Keir Giles, an expert on Russian security issues, predicts the war in Ukraine will most likely end when Russia declares victory on the basis of its latest amended aims – control of Ukraine’s eastern provinces.
The founder and head of research at the Conflict Studies Research Centre with experience inside the old Soviet Union and the defence industry laid out six ways on how the war could end. He was speaking at the AEJ UK’s first post-covid in-person lunch meeting on March 28.
He listed a series of Russian failures in its invasion of Ukraine, most particularly what he said was President Valdimir Putin’s misreading of the country and its people through believing his own propaganda.
Since day 5 of the war, Giles said, Putin has been looking for alternative narratives on ending it, most recently declaring the objective as control of Ukraine’s eastern provinces where Russian-speaking separatists declared independence in 2014.
“Regardless of what happens on the ground,” Giles said, “it is what President Putin tells himself and his population that will determine whether Russia is satisfied with the end state of the war.”
For more on this meeting please see this report from AEJ UK chairman William Horsley and this audio record.
Keir Giles
Conflict Studies Research Centre
