Resuming its grain blockade demonstrates the many cards Putin still has to play before rolling out nukes.

(Originally published Oct. 31 in “What in the World“) Weapons from the West and jury-rigged drones have turned the tables in Ukraine, giving defending forces artillery superiority over Russian invaders now staging what looks like a doomed effort to maintain their conquest of the southern port city of Kherson.

But Russia still has many cards to play. After a drone attack on its Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol that appears to have damaged its newest flagship, the Adm. Makarov, which replace the Mokva after it was sunk in April. Russia responded by making good on threats to pull out of the accord allowing grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, a move decried as devastating to poor countries already facing a food crisis.

But RAND political scientists Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe echo this newsletter’s warnings against the West’s misunderstanding of Russian priorities in defending Ukraine. In a new piece in Foreign Affairs, the two argue that by insisting on Russia’s “total surrender” in Ukraine—including giving up the Crimea and other territory it seized in 2014 and allowing Ukraine to join Western military alliances—Russian President Vladimir Putin is being pushed into what he sees as an existential contest.

The problem, they argue, is that short of Putin’s ouster it appears unlikely that Ukraine can achieve victory over Russia. And unless the West intervenes directly in the war alongside Ukraine, the war continues to be one of attrition. Putin can continue to bleed both countries—and the global economy—indefinitely.

Worse, he can escalate, either by deploying unconventional weapons in Ukraine or by using the West’s military aid as justification for expanding the war beyond Ukraine’s borders into the rest of Europe, touching off what is likely to culminate in full-scale nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO. They argue that Washington needs to be doing more to encourage a negotiated settlement between Kyiv and Moscow.

It’s difficult to see how any such diplomatic efforts could be conducted publicly without appearing to undercut Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has insisted on Russia’s complete withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory.

But a potentially more dangerous outcome that the two don’t raise, but which were contemplated in this newsletter in September, is Putin’s ouster and a Russian collapse. Ukrainian victory may indeed require Russia’s total defeat, but that’s not an outcome the U.S. and its allies are prepared for.