The Year of Ukraine
A retrospect on the first major European war since WWII
A year ago, Russia defied the world by launching a full-scale, unprovoked invasion of its neighbor. It’s a year that has often felt like a decade. I remember my eyes glued to my TV with shocking scenes beamed in from CNN of missiles being launched into Ukraine with impunity. Everyone was trying to capture the fog of war in a bottle, digitize it, and then blog and live-stream and tweet it to a Western world shocked out of its post-war stupor.
Of course, this was not the first true Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ignoring centuries of Russian imperialism, the first invasion was the taking of Crimea in 2014, to which the world responded with a yawn. Then, it was the invasion of the Donbas in the same year, accomplished with proxy forces. But these were just the warning shots for February 24, 2022.
On that day, Ukraine seemingly stood alone, helpless as one of the world’s great nuclear powers sought to wipe it off the map. And on that day, the Ukrainian people and their president stood strong and inspired the world to its defense. Intelligence was provided, anti-tank weaponry was sent, and ammunition was stockpiled. As military provisions streamed to the front, millions of refugees fled in the opposite direction to escape the invaders.
And then, miraculously, the Russian army was halted on the outskirts of Kyiv, and a paper tiger was exposed to the world. All it took was one nation standing up for itself to send mighty Russia reeling. Vladimir Putin had made a devastating miscalculation.
Putin had not been irrational in his calculations. As I explained in a previous piece, Putin thinks in historical terms in contrast to the more technocratic, analytical framework familiar to most Americans. Based on his desire to reunite the Russian civilization rent asunder by the sudden fall of the Soviet Union, he was determined to take Ukraine when the chance presented itself, or when the chance of losing Ukraine to European integration was high.
Putin felt that America was too divided and too isolationist to lead a coalition to defend a foreign nation from invasion and that the Europeans were too reliant on Russian oil and gas to stand up to him. He also assumed that Ukraine would not mount a resistance. This had been the case in Crimea, after all. But Putin was wrong.
He also miscalculated how strong the reaction would be in the rest of Europe. Their alliance with the United States to support Ukraine still holds strong. He forgot that a nation with the spirit to overcome any obstacle to preserve itself could hold out seemingly forever in a war of attrition and would never be conquered.
Yes, economics, manpower, and machinery are all important in war, but even more important are morale and spirit. Putin forgot these intangible elements and is paying the price. He is effectively fighting a 19th-century-style imperial war to recolonize Ukraine, and the Ukrainians will not stop fighting if there is an existential threat. They have overcome centuries of foreign domination, war, and famine under a succession of imperial masters, and they are not about to go back.
Not only have they fought for themselves, but they have also fought for the security of Europe and the United States and the principles of the UN Charter. Russia seeks to overthrow the American-led world order and replace it with one more in line with Russia’s interests as Putin sees them, meaning that Russia should exercise its power with impunity in its sphere of influence. It’s a recipe for a rebirth of colonialism and imperial domination that violates the self-determination of nation-states.
At this point, that worst-case scenario has been averted. But for how long? It will depend on continued Western military support. Sanctions on Russia have cut it off from the supply chains it relies on to replenish its equipment stockpiles. Russia’s revenue from oil and gas sales to Europe has also been nearly eliminated, further weakening an economy that ranks just behind Italy and is smaller than the economies of the states of California, Texas, and New York. It will either need substantial support from China, which up until this point has kept the issue at arm’s length or a fracturing of the Western alliance that will lead to the withdrawal of a significant amount of military aid to Ukraine.
A lot depends on American domestic politics, as a minority within the Republican party seeks to obstruct every action of the Democratic administration. The network of right-wing nationalist parties across the US and Europe, often patronized by Russian oligarchs, represents Putin’s hope to leverage the domestic politics of his adversaries to his advantage. All he needs is one opening: it could be the removal of some sanctions or the reconnection of Russian banks to the global financial system. Anything to drive a wedge to use as leverage to extract concessions.
This is the purpose of Putin’s continued ambiguity about the use of nukes. It gives domestic political opposition in the West a way to frame not supporting Ukraine as a moral positive. Who wants to risk nuclear war to defend a nation 6,000 miles away, after all? But this ignores that indulging aggression by an authoritarian only invites more aggression. This played out in Ukraine as the world ignored the Crimea seizure and destabilization of the Donbas. Now Putin is asking for all of Ukraine. He must not be allowed to ask for more.
It’s clear that Putin is desperate to change the status quo, but also desperate to not act in a way that disrupts the integrity of his regime. This is why Putin refuses to call for a general mobilization and has only done two limited conscriptions primarily in areas that aren’t ethnically Russian. In true colonial style, he sends the sons of groups from the periphery of the empire to fight his wars. It’s his clever way of pursuing multiple goals at once; the war is accomplishing an ethnic cleansing that makes a dissolution of the Russian state less likely as an outcome should the war in Ukraine ultimately fail.
Ukraine will likely prevail if a war of attrition continues. Those who think Russia has the advantage in this scenario are again overrating Russia’s military capacity as was done at the beginning of this war. Many experts see the Soviet Union in the place of Russia and have not accounted for the degradation of the Russian military since the dissolution of the USSR. To paraphrase the late Senator John McCain, Russia is now a gas station with nukes that is running out of customers.
With Russia lacking the capacity to claim outright victory and Ukraine lacking the offensive weaponry to mount a sustained counter-offensive, we are left with two options to end the war. Either we withdraw some aid as a condition to force Ukraine to the negotiating table to trade its sovereignty for peace, or we give Ukraine what it needs to win and drive Russia from its territory. Only one of these options preserves Ukraine’s freedom as a nation, Europe’s continued security, and the credibility of international law.
Ukraine has performed far beyond even the optimist’s expectations. I had expected Russia to at least capture Kyiv, with a long-term insurgency led by the Ukrainian military pushing the Russians out after several years. I certainly never dreamed that a year on, Ukraine would still control over 80% of its pre-invasion territory. A country defending its very existence is capable of incredible feats of resistance. It’s up to Europe and America to give Ukraine what it needs to completely repel the invasion and end the violence that has left a bloodstain on what had been the remarkably peaceful dissolution of the USSR.
Democracy is not inevitable; it is a choice. And its fate is determined by what people value and are willing to risk getting it. Ukraine was not thought of much before this war, as repeated tragedies had suppressed its nationhood until the breakup of the Soviet Union and the dawn of an independent Ukraine just over 30 years ago. Russia is seeking to turn back the clock.
Ukraine is now a testing ground for 21st-century democracy in regions of the world that are embracing it for the first time and the future of the global order. Will it be driven by authoritarian powers seeking to reimpose spheres of influence? Or will it be driven by voluntary associations of independent states governed by international law? We need people to see they can embrace democracy while maintaining national integrity, and a Ukrainian victory would be a symbol to rally around. We need to go for victory and not cower to the whims of foreign dictators. This is, after all, what the American Revolution was fought for.