It's Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia's Defeat --- Putin has withstood the West's best efforts to reverse his actions in Ukraine, and his hold on power is firm.

"As Russian President Vladimir Putin looks toward the second anniversary of  conflict in Ukraine, his self-confidence is hard to miss. A much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive has not achieved the breakthrough that would give Kyiv a strong hand to negotiate. Tumult in the Middle East dominates the headlines, and bipartisan support for Ukraine in the U.S. has been upended by polarization and dysfunction in Congress, not to mention the pro-Putin leanings of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a conflict of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin's hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin's failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the conflict remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.

Western officials' promises of reinvigorating their own defense industries have collided with bureaucratic and supply-chain bottlenecks. 

Meanwhile, sanctions and export controls have impeded Putin's conflict effort far less than expected. Russian defense factories are ramping up their output, and Soviet legacy factories are outperforming Western factories when it comes to much-needed items like artillery shells.

The technocrats responsible for running the Russian economy have proven themselves to be resilient, adaptable, and resourceful. Elevated oil prices, driven in part by close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, are refilling state coffers. Ukraine, by contrast, depends heavily on infusions of Western cash.

Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities. Instead of fretting about lost markets in Western Europe or Beijing's reluctance to flout U.S. and EU sanctions, Putin has decided that it's more advantageous in the short term simply to become China's partner in the economic realm. Goods from China account for nearly 50% of Russian imports, and Russia's top energy companies are now hooked on selling to China.

Even neighboring countries that have every reason to fear Putin's aggressive tactics, such as Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, have made fat profits by serving as enablers of sanctions circumvention and as transshipment points for the goods that Russia used to import directly.

He is still embraced in most of the parts of the so-called "global South." The Ukraine conflict holds little salience for many countries who bristle at what they perceive as U.S. and European double standards or a lack of engagement on issues that concern them.

None of this should come as a surprise. More than six months before the full-scale conflict Ukraine in February 2022, Putin signed off on a new National Security Strategy for Russia. The main thrust of that document was to prepare the country for a long-term confrontation with the West. Today Putin can tell the nation that his strategy is working.

Putin does not feel any pressure to end the conflict or worry about his ability to sustain it more or less indefinitely. As winter approaches, the Russian army has mounted a limited ground offensive of its own and surely will expand missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, power plants, industrial sites and other critical infrastructure. At a minimum, Putin expects that U.S. and European support for Ukraine will dissipate, that Ukrainians will tire of the endless terror and destruction inflicted on them, and that a combination of the two will enable him to dictate the terms for a deal to end the conflict and claim victory. From his perspective, the ideal person to put such a deal together is Donald Trump, if he returns to the White House in January 2025.

The Russian leader is prepared to weaponize everything at his disposal to win the conflict in Ukraine. Nuclear arms control and European security are now hostage to Russia's insistence on the West ending its support for Ukraine. What remains of the Cold War-era arms control framework will be completely gone in 2026, and there is a growing risk of an unpredictable three-way nuclear arms race among the U.S., Russia and China. Putin will use every global and regional issue -- whether the Israel-Gaza conflict, food security or climate action -- as leverage to win the conflict against Ukraine and the West.

Taken together, this state of affairs poses an unprecedented challenge for Western leaders. Washington and its allies have been remarkably effective at tackling the most urgent aspects of this problem: staving off Ukraine's collapse, keeping it well-supplied with advanced weapons and real-time intelligence, and devising sanctions against Russia.

What Western leaders conspicuously haven't done is level with their publics about the enduring nature of the threat from an emboldened Russia. They have indulged all too often in magical thinking -- betting on sanctions, a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive or the transfer of new types of weapons to force the Kremlin to come to the negotiating table. Or they have hoped to see Putin overthrown in a palace coup.

Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia at the National Intelligence Council, is director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Andrew S. Weiss, who worked on Russian affairs in both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, is Carnegie's vice president for studies." [1]

1. REVIEW --- It's Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia's Defeat --- Putin has withstood the West's best efforts to reverse his actions in Ukraine, and his hold on power is firm. Rumer, Eugene; Weiss, Andrew S.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Nov 2023: C.4.