Opinion Reports of Russia’s decline are greatly exaggerated

The prospect, therefore, looks dim for Russia. The best and brightest have fled. Sanctions and trade restrictions have withered its economy, especially crumpled profits from energy exports. The country’s high-tech industries are being put at risk because of the exodus of global corporations. The economy is not expected to grow in the foreseeable future. It will have to simply rely on resource extraction. Politically, Russia has become more sclerotic and repressive, unable to tolerate dissent.

In the diplomatic battle, fewer countries are siding with Russia, not even its Central Asian allies have supported Moscow’s actions. Putin had to skip a series of high-profile global events, including the BRICS and G20 summits. Ukraine, on the other hand, is all set to join the EU, and NATO is set to incorporate Finland and Sweden.

The flip side is whether Ukraine can withstand the test of time amid growing war fatigue in the US ($113 billion since 2014), with the Republicans now opposing another $24 billion in military aid. The war has certainly unified a divided Europe, but as the EU bets on how Ukraine could stir a new wave of integration and enlargement to convert Europe into a “geopolitical force”, it would face a challenge in the form of the Franco-German divide. Germany is reluctant to supply weapons to Ukraine, and France is wary of EU enlargement.

The bloc may also run out of tenacity and eventually seek political expediency to end the conflict. There are already signs of the ground shifting. Ukraine’s closest ally Poland, which hosts 2.6 million Ukrainian refugees, is having second thoughts. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said it would “no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine”.

Finland, the first to abandon neutrality, seems dithering after Moscow halted gas supply — this would increase the cost of living for Nordic countries. The country is on alert after the Baltic connector pipeline was shut down for the winter due to a leakage caused by a suspected Chinese-owned vessel. These kinds of reversal games may impact the war.

Already, the fear of the Gaza war distracting attention away from Ukraine is forcing Volodymyr Zelenskyy to push for a global “peace summit” next February. In the meantime, the EU has asked Kyiv to meet the EU’s prerequisites (reining in corruption and firming up minority laws) before membership talks can begin by mid-December.

The contrarian view is that Russia is winning the war. Detractors of the West are pleased that Putin has finally called NATO’s bluff. Russia already holds a large portion of the Donbas and Donetsk and may gain more territory if the war persists. No matter what prevails on the battlefield, Russia is unlikely to vacate those territories. This will weaken Ukraine’s bargaining position for any future prospect of a peace deal. This means a state of prolonged frozen conflict accompanied by an arms race, and higher defence spending, a burden that the rest of Europe will have to bear.

Regardless of the war outcome, even a weakened Russia will remain central to European security. In the scenario that Putin can crush Ukraine’s resistance, the challenges for Europe would multiply. Even the task of rebuilding Ukraine would depend on sustained energy supplies from Russia.

Russia will remain a formidable military power with a large nuclear arsenal, and disruptive technology to influence the global strategic balance. In fact, this war may have taught the Russian military how to deal with NATO’s weaponry. The question, therefore, is whether Europe will opt for a new security architecture with the inclusion or exclusion of Russia.

One cannot underestimate the Russian strategic culture and its deep-seated history of threat perceptions vis-à-vis others. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the Euro-missile crisis of the 1980s still stand in public memory. In fact, things may not have come to such a pass if the West had not ignored Moscow’s repeated warnings against NATO’s expansion. Therefore, the assumption that Russia is permanently weakened is premature.

Instead, Putin, through the war efforts, may have found a renewed goal and a sense of purpose to regenerate Russia. The Russian economy is certainly withering now, but it also showed resilience because of the growing share in the energy markets. Moscow has dramatically reoriented its foreign policy/economy toward China, the Middle East, India, and Africa — a historic shift in the global power balance.

In the years ahead, Russia will be geopolitically tied to Europe, but the scale of its assertion will depend on how widely the US defines its global interests. It is already reasserting its influence around the world, especially in the Middle East. Ukraine’s fate aside, the conflict in Gaza will shape the future trajectory of Russia’s foreign policy. Moscow has tentatively taken steps to improve links with Beijing knowing that the matrix of partnership is imbalanced — in Beijing’s favour.

India’s official Russia policy remains grounded in realism, but a tendency among observers and analysts is to quickly draw on Western conclusions to discard Russia, and berate Putin for his “war of choice”. It would be premature to underestimate Russia’s potential.

The writer, a former diplomat, has served in Eurasia