When it comes to decoding goings-on in the Kremlin, it can be useful to think in Russian — or, if that is not possible, then to think in reverse. That is one enduring lesson of any amount of time spent in Russia’s tough and quixotic capital. 

When the Wagner mercenary group’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, last month led a failed revolt against his paymaster and longtime comrade, President Putin, many in the West were led to believe it could be the long hoped for “gotcha” moment for the cunning Russian strongman. Others were less sure.

Those included a number of academics and political analysts such as the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer. In an interview with the South China Morning Post’s Alex Lo, Mr. Mearsheimer spelled out not only why, in his view, the war in Ukraine looks set to drag on but also why the strange dynamics between Messrs Prigozhin and Putin could actually make the Kremlin stronger. 

This somewhat contrarian take on recent events is especially relevant amid fresh reports that Mr. Putin hosted Mr. Prigozhin at the Kremlin just days after the irascible commander instigated his short-lived lashing out at the powers-that-be at Moscow. According to multiple sources at that three-hour meeting on June 29, the Russian president assessed Wagner’s actions on the battlefield in Ukraine — where the mercenaries have fought alongside Russian troops — and also during the rebellion. According to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, the Wagner forces pledged loyalty to Mr. Putin. 

In his remarks to the SCMP — Hong Kong’s newspaper of record since British colonial times — Mr. Mearsheimer said, “In the West, there was a lot of wishful thinking about the mutiny. A lot of people were hoping it would bring down [Vladimir] Putin or at least weaken him,” adding, “but that did not happen. In fact, as a result of the mutiny, Putin’s position will be improved; he will be stronger.”

The reason for that is rooted in the uneven relationship between the Wagner group and the Russian military. “There is no way you can run an army without a rational command structure,” Mr. Mearsheimer said, adding that Mr. Prigozhin “was something of a loose cannon. The end result is that Prigozhin had been dismissed and the Wagner Group was going to be placed under the command of the military. That would make the Russian military a more efficient fighting force.”

The problems that Russia’s army faced in the initial stages of the invasion are diminishing, the professor said, as the war wears on, leading to a sort of “rationalization” of the military. “What happened with the Wagner group is an example of a clunky military system being rationalized,” he stated, with the end result being  “a more powerful Russian military.”

That itself does not spell particular trouble for the Ukrainian military, especially as it continues to be bolstered with the latest Western weaponry. Two other issues do, though, and they will persist well after the two-day NATO parley at Vilnius this week.

The first is territory: Despite Ukraine’s impressive gains on the battlefield, there is no getting around that Russia still occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory. The Russians essentially took at least one major city, Mariupol, by destroying most of it. In Mr. Mearsheimer’s view, the problem is that “you can’t solve the difference over territory between Russia and Ukraine because either Russia keeps the territory or Ukraine gets the territory. There is no way you can square that circle.”

That dilemma, as well as the less explosive but equally thorny one of neutrality, pushes the war more and more in the direction of a frozen conflict. The Russians are adamant about not wanting to see Ukraine in NATO, and Ukraine needs meaningful security guarantees, with the imprimatur of NATO or not. “If Ukraine is de jure inside NATO or de facto inside NATO, it’s not a neutral state,” Mr. Mearsheimer said. 

Because such a scenario is unacceptable to the Russians — or at least to Mr. Putin — “there is no way to solve the neutrality issue and satisfy both the Ukrainians and the Russians,” he said.

In light of the foregoing, one need not be a professor or high-ranking diplomat to see that despite or because of the Western backing of Kyiv, Ukraine and Russia are barreling toward an aggravated stalemate. In the wake of this endless tangle, the one country that truly stands to benefit is Communist China. 

For Mr. Mearsheimer, Communist China is the “big winner” in this conflict. “China is a rising great power and is a threat to America in ways that Russia is not,” he said, adding that “the Americans have a vested interest in not getting bogged down in a war in eastern Europe, more specifically in Ukraine.”

The longer the war goes on, the harder it is for America to “fully pivot in Asia.” Americans “have foolishly driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese, which is a violation of balance of power politics 101,” the professor said. 

Yet is it altogether fair to blame “Americans” for tossing these unsolicited  presents Beijing’s way? Not really. It is under the Biden administration’s inexpert watch  that the war in Ukraine has now exceeded the 500-day mark. Secretary Blinken, for all his studious utterances ex post facto, was essentially caught unawares by Mr. Prigozhin’s mutinous ballet. Conflicting messages between the departments of state and defense point to a White House that seems to mistake inertia for sound foreign policy. 

Ukraine is on the verge of becoming another Cyprus: Both are fractured states where aggressive state actors scooped up territory by means of war and are hellbent on holding onto  it. (That is something President Zelensky might want to keep in mind lest he think that Turkey will actually do anything to defuse the situation.) Both places are distant from the American consciousness. Both have tried, in their way, to lean on headlines to douse the flames.

That doesn’t work, though. Absent stronger leadership on our shores, there may truly be no way out.