the United States faces an easier task in overcoming the Kremlin’s manipulations than Russia does in closing the massive gap between Russia’s war aims and its capabilities. The United States must surge its support to Ukraine, and it must do so in time. Delays come at the cost of Ukrainian lives, increased risk of failure in Ukraine, and the erosion of the US advantage over Russia, granting the Kremlin time to rebuild and develop capabilities that it intends to use against the West — likely on a shorter timeline than the West assesses.

The United States must defeat Russia’s efforts to alter American will and decision-making for reasons that transcend Ukraine. For the United States to deter, win, or help win any future war, US decisions must be timely, connected to our interests, values, and ground truth, but above all – these decisions must be ours. The US national security community theorizes a lot about the importance of US decision advantage over our adversaries, including timeliness. Russia presents an urgent and real-world requirement for America to do so in practice.