01 March 2022

CER: Four questions on how the Russian assault on Ukraine will affect Europe

CER experts provide answers on the off-ramp for Putin, Germany’s defence spending, how to deal with refugees, the internal battle over the rule of law and the impact on the EU’s neighbourhood. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will change Europe in many ways.

 The West’s first priority is to stop the war, and use Europe’s considerable political and economic power to force Putin back to the negotiation table. But the EU will have to quickly change other policies too – its refugee and asylum policies, as up to seven million Ukrainian refugees might cross the EU’s border; its defence policy, to uphold the security of Europe in combination with NATO; and its neighbourhood policy, given the risk that Putin will seek to destabilise other countries on the EU’s borders. Putin has shown where ‘illiberal democracy’ can lead – and the EU’s liberals have a chance to press their advantage in the internal battle over democratic values and the rule of law. Below, CER experts provide answers to pressing questions on how the Ukraine war will affect Europe.

What is the off-ramp for Putin (or for Russia, which might not be the same thing)? 

There has been a persistent belief among Western policy-makers (going back to the annexation of Crimea in 2014) that the West needed to offer Putin an off-ramp to resolve the continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. There has never been any sign that Putin is looking for one. Putin sees the world in zero-sum terms: someone has to win and someone has to lose. Outcomes designed to offer both sides something that they can portray as a win are alien to him. 

He either sees them as a trick or a sign of weakness. Thus he claims that NATO ‘cheated’ Russia over its enlargement in Central Europe, when NATO felt that with the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 it had offered Russia important assurances that the expanded alliance would not threaten Russia’s security. And thus he seems to have regarded the obvious anxiety of Western countries to avoid war in Ukraine, and the assurances they gave him that NATO forces would not get involved, as an indication that he would have a free hand. French President Emmanuel Macron and others, meanwhile, presumably thought they were offering Putin an opportunity not to launch a costly invasion, and to address some of his security concerns through negotiation. 

Putin’s latest threat to the West, increasing the alert level of Russian nuclear forces, also indicates that he is not looking for a face-saving way out of this crisis. Confronted by increasing Western military assistance to Ukraine and powerful economic sanctions against Russia, Putin is doubling down – seeking to intimidate the West into stepping back and allowing him to redouble his military efforts against Ukraine’s resistance. The lines deployed by the Russian media – which faithfully follow the official guidance notes that go daily from the authorities to editorial staff – reflect Putin’s view that Ukraine can only exist as part of a greater Russian whole, not as a fully sovereign and independent state. 

In these circumstances, the gap between the sorts of concessions that the West might be willing to offer Russia for a return to the status quo ante and Putin’s probable demands is probably unbridgeable. 

That does not mean that there is no room for creative solutions, however. But they might have to be directed at those around Putin, at least some of whom probably do not share his messianic fervour to reunite the (as he sees it) artificially-divided Russian and Ukrainian people. The more that the West can make clear to Putin’s subordinates that he is the one causing serious damage to Russia’s national interests, the better the chance that at some point he will be sidelined.  

In crafting sanctions and considering the conditions for lifting them, Western leaders should consider which steps are more likely to lead to greater national unity in Russia, and which might be expected to exploit divisions. The siloviki around Putin (those associated with the armed forces, law enforcement and the security and intelligence agencies) and economic managers having to deal with the real-world consequences of far-reaching financial sanctions may not see the situation in the same light. And even among the siloviki some may be pragmatists rather than true believers.   

Measures that could have a serious impact on ordinary Russians, such as freezing foreign reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, might feed Putin’s long-standing narrative that Russia is a ‘besieged fortress’ under attack from the West, and rally popular support behind him. Such sanctions are necessary at this stage in the conflict, but they need to come with a clear message that they are short-term steps, designed to bring an early end to the war and minimise the suffering on both sides, not to punish the Russian population.

Other measures, such as freezing the assets of those who have benefited from Putin’s kleptocratic system, should be seen as the new normal, regardless of the outcome of the war; they should be presented as a way to stop the looting of the Russian economy and encourage the development of better governance. And some measures, such as reducing Western purchases of Russian oil and gas, would be both a prudent hedge against Putin remaining in office for the long term (regardless of the outcome of the war) and a necessary step towards the larger goal of combating climate change. Such measures need to come with the message that regardless of short-term differences, Russia and the West (and Ukraine) will have to share the same world when the war is over, and deal with the same problem of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.   

If Putin stays in office and if his objective remains to control Ukraine, however, it will be hard for the West to co-operate with him on anything. Russia’s initial moves in Ukraine did not bring about the expected collapse of the Ukrainian forces or the surrender of Zelenskyy and his government. Now Putin’s generals are using more force, including against civilian targets. Western public opinion, already sympathetic to Ukraine, is likely to become even less open to compromises with a Putin-led Russia. The focus of Western policy-makers then will not be on off-ramps, but ramping up the pressure on the Kremlin. Europe’s future could involve a prolonged period of dangerous confrontation. 

How significant is Germany’s decision to raise defence spending?

It is hard to over-state how much German defence policy changed last weekend. In an extraordinary address to the German Bundestag on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a one-off €100 billion fund for the Bundeswehr. He also committed to spending more than 2 per cent of GDP on defence every year, after Germany failed to meet its NATO spending commitments for years. This came a day after the German government committed to deliver 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 handheld air defence systems to Ukraine, breaking with the long-held German taboo of sending arms into conflict zones.  

In his speech on Sunday, Scholz effectively ticked off every single controversial issue in the German domestic defence debate – he urged progress on the stalling Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Aircraft project, announced more purchases of armed drones, and committed to replace outdated Tornado jets with ones capable of carrying nuclear weapons in support of NATO nuclear policy. Each of these issues was highly contentious before Putin invaded Ukraine....

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