Point/Counterpoint: Putin must be stopped because he won’t stop with Ukraine – Duluth News Tribune

After months of delays, American aid is once again flowing to Ukraine. Yet the trajectory of the war remains uncertain. Russia is determined to win a protracted conflict, while Washington’s appetite for further aid remains in question.

As the United States prepares for a presidential election that could determine the outcome of the war, we should take a moment to remember that a Russian victory in Ukraine would be a disaster for the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been outspoken about his desire to dismantle NATO, undermine democracy globally, restore Russia as a world power and achieve a new multipolar world order. The Kremlin already considers itself engaged in a kind of war against the United States and its NATO allies. In Putin’s eyes, the conflict in Ukraine is essential to this broader struggle.

Make no mistake: If he is allowed to prevail in Ukraine, Putin will not stop there. The Russian leader will feel emboldened, thinking he took the best of NATO and still triumphed. He will probably still think twice before initiating a direct military conflict with a NATO member. However, the risk of such an eventuality will increase, especially once Russia rebuilds its army. Many NATO members on the alliance’s eastern flank, particularly the Baltic states, are sounding the alarm.

Direct war with NATO is not the only way the Kremlin could destabilize Europe. NATO recently warned that Russia was waging an “escalating campaign” of “sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns and other hybrid operations” against its members. European intelligence agencies also accuse Moscow of carrying out or preparing violent acts of sabotage across Europe as part of a broader strategy to confront the West. Russia has already attempted to influence European Parliament elections this month. He will no doubt seek to do the same in the US elections in November.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to fuel tensions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and between Serbia and Kosovo, jeopardizing an already fragile peace in the Western Balkans. Russia also seeks to overthrow the pro-Western government in Moldova, where Russian forces still occupy the pro-Russian separatist enclave of Transnistria. As Moldova prepares to hold a presidential election this year, Moscow will likely use information operations, cyberattacks and proxies to destabilize the country. And Chișinău fears that if Ukraine falls, “Moldova would be next,” as the country’s foreign minister said.

The implications of a Russian victory in Ukraine would extend well beyond Europe. The outcome of the war will determine “to a large extent the contours of the future world order,” notes a classified addendum to the Russian Foreign Policy Concept 2023.

A Russian victory would embolden authoritarian regimes seeking to overthrow the current international order. China, in particular, may feel more inclined to use military force against Taiwan. This potential conflict would wreak havoc on the global economy and could precipitate a hot war between the United States and Beijing.

So what can the West do to stop this? The first step is to understand that aid to Ukraine is not charity but a smart investment in our own security. We must then channel that understanding into a greater sense of urgency to provide Ukraine with the weapons and training needed to hold its lines and eventually regain the advantage. Western governments should also stop allowing Russian nuclear extortion to deter them from providing maximum support to Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the Kremlin aims not just to subjugate kyiv, but to rewrite the world order at the expense of Western democracies. The West has the power to stop Putin. The only question is whether we are ready to continue on this path.

Ivana Stradner is a researcher at

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

(fdd.org), a non-profit neoconservative think tank and lobbying organization based in Washington, DC. There, she studied Russia’s security strategies and military doctrines.