U.S. Has Only Two Options Left for Russia's War on Ukraine: RAND

As prospects for a Russia-Ukraine peace deal appear to be increasingly unlikely, members of a global policy think tank said that the U.S. and its partners seem to only have two options left when it comes to the ongoing war: ensure a Ukrainian victory or accept the repercussions of a Ukrainian defeat.

"There appears to be no middle path, no grand political bargain, no easy out," Raphael Cohen and Gian Gentile of the RAND Corporation wrote in an article published by Lawfare on Sunday. "And even if such a deal could be struck, the peace likely would prove short lived and potentially set back stability in Ukraine and beyond."

"Russia's mobilization, annexation, and nuclear threats mean that Ukraine and its backers could face dark times ahead," they added. "The only thing scarier might be rushing for an early exit."

Cohen is a senior political scientist and director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. Gentile is a senior historian and the deputy director of the Army Research Division at RAND.

After nearly seven months of the Ukraine war, which began on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalated the conflict last month by announcing a partial mobilization that he said would call up to 300,000 soldiers to fight for Russia. In that address on September 21, Putin also backed referendums in four occupied regions of Ukraine—which Russia has since declared to be annexed in what the West has decried as an illegal move—and threatened that he could respond to what he alleged was "nuclear blackmail" from the West with his nation's weapons.

Amid widespread criticism of Putin's escalation and uncertainty on how the war will ultimately play out, these actions from Russia should "produce a rare moment of strategic clarity for Ukraine's partners: No viable path to negotiated peace remains, and any result short of Ukrainian victory will be, in the long run, a worse outcome for the rules-based international order," Cohen and Gentile wrote.

The U.S. and its allies have walked a fine line between supporting Ukraine and direct involvement in the war since the beginning. The U.S. and other NATO nations, for example, have been providing Ukraine with weapons and other security assistance, as well as imposing unprecedented sanctions on Russia, while refraining from sending actual troops into Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have continued to call for further aid from the West, describing it as a key component of their push to defeat Russia. Like Cohen and Gentile, they have also warned that consequences of a Russian victory could be felt outside of Ukraine's borders.

"The longer this war protracts, the higher and more numerous the risks that it will engage ever more countries because of our failure to put an end to it....I envision that Russia's next steps might [be]—and we hear it from officials in the Russian Federation—that they threaten Baltic states and Poland," Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's office, said in May.

Newsweek reached out to NATO for comment.