Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state who turned heads at Davos by seemingly calling for Kyiv to cede territory to Moscow, now sees three likely outcomes to the war in Ukraine — even as the sagest of predictions risk being undercut by events unfolding in real time. In a new interview with London’s Spectator magazine, Mr. Kissinger gave his latest read on Vladimir Putin’s pummeling of Ukraine, which the elder statesman, now 99, prefaced by reframing the remarks that set off a firestorm of criticism in May. He said his main point was that big decisions needed to be made “before the momentum of war made it politically unmanageable.”

The first of three possible outcomes Mr. Kissinger sees on the horizon is a limited victory for Russia if it “stays where it is now,” as “it will have conquered 20 percent of Ukraine and most of the Donbas, the industrial and agricultural main area, and a strip of land along the Black Sea.” He added that the role of NATO “will not have been as decisive as earlier thought.” The latest battlefront news from Ukraine would appear to tip the scales in favor of this forecast, distasteful as it is to everyone except Mr. Putin himself. On Sunday Russia claimed control over the last Ukrainian stronghold in Luhansk province, with Ukraine’s military reporting Monday that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk even as fighting continued on the outskirts.

As for the second possible outcome, it would principally be based on whether “an attempt is made to drive Russia out of the territory it acquired before this war, including Crimea,” Mr. Kissinger said, “and then the issue of a war with Russia itself will arise if the war continues.” In May, President Zelensky said Ukraine’s ultimate goal is to restore territorial integrity, including Crimea, but he also said via video at Davos that “it would take hundreds of thousands of killed soldiers from our side” to liberate Crimea.

The third scenario for winding down the war is one that Mr. Kissinger said he outlined, or at least hinted at, during Davos and that it is his impression “Mr. Zelensky has now accepted.” It hinges on the West preventing Russia from achieving any military conquests, “and if the battle line returns to the position where the war started, then the current aggression will have been visibly defeated.” Should that come to pass, “Ukraine will be reconstituted in the shape it was when the war started: the post-2014 battle line” — i.e., minus the Crimean peninsula — and “it will be rearmed and closely connected to NATO, if not part of it.” Thus, “the remaining issues could be left to a negotiation. It would be a situation which is frozen for a while.”

Each of Mr. Kissinger’s forecasts carries consequences, and all are made on the basis of the shrewd calculation and real-world experience of an iconic Cold Warrior — but from a Western vantage point nonetheless. As for the issue of a wider war with Russia, it is not just the possibility of an attempt by Kyiv to retake Crimea by military means, however remote that may seem today, that could raise the stakes. There is also the issue of increasingly audacious cross-border attacks such as one on Sunday that saw multiple explosions in the Russian city of Belgorod, just across the border with Ukraine. Russia accused Ukraine of initiating the attacks that hit apartment blocs and resulted in at least four deaths. 

Russia’s defense ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said air defenses had destroyed three Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missiles with cluster warheads, but fragments of one of them hit apartments, the BBC reported. “This missile attack was intentionally planned and launched at the civilian population,” Mr. Konashenkov said. A Ukrainian defense ministry spokesman, Yuriy Sak, told the BBC that “sometimes, most often, these types of activities are … provocations by the Russian side themselves.” 

Earlier this month Mr. Zelensky told the Financial Times that a stalemate with Russia is “not an option,” but hostilities that stretch across the border into heavily populated Russian cities could mean a stalemate is just the starting point of a new phase of the war whose ultimate outcome defies even the most expert analysis. 

There is a fourth scenario that Mr. Kissinger did not identify, though it may be implicit when he evokes the risk of a wider war with Russia. It is wrapped up in the reality that despite the West’s support of Ukraine and the valor of its fight, Russia has the bigger military by far and more boots on the ground. Writing in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, analyst Anat Hochberg-Marom noted that “although Russia is located on the outskirts of Europe, and is experiencing powerful economic and military failures, Putin — who advocates a ruthless realpolitik — is the one who is setting the tone and pace of events in the international arena.”

As the Western media’s attention shifts inevitably from one Kremlin-induced calamity to the next, it is easier to miss craftier maneuvers from Moscow. One of these is the de facto unification of Belarus, a former Soviet socialist republic, with Russia. Last week Mr. Putin sent warm virtual greetings to the 9th Forum of Russian and Belarusian Regions and noted that Russia ranks first in terms of accumulated capital investments in the Belarusian economy, to the tune of more than $4 billion, that about “2,500 companies with Russian participation operate in Belarus,” and that “bilateral trade increased by more than a third, approaching $40 billion between the regions last year.”

Not between the countries, but between the “regions.” Mr. Putin reminded his audience that only last November the Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, co-signed a Union State Treaty “designed to further encourage the development of economic integration between Russia and Belarus.” He added that “the unprecedented political and sanction pressure from the so-called ‘collective West’ is pushing us to accelerate the unification processes.”

The closer economic integration of Belarus with Russia is happening alongside creeping military integration, with Iskander-M nuclear-capable mobile guided missiles coming soon courtesy of the Kremlin. Belarus borders not just Ukraine but also Poland, the NATO member country from which most Western weapons are entering Ukraine. Quietly but methodically, from Kazakhstan in the east to the Polish border in the west, the Kremlin is indeed setting the pace of events. Neither stalemate nor status quo ante is likely on Mr. Putin’s bleak agenda.