- Charles Kupchan served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama.
- Kupchan believes Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be the start of a new Cold Wr.
- He told Insider "it's just a matter of time before Kyiv falls."
A former aide to President Barack Obama is warning that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a "game changer" in international relations that will result in "horrific scenes" in the coming days, with President Vladimir Putin intent on pursuing regime change at all costs.
"I think it's just a matter of time before Kyiv falls," Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who also served on the National Security Council in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, told Insider.
Already Russian ground forces are approaching Ukraine's capital, having reportedly seized the Chernobyl exclusion zone located between Kyiv and the border of Belarus on Thursday afternoon.
"I expect those forces to go into the city with the aim of toppling the regime of President Zelensky," Kupchan said. "And I expect Putin to then install a Russian puppet."
Less clear is what happens next. Although Russia enjoys military superiority over Ukraine, experts say the roughly 190,000 troops it has deployed are not enough to occupy the country in the face of an insurgency. And while Russian President Vladimir Putin has a stated goal of regime change in Ukraine, it's not clear if he intends to seize control of the entire country or just large swaths of it.
"It's too soon to tell how far west the Russian invasion will go," Kupchan said. If Russia fails to seize all of western Ukraine, Western allies of President Volodymyr Zelensky may use the country's western border to funnel arms "to a resistance that would make costly and bloody Russian efforts to occupy and rule the country."
A direct conflict with the United States or other NATO allies is unlikely, Kupchan said, but a foreign-backed insurgency against a Russian occupation would mean a new chapter in relations between the Kremlin and Western democracies.
"This may well be the beginning of Cold War 2.0," he said.
Even if the collapse of the Ukrainian military is inevitable, then, Putin could be in for a Pyrrhic victory, his support back home — and his vision of restoring Russia's empire — undermined by a steady stream of casualties in a war he chose to start.
"It's possible that Putin is overreaching here and that, ultimately, this could lead to the demise of his regime," Kupchan said.
At the very least, it will lead to his isolation on the world stage: "Most of the countries of the world are going to look at this and say, 'What the hell have the Russians done?'"