Story highlights Tensions have flared again in eastern Ukraine

Leon Aron: In short run, no amount of sanctions will force Russia out of Ukraine

Leon Aron is a resident scholar and the Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Less than a month after French President François Hollande mused that sanctions on Russia should be lifted (apparently reflecting the prevailing sentiment in much of the European Union), Russia has launched a new offensive through its proxies in Ukraine. Facing a full-blown crisis, with the Russian economy estimated to be contracting by at least 5% this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be unconcerned about further economic pressure and diplomatic isolation. Is he irrational? As the only one making important decisions in Russia today, does Putin not care about the sanctions? He is not and he does. His is a multiphased, well-calibrated endgame to destabilize Ukraine and to weaken the sanctions at the same time.

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The first thing for the West to understand is that, in the short run, no amount of sanctions will force Russia to leave Ukraine -- not until the Kremlin achieves victory, which Putin appears to have defined as Ukraine's almost unconditional capitulation. Until then, any "peace initiatives" and "accords" signed by Russia are not worth the paper they are written on.

Having raised the propaganda pitch to a "motherland-in-danger" level unheard of since World War II, Putin has been telling Russians that the war in Ukraine is about " defending our independence and our right to exist ," and that the Ukrainians are nothing more than the first line of NATO's attack . The popular mobilization to protect the motherland from the alleged "NATO aggression" has become the key to Putin's popularity and, by extension, to the regime's legitimacy. Climbing down from such rhetorical heights without a clear victory in sight, especially during an economic crisis, could be very dangerous politically.

What sort of victory could Putin be envisioning? First, humiliated and bled dry on the battlefield, Ukraine would be forced to agree to a "federated" structure and recognize the "autonomy" of its southeast region that would make it a de facto Russian protectorate inside Ukraine. The "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk would have their own political, legal and security systems and their "defense forces" would not be disarmed. Nor would Russian "volunteers" be repatriated.

Completely controlled by Moscow, the republics' authorities would be in charge of all elections within their territories. A permanent bloc of seats in the Ukrainian parliament would be set aside for them, giving them (that is, Russia) de facto veto power over Ukraine's key political, security and foreign policy choices. Finally, there would be no restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the Russo-Ukrainian border and no end to the flow of Russian military and civilian supplies into Ukraine. With these arrangements in place, the Kremlin would be able to re-ignite the conflict instantaneously whenever it did not like what Kiev is doing or, more importantly, whenever Russia's domestic political situation called for another round of propaganda-induced patriotic hysteria and anti-West paranoia.