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People walk past billboards displaying Russian soldiers with a slogan reading “Glory to the Heroes of Russia” on a street in Moscow on August 24, 2022. Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s recent military offensives have upended many people’s expectations of how Russia’s invasion will end. Western supporters have been pleasantly surprised by Ukraine’s successes east of Kharkiv.
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That is nothing, however, compared to the complete surprise of Russian observers. As Ukraine recaptured more territory in two weeks than Russia had gained in six months, Russian television was littered with analysts attempting to cope in real time with the cognitive dissonance of failure.
Russian shock at the country’s reversals on the battlefield is unsurprising. Russian experts have inculcated a fair number of myths about the war and the broader state of the world in the seven months since the start of war. As Columbia political scientist Jack Snyder noted in his book Myths of Empire, self-serving nationalist stories that make territorial conquest sound easy are common in regimes that mix elements of autocracy and democracy.
This holds with particular force for Russia. A combination of sanctions, visa restrictions, and voluntary cutoffs have severed most exchanges between Russia and the West. High-level contact has been minimal. According to the Yale School of Management, around 1, 000 multinational corporations have pulled back or shut down their Russia operations. Similarly, almost all academic partnerships have been severed by Western universities. Within Russia, domestic political opposition to the war has been ruthlessly suppressed. In some ways, the new iron curtain is as impenetrable as during the Cold War.
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As the co-director of the Fletcher School’s Russia and Eurasia program at Tufts University, I and my colleagues have maintained some unofficial dialogue with our Russian academic peers. These half-dozen or so meetings over the past six months have been both virtual and in-person at neutral sites. They have included Russian scholars with close ties to the Putin administration. There has been a frank and full exchange of views with the aim of seeking mutual understanding.
What we heard from our Russian counterparts was sobering: a mix of grievance, defiance, denial, acceptance, foreboding, and hope about the future.
The Russian scholars we spoke with — more than a dozen in all — were far from homogeneous in their assessments about the current state of affairs. There was acknowledgment of some difficulties that Russia would face in the coming years. There were a few points on which they agreed — but whether those claims hold up under scrutiny is very much subject to debate.
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Some of those questionable claims were distracting rather than significant. For example, there was a surprisingly strong embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “cancel culture” claims about the West, extrapolating from occasional overreaches during the first month of the war and making it sound like Western civilization wants to censor all Russian art and culture.
Still, as the war has progressed, our Russian contacts have told themselves a number of stories that all point toward a downplaying of the risks of invading Ukraine and a rosier vision of Russia’s present and future strategic situation.
Some of these narratives possess a grain of truth; others are more detached from reality. But it is worth deconstructing three of these stories that Russians tell themselves to understand how Russia’s elite is thinking about the future of world politics.
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The most prevalent story our Russian counterparts have echoed is that Western democracies lack the fortitude to engage in sustained support for Ukraine. As one Russian scholar put it to me, “We are waiting for high interest rates to create domestic political problems.”
The central tenet of Russia’s current strategy is that Moscow can wait out the West, where they are convinced internal discord and fatigue will inevitably kick in. Russian elites have said that Putin thinks the West is weak, that they will grow weary of war, and that Western public opinion will flip.
This matches multiple statements by Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. In June, Peskov bragged that EU residents were “feeling the impact of these sanctions more than we are” and earlier, said that “the cost of these sanctions for European citizens will increase every day.” Over the summer Russian analyst Sergey Karaganov told the New York Times that “modern Western elites ... are failing and losing the trust of their populations.”
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To be fair, such sentiments are also heard in the West. It sometimes seems as though there’s a new headline each day suggesting rising discord within NATO or growing dissatisfaction within the United States about the situation in Ukraine.
In April, for example, Politico reported, “The growing concern is that Putin has something the Western alliance lacks: time. ... U.S. officials fear support for the war at home could wane over time, especially if fuel prices remain high as the nation barrels into the midterm elections.”
Five months later — as Ukraine was racking up significant territorial gains — Politico ran a similarly themed story with the lead, “As the war in Ukraine grinds on toward its 200th day, President Joe Biden faces fresh challenges in his vow to defy Moscow’s war machine for as long as it takes.”
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No doubt, Western politics have been roiled by instability. In the seven months since Putin invaded Ukraine, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson left office, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned, French President Emmanuel Macron’s party lost its parliamentary majority, and President Joe Biden’s party looks poised for midterm losses. Even if Russia was surprised by NATO’s initial display of solidarity with Ukraine, is Putin so wrong to expect the collapse of Western support?
But there has been one force that has helped keep Western resolve from fraying: Russia itself. The country’s vicious prosecution of the war has been the most reliable factor in preventing any wavering. Reported war crimes in Izyum, Bucha, Mariupol, and the Donbas offer a constant reminder to outside observers of Russian bellicosity. Indiscriminate missile attacks on Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odesa also provide periodic lessons about the crude nature of Russian methods and ambitions.
This problem will persist for Putin — indeed, his domestic strategy necessitates it. In order to maintain public support for the war, Putin has little choice but to amp up Russian rhetoric and actions in ways guaranteed to inflame the West. This leads to a bevy of quotes that make the Russians look positively genocidal.
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Deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s Telegram account is littered with inflammatory comments about redrawing Europe’s borders, including one warning that “Ukraine may lose what’s left of its state sovereignty and disappear from the world map.” In one interview, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that it was possible that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could be a Nazi even if he was Jewish. In June, Vladimir Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, explaining that “it is also our lot to return [what is Russia’s].”
Such statements ricochet around the Western world — and dim Russian hopes for a Western public demanding accommodation with Moscow. Recent polling continues to show rock-solid support in the West for countering Russia in Ukraine. In a September poll, 70 percent of Germans approved of supporting Ukraine even if it means higher energy prices. In an August poll, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 72 percent of Americans support providing additional arms and military supplies to the Ukrainian government; 58 percent also agreed that, “the United States should support Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
This Russian narrative underestimates the autonomy that elected leaders have in managing national security. The strength of the French presidency ensures that Emmanuel Macron, who just won reelection to another five-year term, will maintain continuity in French foreign policy regardless of parliamentary control. Elizabeth Truss, Boris Johnson’s successor in 10 Downing Street, appears committed to sustaining British support for Ukraine.
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As for the United States, even a Republican wave in November would almost certainly have no effect on US support for Ukraine. The Biden administration will be running foreign policy until at least January 2025. For all the Russian talk about outlasting the West, it is far from clear whether Russia can fight a three-year war. By 2025, global commodity markets will likely have adjusted to the sanctions on Russia, and Europe should be independent of Russian energy and Russian economic leverage; even our Russian counterparts acknowledged that the energy link between Russia and Europe would be completely severed. Meanwhile, Russia’s civilian economy will face continued strangulation from sanctions.
Things can change, of course — a harsh winter, some battlefield reversals, and more tumult within their governments could rattle Western resolve. But as of now, it’s the Russian belief in the weak West that’s proven unfounded.
When pushed on questions about economic competitiveness and technological change, the Russians we spoke with always had a rhetorical out: even
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