Russia will lose only if the US doesn't fall for its disinformation analysts say

Russia will likely lose the fight to conquer Ukraine but only if the West and the United States can mobilize its resources to resist Moscow. The Kremlin knows it cannot win if the West leans in, which is why the country’s leadership turned to a strategy of disinformation according to analysts. 

New analysis from experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argued that the Kremlin is trying to isolate the United States and the country on the sideline of the war if Moscow wants any chance of beating Ukraine and winning the fight. 

The argument makes a lot of sense once the reality of what Moscow faces in regards to what the United States and Ukraine's other allies can bring to bear in a fight against the Kremlin, even if all of the states remain outside of the conflict and only provide support. 

The combined Gross Domestic Product number of all NATO and non-NATO countries in Europe and Asia amounts to roughly $63 trillion dollars whereas Moscow has a meager figure of $1.9 trillion—so the Kremlin could be easily outspent. 

Analysts argued that Russia knows it can’t win a war against such overwhelming odds if the West leans into the fight so it has been pushing a strategy to isolate Ukraine from its allies, especially the United States, so that it can win the war. 

According to the ISW analysts, the Kremlin needs the United States to “choose inaction and embrace the false inevitability that Russia will prevail in Ukraine,” and to do this Russia is trying to shape the narrative to make its victory inevitable. 

“The Kremlin’s principal effort is to force the United States to accept and reason from Russian premises to decisions that advance Russia’s interests, not ours,” the analysts explained, and the Kremlin is doing this in a number of ways. 

The analysts say Moscow is flooding the Western discourse on the Ukraine war with false narratives and irrelevant narratives so time and energy are focused on unimportant arguments so that countries focus their attention on anything but the real issues. 

Moreover, Russia is hijacking key debates in Western countries like those of peace and defense so that it can use those debates to further its own, something the analysts said was a problem the U.S. was particularly susceptible to falling for. 

The analysts reported that when the “Kremlin dangles the concept of “peace” to steer the West towards Ukraine’s surrender” it is because Moscow knows it can’t win the war with its military might alone but the Western nations indulge the idea.  

Peace for Russia means surrender, and despite any real evidence that Moscow is ready and willing to engage in a peace process, leaders of Western nations and the U.S. are still willing to indulge Russian rhetoric according to the analysts. 

Whether or not the analysis from the Institute for the Study of War is accurate is difficult to say. But it does seem that, at least in the United States, narratives about the war are one of the top reasons why over $60 billion in aid has been held up since October 2023.  

For example, the narratives that “Ukraine cannot win this war; supporting Ukraine is a distraction from ‘real’ US problems; Ukraine will be forced to settle; the United States is at risk of being stuck in another “forever” war,” are all issues in American dialogue that have been used to prevent the passing of aid to Ukraine.  

“The Russian goal is to have us freely reason to a conclusion that Russia’s prevailing in Ukraine is inevitable and that we must stay on the sidelines, and Moscow is succeeding far too well in this effort,” the analysts explained. But there is hope. 

Another important concept is the idea that providing weapons to Ukraine can be seen as an aggressive or escalatory action, something that has undoubtedly affected Ukraine when it comes to weapons like the German Taurus cruise missile. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has refused to provide the Taurus cruise missile to the Ukrainians because of its long-range capabilities and the escalator danger it poses if it were used on target inside of Russia. 

“From my point of view, this is a very long-range weapon,” Scholz stated to the German parliament in March according to the Associated Press. “Given the significance of not losing control over targets, this weapon could not be used without the deployment of German soldiers. I reject that.”

Russia will ultimately lose in Ukraine if the United States and Ukraine’s other allies don’t fall victim to the Kremlin’s disinformation strategy and lean into the conflict by providing Kyiv with what it needs to win, namely, more resources to fight the conflict analysts 

"If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will mean the Kremlin managed to undermine the Western will and ability to reason from the ground truths and its interests," the analysts wrote. But this is not an outcome that has to become a reality.