Crisis bargaining,domestic politics and Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has called into question conventional wisdom on interstate war, US foreign policy and Russian politics, with analysts expressing shock over the invasion itself and the progress of the war to date. ¹ As of this writing, the war is ongoing and much remains uncertain about the future of Russia and Ukraine. We can, however, look back to the initiation of the war and, using canonical theories of interstate conflict, offer a preliminary explanation for why Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered the invasion. This serves both to bring a series of important formal models into the conversation about the war and to evaluate their effectiveness at explaining a new, highly salient case. Like the other articles in this symposium, we center the crisis bargaining model of interstate war. Our focus is on how domestic political concerns within Russia may have affected Putin's behavior in negotiations that preceded the invasion. Relying on models that make explicit the link between domestic and foreign policy, we find limited evidence that domestic politics in Russia constrained Putin, revealed information about his resolve or competence, or shifted the expected costs and benefits of war. However, the expectation that conquering Ukraine would generate future economic rents for Putin and his closest supporters may have reinforced his incentive to misrepresent his true willingness to fight, highlighting the utility of the crisis bargaining framework for understanding the conflict. Moreover, if we consider how Putin may have perceived Ukrainian domestic politics, these models suggest that invasion may have been a rational, opportunistic decision. ²

Many observers see the invasion of Ukraine as a strategic error by Putin. ³ For scholars of international relations (IR), formal models are an important tool for evaluating strategic decision making (Morrow and Sun, 2020). In particular, the crisis bargaining model—in which one side makes an offer to an opponent, whose rejection initiates war—offers a canonical explanation for wars that otherwise appear ex post inefficient (Fearon, 1995; Powell, 1999). This framework is foundational to the formal literature in IR and has been supported empirically (although some findings are mixed, see Reiter, 2003). We use it to evaluate Putin's decision to initiate war in Ukraine.

It is important to note that the unitary actor crisis bargaining model has been shown to have limited explanatory power in some cases (e.g. Lake, 2010). The key mechanisms that lead to war within this model—lack of credible commitment and private information with incentives to misrepresent—alone may be insufficient to explain why some countries fight wars while others remain peaceful. We specifically consider the interaction between crisis bargaining and domestic politics. The need to maintain stability and control at home may reasonably constrain leaders from pursuing risky or unpopular foreign policy (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003; Putnam, 1988). Taking advantage of the link between foreign and domestic policy in part undergirds strategies of economic sanctions and democracy promotion like those pursued against Russia since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. To what extent did domestic political concerns constrain, or enable, Putin in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine?

We consider three mechanisms by which domestic political concerns may explain the Russian invasion of Ukraine: commitment to fighting could have been increased by audience costs; domestic audiences might have revealed information about resolve or learned about leader competence; and expectations about the gains and costs of fighting may have been shaped by internal actors who stood to profit or lose from the war. Each of these mechanisms corresponds to a distinct literature in IR that builds on the bargaining model of war to explain conflict onset and avoidance. In evaluating each mechanism in the context of Russia prior to the invasion, we find the most support for the domestic redistribution mechanism, although overall we find limited evidence that domestic politics impacted Putin's considerations. However, we show that the other mechanisms explored in this symposium, particularly asymmetric information, probably played an important role. Finally, using the same theories of domestic politics and crisis bargaining to assess how Putin may have evaluated domestic politics in Ukraine, we show that invading may have been an opportunistic but rational gamble—although this is based on the limited information that outside observers have about how Putin viewed Ukrainian internal affairs.

While domestic politics and crisis bargaining models may be well suited to explaining behavior of states where leaders can be held accountable, we find that these models have limited utility when applied to Russia. Putin has led a personalist regime for over two decades (Frye, 2022; Geddes et al., 2014). In personalist regimes, power is concentrated in the hands of a dictator who is unconstrained by the military or a political party (Geddes, 1999). Russia lacks free, fair elections and opposition groups ⁴ that can threaten, much less remove, the leader—a key mechanism in many models. Given this, we highlight the need for future work to more explicitly model the relationship between autocratic domestic politics and foreign policy, with emphasis on variation within autocracies.

Although decisive conclusions remain premature, preliminary analysis points away from domestic political explanations and toward the role of asymmetric information (İdrisoğlu and Spaniel, 2024) and commitment problems (Smith, 2024) in explaining the onset of the war. In demonstrating this, we offer evidence from disparate sources on the state of Russian domestic politics immediately prior to the invasion, which may be of particular use to non-experts seeking to understand the Russian context, as well as future scholars wishing to argue that internal concerns did in fact motivate Putin.

Finally, we offer a clear analysis of how a series of theoretical models apply in a new, salient case, demonstrating how scholars can follow best practices for effectively evaluating a model using case studies (Goemans and Spaniel, 2016; Lorentzen et al., 2017). We find support for a core insight of the bargaining model of war—that war occurs when the de facto bargaining range is empty—but show that models building on this framework by incorporating domestic politics may not clearly explain decision-making in some autocratic regimes.

Linking crisis bargaining and domestic politics

Before evaluating how domestic politics affected Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, we first must articulate how internal concerns motivate or constrain a leader at the brink of war. Crisis bargaining theory contends a leader (she) aims to extract maximum concessions from a foreign adversary (he) while minimizing the risk of war. Because fighting is costly, leaders should always be able to arrive at a settlement short of war, absent other frictions. However, in the presence of asymmetric information or commitment problems, the de facto bargaining range may be empty. War occurs, then, if the leader and adversary are unable to find a mutually agreeable bargain. Domestic political considerations can also generate a positive risk of conflict, even in the absence of incomplete information or commitment problems. A leader's concerns at home can affect the deal she is willing to accept, either narrowing the bargaining range and increasing conflict risk, or expanding it and potentially allowing her to avoid fighting. How do domestic politics interact with her tradeoff between concessions and escalation risk?

We focus on three mechanisms by which domestic actors may affect crisis bargaining. First, a leader may use the threat of punishment by constituents if she reneges on a threat to generate audience costs, signaling her resolve to the foreign adversary. Second, as the leader engages in crisis bargaining, information that domestic audiences care about may be revealed. Domestic actors may learn about the leader's resolve and signal to the adversary, or they may observe the outcome of bargaining and update their beliefs about the leader's competence. Finally, bargaining and fighting both have implications for how much surplus a leader has to distribute to constituents. The need to satisfy an internal audience may embolden or constrain a leader in her interaction with the adversary. These three mechanisms encapsulate the most common explanations in the literature for how domestic political concerns affect crisis bargaining and war. We consider the explanatory power of each mechanism in turn.

Audience costs and signaling resolve

When negotiating at the brink of war, a leader would like to communicate to a foreign adversary that the issue at stake is very important and she is highly resolved, or certainly willing to fight (Fearon, 1994, 1997). ⁵ This can earn her a better deal. By demonstrating resolve, she may convince the adversary to offer a more favorable division of a disputed good rather than accepting the certain costs of war. Merely saying that she is resolved, however, is not sufficient to convince the adversary to offer concessions: if the adversary gave in to such cheap talk, an unresolved leader would claim to be resolved too (see, e.g. Fearon, 1995). The leader then needs another way to show the adversary that she is willing to fight. One well-studied tool for signaling resolve is making public statements about her commitment that “lock in” the leader's negotiating position (Fearon, 1994). These actions generate audience costs because the domestic public does not like to see their leader back down from her negotiating position. In this way, citizens create for the leader a tool for communicating resolve to the adversary. The leader can commit herself and create bargaining leverage by putting her reputation on the line and risking domestic consequences (Levenotoğlu and Tarar, 2005; Tarar and Leventoğlu, 2013).

Not only do audience costs potentially create bargaining leverage for leaders, they also afford the adversary an opportunity to learn about the leader's resolve. When the leader escalates a crisis, increasing the audience costs she would face should she back down, the adversary can update his beliefs about the leader's resolve (Fearon, 1994). This, however, raises an important caveat to the audience cost story. Highly resolved states may not care to learn about their opponent's willingness to fight. For leaders with extremely high willingness to fight, or high expected values for war, it may not be worthwhile to wait very long to find out whether the adversary is resolved; learning will not change the leader's decision to go to war (Fearon, 1994; Schultz, 1999). For example, if Putin was certainly willing to invade to exert control over Ukraine, it would have been inefficient to delay the invasion and raise audience costs to signal that resolve to Ukraine. Further, his high resolve to fight would mean that additional information about Ukraine's cost of war would not affect his decision-making. Neither side, then, has an opportunity to suffer audience costs and, in their absence, crisis bargaining prior to war features only asymmetric information. This would leave Ukraine to face the canonical risk–return tradeoff—give fewer concessions but increase the probability of war—without an audience cost signal available to make clear Russia's commitment to fighting.

Putin's actions prior to the invasion suggest that he was probably a highly resolved type who was willing to go to war without first attempting to signal via audience costs. Russia made deliberate military preparations, like amassing troops on the border, which demonstrated strong willingness to fight (Watling and Reynolds, 2022). Further, Putin did not attempt to raise public awareness around negotiations with Ukraine or take other actions that would generate audience costs. As an informational autocracy (Guriev and Treisman, 2019), the Putin regime has long used the control and manipulation of information to generate apathy or passivity; as a result, the contemporary Russian public is largely disengaged from politics and the lead-up to the invasion was no exception (Alyukov, 2022). Even on the eve of war, the threat of conflict was not a focus of the Russian public. In a survey conducted 17–21 February 2022, 45% of respondents reported following the situation closely or very closely, meaning that the majority of the population was not attentive to, or even ignorant of, government statements about Ukraine (Levada Center, 2022b). Fewer than half of survey respondents—45%—believed war was likely or certain, even just three days before it began. This suggests that the Russian public was not responding to escalatory statements in a way that would “lock in” conflict. This is consistent with Russia's initial plan for a rapid incursion, in which Kyiv would fall in a matter of days, after which the conflict would be presented to the public as a fait accompli (Reynolds and Watling, 2022). There was little effort to make a public case for war in advance, because a war was not expected; indeed, even the military had not prepared for one (Massicot, 2023). Only in March, after the failure to rapidly seize power, were justifications for the war advanced to the public, rather than during bargaining (Reynolds and Watling, 2022).

The apparent lack of audience cost signals in the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlights an important distinction in how leaders, and autocrats in particular, use and respond to public sentiment. When the public has limited ability to sanction a leader whose actions they disagree with, it is not obvious whether that leader can gain from signaling resolve via audience costs. This is consistent with work assessing whether autocrats generate audience costs: Weeks (2008) argues that the production of audience costs depends on a domestic opposition's willingness and ability to coordinate to punish the leader, whether the audience actually dislikes backing down, and whether an outsider can observe the likelihood of domestic sanctions. ⁶ Because in personalist autocracies, including Russia, these conditions are absent, leaders may struggle to bolster the credibility of their bargaining position: even if the Kremlin had made threats, they may not have generated audience costs.

Moreover, it is unclear whether audiences in fact dislike a leader backing down more than they dislike war (Kertzer and Brutger, 2016). In Russia, there was no particular demand for war from the public. In late February 2022, 51% were frightened of war (Levada Center, 2022b). While 33% of respondents felt that the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics (LPR/DPR) should be independent and 25% felt they should be part of Russia, this is hardly resounding support. In fact, support for the inclusion of these regions into Russia was higher in 2016, when there was no imminent threat of war (Levada Center, 2022b).

Nonetheless, leaders like Putin do care about public sentiment and perception of the regime. In the context of the invasion of Ukraine, this is evident in the Russian government's narrative about NATO's responsibility for the war. State and state-affiliated media and officials heavily promoted the idea that escalation was not coming from Russia or Ukraine, but from NATO countries that were threatening Russia (Alyukov, 2022). Russians found this narrative relatively compelling. In November 2021, 50% of survey respondents identified the US and NATO as the initiators of escalation of the conflict; in February 2022, that share had risen to 60% (Levada Center, 2022b). Given the purported escalation by the West, Russia was forced to act defensively to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and the people of LPR/DPR, to prevent an attack on Russian territory and to preserve order. Indeed, these three reasons for the invasion were the most commonly cited by Russians who supported the war in a survey of March 2022 (Levada Center, 2022a). These justifications for war were only seriously advanced to the public after the invasion had gone poorly for Russia, not during bargaining, emphasizing the distinction between public opinion and audience costs.

A remaining puzzle is why Russia seemed to downplay its resolve during negotiations, rather than sending no signals at all (via audience costs or otherwise). ⁷ Leading up to the invasion, highest-level Russian officials repeatedly stated that Russia had no intention to attack, even as forces massed on Ukraine's border. In November 2021, Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that no attack was planned and that the movement of nearly 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border “shouldn’t be a cause for anyone's concern,” while Russia's deputy UN ambassador said that Russia “never planned, never did, and is never going to [invade Ukraine] unless we’re provoked.” ⁸ Following diplomatic talks between US and Russia in January 2022, a Deputy Foreign Minister said “There are no plans or intentions to attack Ukraine … There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario.” ⁹ In early February, the Russian Ambassador to the United States said “Russia is not going to attack anyone, we do not need that, it is not in our interests.” ¹⁰ Days before the invasion, Russian officials described the fear of war as paranoid hysteria. ¹¹ While these and similar statements were accompanied by assurances that Russia would defend itself if provoked, repeated claims that Russia wished to avoid war are surprising within an audience cost framework and more consistent with an alternative mechanism that does not center domestic political constraints. ¹²

Information revelation and leader tenure

Private information plays a key role in explaining how rational actors fail to arrive at a mutually acceptable bargain at the brink of war: if the leader proposing a division of goods is unsure about the resolve of her opponent, then she faces a risk–return tradeoff that generates a positive risk of war. Incorporating additional domestic actors into this crisis bargaining framework creates alternate sources of information and means of learning about the opposing leader's resolve. Information revelation can affect prospects for peace in two ways: an interested domestic third party, often an opposition group, can signal to the foreign adversary or they can receive information about the leader's competence via the outcomes of crisis bargaining. We consider how opposition actors and the mass public influence the information environment in turn.

Opposition as source of verification

Opposition parties who hope to replace the leader in office can provide valuable information that can reduce the ex ante probability of war. The opposition faces a tradeoff between their own electoral prospects and the national interest: a leader who does better in crisis bargaining may be harder to defeat electorally, but extract more surplus from the foreign adversary. When the opposition communicates private information that the leader is resolved, the adversary can be more assured that signals of readiness to fight from that leader are credible, and in turn, offer a better bargain (Ramsay, 2004; Schultz, 1998). However, when the opposition's own electoral incentives trump the national interest, such as when the leader is incompetent or war prospects are genuinely poor, they may signal the leader's weakness. Sometimes the adversary is willing to pay for this information and even a non-endorsement of the leader by the opposition yields a better bargain (Ramsay, 2004).

In a democracy, competitive political parties constitute the opposition, which are informed about the regime's resolve and able to reveal it. Many autocracies, however, either lack opposition parties or those that do exist are too weak to play this role. Russia, a dominant party state, is no exception. In Russia, the dominant party is United Russia, and opposition parties are traditionally classified as systemic or non-systemic. Systemic opposition parties, like the Communist Party, are legally registered and some have representation in the Duma or other higher offices. To preserve this status, systemic opposition parties are unwilling (and often unable) to challenge United Russia or the regime—a feature common in autocracies (Lust-Okar, 2005). As a result, the interests of the systemic opposition parties align with the regime. Non-systemic opposition parties’ interests diverge from those of the regime. Most lack the legal standing to compete in elections, and as of 2021, no non-systemic politicians or parties had representation in national office. This exclusion means that they do not have access to information about resolve that could affect bargaining.

It may be more tenable to conceive of the autocratic opposition as a faction within the elite that prefers a change of leader. Although it lies beyond the scope of these models, we consider this possibility in service of the potential application to autocratic cases. There is no evidence that an anti-Putin elite faction existed in Russia in the lead-up to the invasion. Russian elites understand that their allegiance to Putin determines their fates and fortunes, particularly in the form of access to rents. Factions within the elite compete for Putin's favor, not to undermine him. ¹³ This dynamic obstructs the collaboration necessary for the elite to act against Putin. ¹⁴ Turning against the regime can be incredibly costly, as the Kremlin is regularly implicated in extrajudicial assassinations of former insiders, domestically and abroad (Borogan and Soldatov, 2022). If an elite faction could publicly reveal information about Putin's intentions, there are no incentives to do so.

Moreover, it has become clear that few elites were accurately informed about Putin's plans for Ukraine, meaning they did not have information to convey. Generally, Putin does not discuss foreign policy decisions beyond a few close confidants. ¹⁵ However, the level of secrecy surrounding the planned invasion left important elites out of the loop (Massicot, 2023). Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in negotiations with his American counterpart Anthony Blinken in January 2022, did not appear to know what Putin's goals were in Ukraine (Whipple, 2023). Reportedly, Lavrov only learned of the invasion a few hours before it occurred, while the Kremlin's senior leadership found out later, with the rest of the country, in Putin's televised address. ¹⁶ The majority of the invasion was planned by the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's intelligence agency, rather than the military. That work was limited to a single branch of approximately 200 individuals and related to the use of intelligence assets managed by agents inside Ukraine, not Russia (Watling et al., 2023). Information was not shared more broadly within the intelligence service. ¹⁷ Also, since Russia anticipated occupying Ukraine within a matter of days, there was no planning for an extended war effort that might have recruited larger segments of the elite. ¹⁸ In sum, few elites could have revealed information to signal resolve during bargaining, a necessary preliminary of models like those of Schultz (1998) and Ramsay (2004). Rather, evidence suggests that Putin deliberately concealed resolve to make war more likely.

Bargaining or fighting demonstrates competence

Even if the leader is the only source of signals to the foreign adversary, her actions may be informative to a domestic audience seeking to learn about her competence. The need to demonstrate competence can constrain the leader's bargaining because she knows she is accountable to a public who may view a failure at the negotiating table as a reason to remove her from office. This accountability may affect the leader's own preferences, as she worries about her post-office fate (Chiozza and Goemans, 2004; Debs and Goemans, 2010). How does this change her behavior in crisis bargaining?

The need to signal competence may induce the leader to adopt a more hawkish foreign policy. When bad circumstances, for example an economic downturn, cause citizens to question their leader's skill, she may seek out diversionary conflicts not merely to distract the public from bad times, but also to demonstrate her competence with a foreign policy victory (Debs and Weiss, 2016; Gent, 2009; Smith, 1996, 1998; Tarar, 2006). If she can extract concessions from an adversary or win a war, then the public may be convinced that bad economic circumstances arose by chance and were not the product of an incompetent leader. Thus, foreign policy success can help the leader weather domestic crises.

This mechanism relies on the public having an avenue to remove the leader from office, or otherwise hold her accountable. In Russia, there is no straightforward way for the public to do this. Presidential elections are not free, fair or competitive, nor were they proximate to the pre-war bargaining period: Russia's next presidential election is currently scheduled for 2024. While the Putin administration has long been preparing for that election, there is no indication that Putin was in particular danger in 2021–2022. In 2020, the constitutional referendum legally allowing him to run in the 2024 election was approved with a comfortable 78.6% of voters, with a turnout of 67.9%. There is risk of a popular uprising at the 2024 Presidential election, but in 2021, this concern was still several years away and appeared reasonably low, given that national organizations capable of organizing such activity, such as opposition leader Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, had been dismantled. ¹⁹

Neither did Putin face a deficit of competence. During his long tenure in office, Putin has been widely regarded within Russia as a highly competent manager. This is the backbone of his popularity: performance legitimacy is often cited as the source of the theorized authoritarian “social contract” in which Russians allow for limitations on their freedom in exchange for stability and economic performance. Moreover, Putin has been insulated from responsibility for Russia's many governance problems. In a dynamic often referred to as “good tsar, bad boyars,” governance problems are attributed to lower-ranking officials and members of government, while Putin is believed to have largely good intentions and the public interest at heart. In evidence of this, Russians regularly address low-level governance complaints to the Presidential administration directly, hoping for Putin to directly resolve their problems (de Vogel, 2023).

Further, there was no need in 2021 to demonstrate competence specifically in the economic domain, as described in Tarar (2006) and Gent (2009). In the early years of Putin's rule, economic performance was a major source of his popularity (White and McAllister, 2008). Guided by skilled economic advisors, Putin has already stewarded the country out of the economic turmoil of the 1990s and through the global crisis in 2008 and weathered an inflation crisis after the 2014 annexation of Crimea provoked sanctions. Indeed, the quality of Russian economic management has limited the impact of the post-invasion sanctions—some of the most extreme in history. Despite predictions that the economy would collapse in a matter of months, growth is forecast for 2023. ²⁰ In the period preceding the invasion, there were concerns that growth had slowed, living standards were stagnating and the global shift away from fossil fuels would undermine Russia's economy, but these were mitigated by the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and closer economic ties with China.

Dividing the domestic surplus

When a leader makes a deal or wins a war, she earns some good(s) that can be shared domestically. To retain office, the leader must at minimum satisfy her selectorate, which may expect to enjoy public goods or reap private benefits earned through international conflict (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 1999). The need to satisfy this domestic coalition constrains the leader's upstream choices in crisis bargaining.

The need to maintain domestic support can change the offers a leader is willing to accept to avoid war. For example, if the outcome of the crisis has a substantial effect on her prospects in office, a leader may be more willing to take risks, even to the point of a risk-seeking gamble (Goemans and Fey, 2009). However, if diverting resources to fighting abroad would jeopardize the leader's hold on power at home—perhaps by making it easier for coup plotters to coordinate or reducing available security forces to quash a revolution—then she may accept worse offers to avoid interstate conflict (Wolford, 2014).

Redistributing the spoils of conflict often involves creating domestic winners and losers. A domestic public that is worried that the leader's preferences diverge from theirs may impose constraints, for example passing legislation that ties the leader's hands, in order to mitigate the leader's bias (Chapman et al., 2013). When a leader does go to war, the consequences are not felt equally by all domestic groups. For example, weapons manufacturers may support a more aggressive position in crisis bargaining because they expect to profit from war, while enlisted soldiers may have opposite preferences. A leader may be able to impose transfers between these groups, but doing so is costly. When the leader prioritizes the support of domestic war beneficiaries significantly more than war losers, the adversary may impose demands so large that fighting becomes inevitable (Davis, 2023). ²¹

In examining how domestic expectations about redistribution affect the choice to fight, it is important to distinguish between leaders of democracies and autocracies. A democratic leader may be more selective about which crises she escalates, because she risks losing office if she loses the war (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 1999). An autocrat may also bide her time before going to war, only fighting when she can no longer be appeased (Krainin and Slinkman, 2017). Krainin and Slinkman show that a foreign adversary's initial willingness to appease an autocrat can incentivize the public in an autocracy to support a leader who is biased toward war. A biased autocrat can extract extra concessions in any crisis bargaining scenario short of war, and earning more today is appealing to the domestic audience, even if it does not eliminate the risk of war tomorrow.

Theories of how dividends of war are shared offer the most promising explanation of how domestic politics affected Russian decision-making prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Putin faces few domestic constraints of the kind envisioned by Chapman et al. (2013) and appears rationally biased towards war in line with Goemans and Fey (2009) and Krainin and Slinkman (2017). ²² Given that Putin is relatively secure from domestic challenges and inclined to favor a narrow constituency of elites who stood to benefit from the invasion, these models all point towards war as a rational outcome of crisis bargaining between Russia and Ukraine.

To evaluate the validity of this mechanism as an explanation for the invasion, we need to examine two sets of conditions. Before assessing the effects of domestic power or spoils, we should establish whether the general crisis bargaining framework with domestic redistribution can explain Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. Specifically, we must first show that the de facto range of feasible bargains was empty, to explain why a bargain that avoided war was not struck. This can be demonstrated in two ways: (1) Putin's demands before the invasion were so large that Ukraine was unwilling (or unable) to make an offer that satisfied them; or (2) Putin's relative costs of fighting were so low, and the expected gains from war so large, that no offer could have dissuaded him. In crisis bargaining models, these conditions may arise owing to the well known frictions of asymmetric information or commitment problems, or by a third mechanism—war generates benefits for a leader that are unattainable under peace, which help her manage internal politics. Then, we need to show that this third domestic politics mechanism is responsible for bargaining failure. For the specific domestic spoils mechanism(s) to hold, the reason that Putin could not be placated at the bargaining table must follow from either (1) an expectation that fighting would shift the domestic distribution of power in his favor (Wolford, 2014) or (2) a need to satisfy constituents, either because failing to do so could threaten his hold on power (e.g. Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003) or because he cares about enriching those who stood to gain from war (e.g. Davis, 2023).

Russian domestic politics and Putin's aims in Ukraine

To evaluate models of domestic dividends of war, we begin with a brief review of Russia's aims in Ukraine, the events leading up to bargaining, and Russia's demands in those negotiations. Putin's objective regarding Ukraine is fundamentally simple: he wants Ukraine to be subjugated to Russia. The mode of this subjugation has been less important than Russia's control over Ukraine itself; only relatively recently did military invasion, occupation, and annexation of the territory to Russia replace “soft power” strategies (Watling and Reynolds, 2022). Still, Putin's motivation to secure influence over Ukraine has always been to ensure that Russia's neighbor does not fall into the Western sphere of influence. Thus, the conflict is both about Ukraine itself and about Western forces (the United States and NATO) that might seek to act in or through Ukraine.

Putin sought this objective for numerous reasons. First, Putin has long understood Russian influence over its near neighbors as a critical element of Russian security and of the effort to stop the West from controlling global politics. Preventing what he perceives to be Western control over Ukraine, via economic and political integration with the West at Russia's expense, is essential, and the alternative to this is Russian control, not Ukrainian sovereignty. Relatedly, the repeated popular uprisings against authoritarian, Russia-allied leaders in Ukraine and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, are understood by Putin as a threat to Russia. ²³ Known as Color Revolutions, Putin believes that these uprisings are engineered and financed by the West, and he fears the spread of such movements into Russia (Person and McFaul, 2022; Zygar, 2016). Securing control over Ukraine therefore also prevents Western subversion of Russian domestic stability.

These concerns have existed since the mid-2000s, but they became acute after 2014, as Ukraine turned away from Russian influence. From 2013–2014, the Euromaidan movement and Revolution of Dignity saw massive, deadly protests after Ukraine's Russia-backed President Viktor Yanukovych rejected closer ties with the European Union. Yanukovych fled the country and was replaced with a European integrationist. In the wake of this conflict, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and made additional territorial grabs that destabilized eastern regions of Ukraine. These events did more than diminish Ukrainian good will toward Russia; they also removed some of the country's most pro-Russian areas from national elections, as voting no longer occurred in conflicted areas. Ukrainian national politics came to place significantly increased emphasis on Ukrainian identity, independence and security, which in turn shifted the country westward to protect these priorities. By 2019, Russia's influence in Ukraine was considered to be at a century-long nadir: ²⁴ Moscow did not even manage to field a puppet candidate in Ukraine's 2019 presidential election.

To recover that waning influence, since 2014 Russia has made numerous attempts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, escalating in intensity as each has failed (Watling and Reynolds, 2022). These strategies encompassed different tranches of tactics to create political configurations in Ukraine that were favorable to Russian influence. Many entailed efforts to destabilize Ukrainian politics, creating opportunities for Russia to either penetrate the state or to install a puppet government friendly to Moscow. Supporting separatism in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine was one such strategy. The Minsk II agreement, meant to restore peace in that region, included provisions that, if enacted, would functionally allow Russia to exert direct influence over Ukraine's national government via its foothold in those eastern regions (Allan, 2020). Importantly, during the Minsk II negotiations, Russia demanded a guarantee that Ukraine would never join NATO, and Ukraine refused. ²⁵ Ongoing work to destabilize the east was also designed to influence Western states that had made security guarantees to Ukraine: to avoid conflict with Russia, the West would pressure Ukraine to enact those provisions of Minsk II (Watling and Reynolds, 2022). The belief that the West would abandon Ukraine, despite promised assurances, persisted until the invasion itself. When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019, the Kremlin did not see him as a threat, as he was a political neophyte who had not taken a hardline stance on Russia. Yet that same year, in a meeting with Putin, Zelensky firmly refused to implement Minsk II—shocking and humiliating Putin, who had been prepared for Zelensky's submission. ²⁶

Many other strategies to undermine Ukrainian stability involved soft power approaches, such as controlling media outlets through local agents, penetrating the Ukrainian government with Russian agents, astroturfing, and using agents provocateurs posing as far-right activists. A key actor in these efforts was Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who is so close to Putin that the Russian president is godfather to his daughter. Medvedchuk's political party was victorious in six eastern regional elections at the time Zelensky was elected president. Subsequently, Medvedchuk-owned television stations in eastern Ukraine began attacking Zelensky. The Ukrainian government responded by banning these stations, sanctioning Medvedchuk for supporting terrorism and nationalizing the oil pipeline he controlled in February 2021. Medvedchuk's ouster ended Putin's soft power strategies and inaugurated the planning for invasion and occupation. ²⁷

It also bears mention that over the course of Putin's tenure in office, he developed a personal conviction that Ukraine was not truly an independent state and had no claim to existence. It appears that this view sharply intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Putin spent it in isolation with oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk. Described as “Putin's closest friend,” Kovalchuk is known for his anti-Western conspiracist views ²⁸ and is believed to have led Putin to adopt extreme ideas on Ukraine's right to exist. While this ideology is evident in Putin's public remarks, Russian attempts to control Ukraine predate it by many years (e.g. Allan, 2020).

The decision to invade and negotiations

Putin's desired outcome—control over Ukraine—constituted a demand so large it was not possible to directly negotiate. Russia began planning for war in Spring 2021 with an initial military build-up on the border to test the Western reaction (Watling and Reynolds, 2022). In July, the FSB began preparations for the invasion, largely relying on Ukraine-based agents. From September 2021, military presence on the border and within Belarus increased to a size that was sufficient for an invasion. With tensions escalating, negotiations began. During these negotiations, Russia's central demand was a ban on Ukraine joining NATO, alongside the removal of NATO troops and weapons in Eastern Europe, the end of NATO expansion, and other demands. ²⁹

While short of Putin's true objective, the demand that Ukraine be permanently prevented from joining NATO was still beyond Ukraine's ability to satisfy. First, Ukraine understood that this demand amounted to subjugation to Russia's influence and would leave the state without allies to defend itself against Russia long term. Ukraine had already refused to make such a commitment while negotiating Minsk II. Second, Zelensky's acquiescence to this demand could easily have hastened an invasion. One variant of Russia's plans foresaw that, once Western allies forced Ukraine to renounce NATO membership to avoid war, unrest would sweep Ukraine (fueled by Russia-funded agents provocateurs), either allowing for a coup or creating the pretext for an invasion to keep the peace (Watling et al., 2023). Thus, any negotiations suffered from an inherent commitment problem—Putin had every incentive to renege on a deal involving Ukraine foregoing NATO membership.

There was, in other words, no way to negotiate away from war. This is evident from Western frustrations during the negotiation process. Russia submitted lists of demands that it knew were unacceptable ³⁰ and, unusually, undermined negotiations by releasing these demands publicly. ³¹ US Ambassador to Russia, John J. Sullivan, who participated in these talks, said, “It was apparent to me that the Russians had no intention of negotiating in good faith … The Russians were going through a diplomatic charade to lay the groundwork for an invasion that Putin had already decided to launch.” ³²

It is also plausible that Putin's expected cost of fighting was so low, compared with the large potential gains from war, that no offer would have deterred him. In retrospect, it is clear that Putin's privately known expected cost of conflict was indeed low. The plan for a quick invasion and occupation was developed by the FSB, reflecting a reliance on intelligence rather than more costly military assets. Further, Russian assets within the Ukrainian government would amplify confusion and delays in the chain of command, impeding a rapid response by the Ukrainian military and allowing Russian forces to sweep through the country without facing major battles (Watling et al., 2023). The invasion plan was informed by Ukraine's ineffectual and delayed response to Russian incursions in 2014; similar behavior was expected again. Having obtained control of population centers, Russia would cut off travel and communication between them. Russia thus planned to fight a disunited insurgency within a territory it already controlled. Prior to the invasion, this plan was expected to work. It did not, as is sometimes stated, require that Ukrainians welcome Russian invaders with open arms. Rather, based on operations in Chechnya, the FSB's plan required collaboration (voluntary or coerced) from only 8% of the Ukrainian population, and Russian assets had so thoroughly penetrated the Ukrainian government that this level of support was plausible (Watling et al., 2023). The US and Ukraine were acutely aware of this: as early as January 2022, the US was preparing to fund an insurgency in Russian-occupied Ukraine. ³³ However, although Ukraine and its Western allies anticipated Russia's strategy, they could not know just how low Putin perceived the likely costs of conflict to be, making any offer liable to trigger war.

Thus far, our evidence suggests that well-known mechanisms—asymmetric information and commitment problems—could have yielded bargaining failure in the lead up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, it remains feasible that Putin stood to gain from the war, even in the absence of these frictions. We now consider whether war could have been profitable for Putin, allowing him to more effectively manage internal politics in Russia.

Did domestic constraints matter?

Having established that bargaining failures were relevant to the invasion of Ukraine, we return to the role of domestic politics in Russia. For models of domestic power or spoils to explain bargaining failure, Putin's expected gains or outsized demands must have arisen from an expectation that fighting would generate a favorable shift in the domestic distribution of power (e.g. Wolford, 2014), or from a need to satisfy constituents (e.g. Davis, 2023).

For the expectation that fighting would shift the domestic distribution of power in Putin's favor to apply, Putin must have believed that war would reduce the odds that a challenger could remove him from office, or that fighting would generate enough spoils that he could redistribute some while extracting rents for himself. There is little reason to believe that the war would appreciably shift power from the public or opposition groups into Putin's hands, because it was already significantly concentrated there. As discussed above, the Russian opposition is too weak to threaten the regime. While Russia's desire to keep Ukraine in its shadow partly arises from a longer-term fear that the Western-funded Color Revolution could spread from Ukraine to Russia, such an uprising was not an immediate threat. Color Revolutions occur at pivotal elections (Bunce and Wolchik, 2011), which were not scheduled in Russia until 2024, and there was little reason to believe a popular uprising would occur at that time. Already in 2021, the institutions necessary to execute a Color Revolution had been functionally dismantled, including independent civil society, opposition political groups and the free media. The September 2021 Duma elections passed without incident, despite the use of a strategic voting program by the opposition. The repressions that attended the invasion of Ukraine served as the culmination of the crackdown that was nearly complete. ³⁴ There is also limited reason to believe that Putin needed to satisfy constituents—meaning a selectorate or elites—to protect his power. The Russian elite is highly consolidated in favor of Putin and has limited ability to coordinate among itself against him. Moreover, as far as we are currently aware, there were no threats from the elite at the time the decision to invade was undertaken nor during the pre-invasion bargaining period.

Alternatively, per Davis’s (2023) model, the autocrat may aim to satisfy constituents owing to a preference for enriching certain domestic groups, which can be accomplished more easily via war than peace, as the autocrat's utility depends on the utility of those favored groups. In this case, that would mean that Putin would personally profit from a war that enriches other elites. This proposition is highly plausible given that corruption is so rampant in Russia that it is often called a kleptocracy (Dawisha, 2015). However, assessing this relies on speculation because corrupt income is covert; because the invasion has not followed Putin's plan, so initially projected enrichment may not have gone as intended; and because documenting economic extraction from occupied territories is exceedingly challenging (Lewis, 2023). Still, the occupation of Ukraine was certainly expected to generate significant profits. Russia would be in control of Ukraine's industries—importantly steel, heavy industry and grain—its assets, and 45 million people. In regions of Ukraine occupied in March 2022, occupying forces or Russian collaborators took control of commercial services as part of an attempt to penetrate and assert dominance over the population and, presumably, to compensate for disrupted supply chains (Watling et al., 2023). Since then, economic integration with Russia has been deployed as a strategy to secure occupied territory, a tactic also used to integrate Crimea ³⁵ (Lewis, 2023). Ukrainian enterprises from steel plants to banks to meat factories, along with thousands of “abandoned” properties and assets have been nationalized, seized and/or reregistered with Russian owners. Major beneficiaries including the FSB, the Ministry of Defense, and Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, whose ultraviolent paramilitary group participated in the invasion (Lewis, 2023). A member of Kadyrov's inner circle now owns Ukraine's second largest steel plant; ³⁶ at least US$380,000 of steel entered Russia from this plant in September 2022 alone. ³⁷

If the past is any indication, the enormous rewards reaped by Putin's closest friends have also enriched Putin. Unlike the political elites, members of Putin's personal inner circle operate more privately, often in the business sphere. Several are responsible for holding and concealing Putin's personal wealth and assets via shell companies and LLCs, as well as direct ownership. Of Putin's allies most relevant to the invasion, Kovalchuk, the ultra-nationalist billionaire known by the epithet “Putin's banker,” and Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian oligarch and politician, are two important figures who stood to directly benefit from war. Kovalchuk is considered one of the biggest financial beneficiaries of the annexation of Crimea, via investments he made as the largest shareholder of Rossiya Bank. ³⁸ Although among the first sanctioned elites, his fortune grew by an estimated $1.4 billion USD from 2022 to 2023. ³⁹ It is plausible that some of Kovalchuk's profits from the war are held on behalf of Putin, as he is among the rumored owners of “Putin's Palace” and a mega-yacht believed to be Putin's. ⁴⁰

As for Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian government's seizure of his assets is considered to be among the final straws in the decision to invade. For years, Medvedchuk was heavily involved in financing Russia's operations in eastern Ukraine, and per Ukrainian intelligence, stole a significant portion of the funds meant for local assets prior to the invasion. ⁴¹ Had the occupation succeeded, Medvedchuk would likely have been Putin's pick for the next Ukrainian president, ⁴² and there is talk that he might lead a Ukrainian government-in-exile from Russia. ⁴³ In sum, even based on limited information currently available, it is overwhelmingly likely that the invasion was expected to generate sufficient spoils that Putin could enrich certain domestic groups, while still extracting rents for himself.

This alone, however, is not sufficient for war. In Davis's (2023) model, war only arises when a leader who favors potential war profiteers also faces high costs to transfer benefits of a peaceful bargain from other domestic groups to that hawkish coalition. If it were free for the leader to use gains from peace to pay off war profiteers, then war would not occur. While it is difficult to empirically evaluate this condition, it appears that the transfer of assets to war profiteers would be more easily achieved with Ukraine under Russia's direct control, as it would be in a post-invasion occupation, than if Ukraine was under informal control, as would result from a peaceful settlement barring Ukraine from NATO membership. Prior to 2022, economic extraction from the LPR/DPR relied on heavily on organized crime and smuggling (Galeotti and Arutunyan, 2022). Since the Russian occupation of south-eastern regions of Ukraine in March 2022, redistribution of Ukrainian assets now occurs through formalized processes of nationalization, taxation, seizure and similar tactics (Lewis, 2023).

To summarize, it is clear that any offer Ukraine could make was too small to avoid war, and the potential payoff of war was very high, pointing to the utility of the crisis bargaining framework for understanding the invasion. While there is no evidence that Putin made such large demands in order to shift the domestic balance of power in his favor, there is plausible evidence that the enrichment of domestic groups, and therefore of Putin himself, may have been a motivating factor. However, given the lack of clear indications of this, and in light of the fact that the war has not proceeded according to Putin's intended plans, at this time it is not possible to definitively demonstrate that crisis bargaining failed due to domestic factors.

Putin's view of politics in Ukraine

Thus far, we have discussed domestic politics within Russia and found that models of domestic politics and crisis bargaining offer only a partial explanation of the invasion. Domestic politics, however, do not only matter in the adversary state that decides to initiate conflict. Bargaining is also affected by how the adversary understands the domestic politics of its target. ⁴⁴ Therefore, we shift our attention to how Vladimir Putin may have viewed domestic politics in Ukraine and the potential effect on his decision to invade. (A full analysis from the Ukrainian perspective of domestic politics and pre-invasion bargaining unfortunately lies beyond the bounds of our current exercise, but is no less necessary.) We approach Putin's view of Ukrainian domestic politics by considering two possible conclusions that he may have drawn during the bargaining process, either of which could have rationalized the invasion: first, that Zelensky was bluffing; and second, that invading would yield pro-Russia shifts in Ukrainian domestic politics. ⁴⁵

We assess first the possible belief that Zelensky was bluffing during negotiations and actually lacked the resolve to fight. We define resolve here as a willingness to take risks (Powell, 1987) and possession of military capability (Morrow, 1989). ⁴⁶ What can a leader do to appear more capable and willing to take risks? Several models we discuss above address how a democratic (or non-personalist autocratic) leader may incur domestic costs from backing down or making significant policy concessions in a crisis (e.g. Fearon, 1994). Leaders use these potential internal sanctions to bolster their position at the bargaining table. Audience costs, then, can create an incentive for a weaker leader to bluff, leading her to take actions sure to raise these costs in hopes of convincing the adversary she is actually resolved (Schultz, 1999). If the targeted leader is expected to be weak, however, both sides have incentives to gamble: the leader by attempting to mimic a highly resolved type, and the adversary by calling the leader's bluff and escalating a crisis. Similarly, if the adversary believes that a targeted leader has adopted a hardline bargaining position to hide incompetence, he may take advantage of the leader's weakness and fight (Gent, 2009). War results because the adversary expects that fighting will lead to a favorable outcome against a weak or incompetent leader, and he calls the leader's bluff.

Returning to our context, this implies that Putin's observation of Ukrainian domestic politics structured his belief about Ukrainian resolve and therefore informed his decision to invade. What types of information might Putin have considered when forming that belief? First, Putin probably saw Zelensky as a weak or risk-averse leader, given that the presidency is his first political office following a career as a comic actor. He may also have expected Zelensky—who was raised a Russian speaker, hails from a region that has supported pro-Russian candidates, and was smeared as a pro-Russian candidate himself—to be less committed to hardline Ukrainian nationalism. In light of this, Putin may have understood public statements by Zelensky, such as those requesting Western aid and military support or warning against appeasement of Russia, as an effort to raise audience costs to compensate for weakness or lack or resolve—in other words, bluffing. Additionally, Putin would have been aware of past attempts by the Ukrainian public to sanction Zelensky for seemingly caving to Russian demands, ⁴⁷ meaning that although he could reasonably expect audience costs to be generated by these statements, he may have concluded Zelensky was willing to back down. Finally, it is possible that Putin received messages from the Russian-allied Ukrainian opposition, such as that organized by Medvedchuk, which convinced him that Zelensky was actually unresolved (Ramsay, 2004; Schultz, 1998).

Further, the planned invasion turned on low resolve among Ukrainian forces, if not Zelensky himself. Pro-Russian assets in Ukraine were expected to obstruct the military response with foot-dragging and deliberate inaction, not active, enthusiastic support for the Russian invaders. In 2014, the Ukrainian military was so significantly penetrated by Russian allies that defections and betrayals interfered with Ukraine's response to Russian incursions. ⁴⁸ Russia may also have been unaware of efforts to modernize the Ukrainian military since 2014, or expected them to be undermined by corruption, as they have been in Russia. It is believed Medvedchuk exaggerated information about Ukrainian resolve to fight in communication with Putin, creating the expectation that Russian troops would not be opposed. ⁴⁹

In sum, Putin may have believed that Zelensky was exaggerating his resolve and that by invading, he called the other leader's bluff. We stress that this is how Putin may have perceived Zelensky, and his public statements, prior to the start of the war and does not, therefore, capture the likely consequences for Zelensky of backing down on an issue like possible Ukrainian membership in NATO, which we discussed earlier. For Putin, calling Zelensky's bluff would have been a reasonable gamble if he believed the likely outcome was either Zelensky backing down, which could have yielded his ouster owing to domestic pressure, or quickly conquering Ukraine militarily, as was the expectation at the time of the invasion.

The second conclusion Putin may have drawn about Ukrainian domestic politics is that fighting would shift the domestic distribution of power against Zelensky. In this context, war could be preferable to whatever bargain would have been struck (Davis, 2023; Wolford, 2014). Di Lonardo et al. (2020) show that a key factor affecting the adversary's willingness to intervene is his expected alignment with whoever may replace the targeted leader. When the opposition and the adversary are aligned, the opposition supports an invasion to delegate the leader's removal by the adversary. ⁵⁰ The end result, then, could be a domestic political environment more favorable to the adversary. This scenario, too, is highly plausible, given that the Kremlin has historically sponsored pro-Russia parties and politicians, including past Ukrainian presidents, and recently has fomented opposition to Zelensky. Medvedchuk led such an opposition movement, with rumored expectation of being installed as Ukraine's next leader, although he was only one of several Ukrainian opposition politicians considered for the role. ⁵¹ These individuals no doubt expected that collaborating with Russia to remove Zelensky would pave the way for their personal rise to power.

Conclusion

Russia's invasion of Ukraine will remain puzzling for scholars and policymakers as the war continues and long after it is over. Having considered a number of ways domestic politics within Russia may have affected Putin's disposition in the lead up to the war, we find that internal concerns did little to constrain or moderate his demands. Theories that center information revelation by opposition politicians or a leader seeking to demonstrate competence bear the least resemblance to Russia on the eve of invasion, although models that emphasize how gains from fighting can enrich a leader and her cronies may provide a partial explanation for Putin's maximalist demands. Audience cost models can rationalize the invasion, although only because Putin was a highly resolved type, not because he leveraged audience costs to extract concessions in bargaining. Instead, if we reorient ourselves to thinking about how Putin viewed Ukrainian domestic politics, we show that a number of existing formal models of crisis bargaining and internal affairs offer one plausible explanation for the invasion: Putin may have believed that he could take advantage of a weak leader in Zelensky.

The crisis bargaining framework offers a canonical theoretical explanation for why wars occur despite being costly, and scholars of international relations have long developed models that build on the framework to incorporate additional mechanisms that drive conflict. Our analysis shows that while thinking about reasons why the bargaining range may be empty—because asymmetric information or commitment problems close the de facto bargaining range or because war is uniquely profitable compared with peace—helps us understand why Putin may have ultimately decided to invade Ukraine, we also find that many models that incorporate domestic politics are not well suited to the Russian case. How may negotiations to avoid war change when one side is led by an autocrat who is unlikely to trigger internal challenges? Can an opponent glean any useful information from the actions of the leader of such a regime? We hope these questions inspire future formal theoretic research that may be applied to the Russian case once more is known about the origins and outcomes of the war.