Ukraine is a dangerous theme to bring up unless you accept to “howl with the wolves you are among”. Well I don’t. What follows is not an apology for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which clearly is against international law (as were the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and Libya, the NATO wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US invasion of Panama, and so on). Neither is it about pointing out the good and the evil, but about statesmanship: that countries have the ability to choose the actions that are conducive to the best possible result for themselves, according to Otto Von Bismarck’s dictum ‘politics is the art of the possible’. To my opinion, statesmanship has been absolutely lacking on all sides during this conflict.
This statement doesn’t mean insensitivity to the suffering from the war. It is utterly depressing to see young men being killed on both sides of this war, to see civilians being caught up in the middle and to see all the destruction of housing end economic infrastructure. Neither does it mean support for national selfishness, ‘save yourself and to hell with the rest’. To the contrary. Statesmanship implies to keep the heart warm and the head cool, and having the capacity to analyse the consequences of policy and act rationally. Hatred and revenge lead to even worse outcomes.
Is Ukraine winning the war?
But back to Ukraine. There are those who think that Ukraine is about to win the war and drive the demoralized Russian troops of the country, see here, here and here. Perhaps even win back Crimea, Donetsk, and Lugansk. I admit I know very little about military matters, but I seriously doubt that this is the case. I agree with the assessment, that the Russians erroneously thought they could overwhelm Ukraine, shock and awe style, by attacking directly Kiev and the North of the country, which is Ukrainian heartland, and get a swift and largely bloodless victory as they did in Crimea in 2014. This would have permitted them to avoid having to attack in Donbas, where the Ukrainians have concentrated their armed forces and have dug themselves into heavily fortified positions. By knocking out the Ukrainian air force and air defence, Russia did gain almost absolute air supremacy, but the resistance from the Ukrainian army, the fourth-biggest in Europe, was no doubt much tougher than they expected. So they gave up on Plan A after around a month and pulled back from the North, and now they have started Plan B, where they necessarily will have to go through the slow and bloody combat in Eastern Ukraine that they wanted to avoid, even if with the difference that in Donbas they are in a much less hostile local environment. The mainly Russian-speaking port city of Mariupol has been taken, but at an enormous cost as it was defended by decided and heavily armed Ukrainian forces, including the infamous Azov battalion, now holed up underground. This is where we are now. Despite heavy weapons now pouring in from US and the EU, the Russian army continues to have air supremacy, and even if they are outnumbered by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it is a professional army against conscripts. However, as the Ukrainian military under pressure retreats into the urban areas, the resulting urban warfare has a very high human cost for all: the Ukrainian and Russian armed forces, and the civilians living there. The experience from Grozny, Fallujah, Mosul, Raqqa, Eastern Aleppo and latest Mariupol show how ugly urban warfare is, with civilians used as human shields and cities suffering enormous destruction.
Lack of statesmanship unfortunately implied that the war could not be prevented. Now the question is, how further bloodshed can be prevented or reduced. Regrettably, the perspectives are not good. Once started, an armed conflict will normally not stop before either one of the parts is clearly winning, or there is a prolonged stalemate leading to war-weariness on both sides. We are not there yet, and it may take some time before we get there. And forget the sanctions. They will not change the course of the war.
Russia has stated two main goals for their military campaign: A neutral Ukraine and Ukrainian acceptance of the secession of Donbas and Crimea. The Ukrainians have said they are open to some sort of internationally guaranteed neutral status, but that they will not accept to give up one inch of the territories in the East. These are irreconcilable positions. The longer the war goes on, the tougher will the demands from the Russians probably be for entering into a peace agreement.
Ukraine's strategy: internationalisation of the war.
It is worth remembering that Ukraine’s war against the secessionists in Donbas in 2014 ended in a shaky ceasefire, which according to the four-country Minsk agreements should lead to peace basically through two measures: constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government. Ukraine has since refused to carry it out. According to Ukraine’s security chief Danilov, “The fulfilment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction. When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel — and the German and the French watched — it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement those documents.” The main weakness of the Minsk Agreements was that the Western sponsors were Germany and France, while the US was not part of it. The US position is very similar to the one stated above by Danilov, so they chose the role of spoiler.
The Ukrainian Government’s main strategy to avoid a defeat in the ongoing war appears to be to internationalize the conflict by drawing NATO into it, even if that may result in a major armed conflict in Europe with a high risk of spilling over into a nuclear war. It has been very skilful in turning public opinion in the NATO countries towards more and more involvement in the conflict. President Zelensky is now a staple of Western Media, appearing routinely in the media and talking directly to the parliaments on large screens, and European heads of state are queuing up to visit him in Kiev, promising more and heavier weapons and more financial aid (and getting a photo opportunity with him for their national audience). He is a veritable media star.
Let us cross the fingers that Zelinsky doesn’t succeed in getting the US and NATO to enter the war, as the consequences are impredictable, things may very easily spin out of control and the outcome would be nefarious, not only for Ukraine, but for Europe as a whole and in the worst case for the world. But with the uncritical coverage he gets in the Western Media, nothing is guaranteed.
How will the war end?
Despite this, let us assume that the US and NATO continue to limit their role to providing arms, intelligence, and training to Ukraine. What are the likely outcomes?
1. The first scenario is a successful counter-attack by Ukraine, driving the Russians out. As mentioned, I think this is an unlikely scenario, despite the flow of weapons from US and NATO.
2. The second is a prolonged stalemate, where none of the forces are gaining a clear upper hand. This is a scenario which some military experts think is probable. This will lead to heavy losses on both sides, destruction and much misery. It may take years before the stalemate reaches the point where both parties are willing to reach a negotiated solution.
3. The third is a swift Russian victory, leading the Ukrainians to capitulate. Many military observers thought this was a likely scenario when the war started, but now it looks unlikely.
4. The fourth is a prolonged conflict, where the Ukrainian forces slowly are driven out of Donbas. Urban warfare will lead to heavy losses on both sides, enormous destruction of infrastructure, and in case the civilians are not evacuated first, loss of civilian lives. I think this is the most likely scenario, but it will be grim.
In the fourth scenario it is very likely that the Russians will not stop at driving the Ukrainian Army out of Donbas, but will also drive them out of Southern Ukraine as well, possibly including Odessa (even if some observers consider it unlikely that they will be able to do that). It is very unlikely that the Russians will give back Kherson, just north of Crimea, which they conquered during the first weeks of the war, as this gives them control of the Crimea Canal. The canal was built by the Soviet Union in sixties, and it brings fresh water from the Dnieper River to Crimea, both for human consumption and for agriculture. Crimea depended 85% on the water from this canal, but it was blocked by Ukraine in 2014 creating a catastrophic water shortage. The dam blocking the canal has now been blown up and water is flowing to Crimea again. It is also unlikely they will give back the rest of the coast of the Azov Sea that is not part of Donetsk Province as this creates a land bridge to Crimea.
It is a real possibility that this fourth scenario will not end in a peace agreement but rather in some sort of unstable ceasefire, much as the Donbas conflict in 2014, but with the difference that the Ukrainian forces will look eye-to-eye with the Russian army, not just some secessionist army.
When "all or nothing" ends in - nothing
If I am right concerning the fourth scenario, it implies that the Ukrainian Government has played its cards badly. A classical case of wanting ‘all or nothing’ and ending up with – nothing. This is exactly what lack of statesmanship is about. The verdict regarding US and the other NATO countries depends on what the goal was in the first place. If the goal was to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine, US and NATO have also played their hand badly. On the other hand, if the goal was to weaken and isolate Russia, create a smaller and more homogeneous Ukraine that could be a reliable NATO partner in the future, and strengthen NATO, then they have played their hand well. The development of the conflict has furthermore given NATO a new sense of purpose, it has made the European NATO countries increase their military spending, even with support from the European left, and it looks as if NATO will be getting two new members: Finland and Sweden. So for US and NATO, thumbs up. A pity Ukraine went down the drain in the process, but as we know, you can’t make an omelette without cracking an egg.
Again, if I am right concerning the fourth scenario, and if the EU countries really want to stop the blood-shedding in Ukraine, the policy of unwavering support for the Ukrainian Government, urging it not to compromise with Russia, and providing an increasing flow of weapons, is not the right policy. It will draw the war out for a very long time with no real perspective of the Ukrainians winning it. This is not statesmanship, but moral grandstanding. Looks well, but has tragic results.
And then for the Russians. If the outcome is that Russia prevails according to the furth scenario, even if at a high cost in human lives and economic damage, they can be deemed to have played their cards well or badly, depending on whether they succeed in Ukraine becoming a neutral and demilitarized country. If they do, the question can be raised whether the results were worth all the suffering – I guess some Russians will think it was worth it and some that it was not. If they don’t, then Russia is just as insecure in the future as it was before the conflict started. And if it ends in a frozen conflict, just with new borders, this lack of security becomes permanent and an eternal risk of a new conflagration.
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Why are there so many Russian-speakers in the South of Ukraine?
Sometimes the question is raised, why it is that the Russian-speakers apart from the East are concentrated in the South of Ukraine, as you would expect them to be concentrated in the border areas with Russia. The reason is that the historical Ukrainian land is what today is the Centre-North of the country, while the southern part of what today is Ukraine was part of the Crimean Khanate (one of the fragments of the Mongolian Golden Horde once it disintegrated in the end of the fourteenth century). The Crimean Tatars were skilled warriors and raided regularly what today is Southern Ukraine, capturing thousands, or even tens of thousands, Slavic people annually, and auctioned them off as slaves in Caffa, Crimea, after which most of them faced a miserable, short and violent life in the Ottoman Empire. The slave raids (and trade) continued into the late eighteenth century. Some of the raids even reached Moscow which was captured and burned down in 1571. The raids by the Crimean Khanate, since 1475 formally a subject of the Ottoman Empire, is one of the reasons that what today is Southern Ukraine was sparsely populated, despite being fertile lands. The Muscovites, who for centuries had had to pay tributes to the Khanates in Crimea and Kazan, defeated the Kazan Khanate in 1552 (under Ivan the Terrible), but failed to subdue the Crimean Khanate until the Russian Tsarina Catharina the Second (called “the great”) defeated the Ottoman Turks in the first Russo-Turkish war and in 1783 annexed Crimea. The newly conquered territory was named Novorossyia (‘New Russia’).
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya#Demographics. The Russians called Ukraine ‘Little Russia’ (‘Malaya Rossiya’).
As the land was sparsely populated, immigration was incentivized, giving rise to a rapid colonization. The colonizers came mainly from Ukraine and Russia, including many runaway serfs, but also from Poland, Belarus and Germany. The Lingua Franca was Russian. Most of the larger cities in what is now Southern Ukraine and Bessarabia (Moldova) were founded under the reign of Catharina and were mainly populated by ethnic Russians (Odessa, Zaporizhia, Dnipro/Dnepropretovsk, Kherson, Mariupol, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Melitopol, Mykolaiv, Pavlohrad and Tiraspol).