Partitioned Ukraine unlikely, but boundary line will remain ambiguous, experts say
The 2-month-old invasion of Ukraine has killed or injured thousands
Last month, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiming to split the invaded country in two in order to create a "North and South Korea in Ukraine."
While analysts say a partitioned Ukraine is now unlikely, a fractured nation, where Moscow retains control or significant influence over major areas in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, is the anticipated indefinite future of the beleaguered country.
And despite Russia's losses in major cities like Kyiv, some experts suggest Putin's ability to take over some territory could also embolden other autocratic nations to try to seize control of their own neighbouring regions.
"I think there is still a danger if Putin is able to market this as a success," said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And success isn't going to be judged in 2022, but in 2025 and 2030 [that Russia] invaded a country, seized more territory."
'Does send a message'
"[If] everyone has to change their maps because suddenly, Ukraine recognizes or capitulates ... Russian control, that does send a message," Bergmann said.
The two-month-old invasion of Ukraine has killed or injured thousands, reduced towns and cities to rubble and forced over five million people to flee abroad.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, its apparent goal was the capture of Kyiv, the capital. But the Ukrainians, with the help of Western weapons, thwarted the push and forced Putin's troops to retreat.
"At the start of the war, there was a sense that the Russian military would be able to move pretty aggressively and succeed in a lot of its objectives," said Alex Brideau, the lead expert of Russia foreign policy and Ukraine for the political consultancy firm Eurasia Group.
"And that might have included a partition of the country, if they couldn't get control of all of Ukraine. It looks a little different now."
'Bit more vague'
Unable to take control of Kyiv, Russia's focus has turned to its offensive in the eastern Donbas region, while maintaining a hold in the south near Crimea, and Crimea itself.
"It's a little bit different than like a stark, East Germany, West Germany kind of thing. A bit more vague," Brideau said.
"There is an interest in creating a territory that is sort of permanently ambiguous and that's used as some kind of leverage over Ukraine in terms of getting concessions on neutrality or never going into NATO."
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Bergmann said Russia may be able to claim victory by taking control of the Donbas region, make some additional territorial gains around Mariupol and consolidate north of Crimea.
"If they were to take that and a little bit more and conduct real damage to the Ukrainian military, on paper, the Russians would look at this and say, 'Well, look, we did what we tried to achieve. We gained this territory, we now have a land bridge to Crimea, the Donbas is ours.'"
That means, however that there could be some "really awkward territorial boundaries" within a state, or within certain cities — wherever the battle line gets drawn, Bergmann said.
"I think we are in a bit of a Cold War situation, maybe not quite as visual and as acute as the Berlin Wall," he said.
'Russia will always try to get control over the entire of Ukraine'
Liana Fix, a historian and political scientist at the Körber-Stiftung foundation, whose focus includes Russia and Eastern Europe, said Russia will certainly not be satisfied with just holding territory in the east and south.
"The war was very much about Ukraine not having the right to exist as an independent state," she said.
That means, Russia, from the east and the south, will continue be able to put the rest of Ukraine under pressure and attack the other parts of Ukraine, she said.
"It makes it easy to think that, well, we just give Russia those parts of Ukraine that it wants. The other parts can sort of continue to go their own way," she said.
"It's not going to happen. Russia will always try to get control over the entire of Ukraine."
Fix said there will not a be clearly split Ukraine but instead a changing line of warfare, as a war of attrition rages on.
"So you would see sort of a shifting line back and forth. We would probably not see a stable line in any way," she said.
Other nation states could be emboldened by Putin
Meanwhile, if Putin were able to take control of a significant portion of Ukraine, it should be assumed that other nation states with similar aggressive aims might be emboldened one way or another, said Jim Townsend, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defence for European and NATO policy.
"And you can't assume that Putin will stop there, that he wouldn't go a few years later to take the rest."
But NATO and the U.S. may also need to be concerned where else Russia may "flex its muscles" should it achieve some kind of significant victory in Ukraine, said Steven Keil, a fellow of security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
"Ukraine has basically tried to make the argument that we're not just fighting for ourselves, we're fighting for Europe as well, and kind of the broader national security, particularly as it relates to Atlantic security," Keil said.
"One of the challenges that I see right now is just what this current conflict means to Ukraine and the Atlantic security order and kind of essentially upending ... the rules of the road, what they were in the post-Cold War."
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However, Bergmann suggested that the military costs imposed on Russia could also deter others from taking similar action.
Initially, the geopolitical concern was that Russia was going to steamroll Ukraine militarily, declare victory and perhaps prompt other nations to seek territorial expansion through military force, he said.
"That was that was the sort of nightmare for the global order. I think the fight that the Ukrainians have put up have demonstrated that insurgencies are real, and so territorial, and grabs can be incredibly costly," Bergmann said.
Brideau, from Eurasia Group, agreed that with some countries, the lesson that they may take is that the potential consequences for taking aggressive action against another state could be stronger than they originally expected.
"Sanctions themselves have been stronger than expected at the outset of this," he said. "And these are things that the Chinese government and other autocratic or totalitarian government would have to consider as potential responses to those kinds of actions. And that could certainly potentially curb that kind of behaviour."
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With files from Reuters, The Associated Press