If Ukraine and its Western supporters lose resolve, Europe may face a scenario where Russia subjugates the rest of Ukraine, installs a puppet regime, and gradually integrates most or all of the country into a new Russian empire.
In the long term, it would be a Pyrrhic victory for Moscow. The repressive empire would struggle to digest its occupied lands, subdue a restive population, and bear the burden of very high military expenditures in a new era of confrontation.
Moscow would trade its medieval Mongol yoke for a 21st-century Chinese one—and be seriously left behind as the rest of the world enters a new green and digital age. Sooner or later, Russia would face its third state collapse in little more than a century.
A Russian victory and collapse of the Ukrainian state would have extremely grave consequences for Europe as well.
For starters, we can expect tens of millions of new refugees. In the Ukrainian territories Russia has occupied—first in 2014 and then since 2022—the population is now a fraction of what it was before. If a similar ratio applies to further Russian conquests, it would be realistic to count on 10 million to 15 million refugees, in addition to the slightly more than 4 million Europe is hosting already, flowing into nearby European states.
A Russian victory would transform European politics in several respects. Thoughts of an accommodation with this new Russia—something entertained until recently in Paris, Berlin, and some other European capitals—would be entirely unrealistic. A Ukrainian government-in-exile would operate from Warsaw or somewhere else in Central Europe. Defense expenditures—set to reach 4 percent of GDP in Poland this year and at least 2 percent across much of NATO—will need to double yet again in order to credibly deter threats from an increasingly desperate Russian regime.
New conflicts could be on the horizon. To which old borders would Russian President Vladimir Putin like to restore the Kremlin’s empire? Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states were all once ruled from Moscow, and anyone with access to Kremlin-approved television can find Russian imperialist dreamers talking in these terms.
Restoring the empire beyond Ukraine may be an unrealistic prospect for an overburdened, struggling regime, but who dares to take that for granted in Helsinki, Riga, or Warsaw? A new age of European confrontation is certain.
Putin is waging his war both to subjugate Ukraine and to rebalance the global order away from the West and what he considers U.S. domination. For his first aim, he has lukewarm Chinese support, but for the second, he has a strong ally in Beijing, which equally sees any Western weakening as buttressing its own position.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said before the U.S. Congress in April that Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow. Like the fall of Saigon and the fall of Kabul, a Russian victory in Ukraine would be seen across the world as an even more significant sign of the United States’ waning power. The appetite for adventurism from numerous actors is bound to increase.
The consequences of letting Russia win in Ukraine would be catastrophic for the Ukrainians, extremely serious for the security of Europe, and profoundly destabilizing for the rest of the world. In the end, it would probably lead to a collapse of Russia itself—which would present Europa with a whole other set of consequences to prepare for.