A few hours after midnight on February 24, 2022, US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan received a call. The pre-arranged code signaled that Putin’s anticipated invasion of Ukraine had begun. Three years after that fateful night, Ambassador Sullivan’s aptly named Midnight in Moscow (2024) is essential for understanding Russia’s war on Ukraine as a first-hand look at the outbreak and early days of the war from Moscow between February 2020 and September 2022. Sullivan’s vantage point gives him a unique perspective on the causes of the war and the prospects for US policy going forward – a perspective we ignore at our peril.
Drawing on his experience as Ambassador under both the first Trump and the Biden administrations, Sullivan offers vital insights into how and why the war began. Three of these stand out as particularly important. First, the “crisis” that Russia used to justify its invasion was manufactured. Sullivan identifies two main components of this alleged security crisis: Putin’s accusation that a genocide was being perpetrated against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, a claim Russia has never been able to produce compelling evidence of, and that Russia was facing “an existential threat…from NATO and its expansion eastward.” While Sullivan concedes that Putin does believe NATO expansion to be a threat to Russia, Putin’s corollary claim that the United States broke a promise not to expand NATO eastward is demonstrably false, and the perceived threat did not suddenly increase in late 2022. And, if these security concerns were truly existential and urgent, Putin would have discussed them with President Biden at their June 2021 Summit, which he did not.
Second, the Russians were not serious about diplomacy. In December 2021, Sullivan received two draft treaties from the Russians: one between the US and Russia, and one between NATO and Russia. “Read together, the two draft treaties…would have completely undermined the US defense relationships with, and military support for, its treaty allies around the world. The Russians essentially were proposing to rewrite the North Atlantic Treaty…” Diplomacy requires compromise, but Russian’s “diplomacy” consisted of nonnegotiable demands to which they knew the US could not and would not accede. Furthermore, Sullivan recounts that “the United States was prepared to discuss…all aspects of NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe that it found threatening.” Russia cannot blame its unwillingness to negotiate on American intransigence.
Third, Sullivan makes a compelling case that Putin’s war bears remarkable similarities to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Comparisons to the 1930s are often exaggerated, but Sullivan clearly and carefully defines the respects in which Putin’s invasion of Ukraine follows a pattern similar to Hitler’s invasion of Poland and therefore, under the legal precedent created at Nuremberg, is a crime against peace. Hardcore apologists for Putin will not be swayed, nor will those in the West who claim that Churchill was the true aggressor in WWII. For others, however, looking at Putin’s war through the lens of Hitler has the potential to be a powerful antidote to isolationism, indifference, and Russian propaganda.
In the book’s final chapter, titled “What is to Be Done?,” he identifies “four important features of ‘the Russian situation’ that are most relevant to understanding and crafting a strategy to address Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine.” First, Putin considers the United States an implacable enemy and therefore that the war in Ukraine is a manifestation of NATO-Russia, East-West conflict. Second, “the Russian government cannot be trusted in any context.” Third, “Putin’s Russia will never surrender the goal of the ‘special military operation’ to subjugate Ukraine,” so Russia’s feigned interest in peace negotiations is “pure disinformation.” Finally, regime change is not a viable solution.
From these principles, he concludes that “21st century containment of Russian aggression” is the only way forward. Practically speaking, this means continued US and allied support for Ukraine’s resistance, with the understanding that regaining all its territory “might take months (as it did to expel Iraq from Kuwait), or decades (as it did for the reunification of Germany), or may never happen (as on the Korean peninsula).” Sullivan likens calls for immediate peace negotiations to suggesting peace negotiations with Germany after the invasion of Poland in 1939, which “might have changed history, but definitely not for the better.”
Responding to Ukraine skeptics, Sullivan argues that supporting Ukraine is inextricable from maintaining our system of alliances and that abandoning this system would be far more dangerous and expensive than working in concert with our allies. Furthermore, America’s adversaries would interpret our desertion of Ukraine as a sign of weakness – hardly the “peace through strength” that many Ukraine skeptics advocate.
Midnight in Moscow was published before the 2024 election, and Sullivan does not address the prospect of another Trump administration. However, Sullivan’s analysis suggests that Putin will not make any significant concessions and that his eagerness to engage diplomatically with the new administration is pure propaganda, an attempt to secure a temporary ceasefire that will allow Russia to regroup, or a calculated move to take advantage of a US administration that he believes will give him what he wants. President Trump would do well to listen to the warnings of his own Ambassador to Russia in 2020.
Ultimately, Sullivan is hopeful that, just as the Russian people rejected the Soviet system, they will eventually reject the Putin regime. He is not suggesting that Americans passively wait for Russians to fix their country, though. Rather, he argues that:
“Success or failure in stopping Russian aggression depends more on the health and vigor of American society than on any arcane foreign policy decisions or complex military actions…This, ultimately, is the answer to the question What is to be done? We Americans must acknowledge our faults and seek to overcome them, just as we have throughout our history.”
Ultimately, the lesson of Midnight in Moscow is that we, too, must believe in America and prove this belief well-founded. The fate of our country, Ukraine, and the world depends on our ability to do so.
