On January 21, 1990, 450,000 Ukrainians joined hands to form a human chain. The unbroken line ran 700 kilometres from Kyiv to Lviv. It marked the 71st anniversary of Act Zluky, the Unification Act, that gave birth to a briefly sovereign Ukraine.
The protesters demanded independence from the Soviet Union. The following year, after a referendum backed by 92% of Ukrainians, they regained their freedom. Vladimir Putin wants to take it away. Having spent 20 years subverting Ukrainian independence, he has gone for broke. He will fail.
Wars are fought to secure political objectives. Victory is not decided by casualty counts or cities destroyed. It is determined by which side achieves its aims.
What are Putin’s objectives? First, he wants to erase Ukraine. Despite its distinctive language, culture and heritage, he claims there is no such country as Ukraine. He insists Ukrainian and Russian people are one and the same. He wants to eradicate forever all distinctions.
Second, he aspires to restore Russia’s great power status. He is obsessed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the humiliations he believes this inflicted upon Russia. He admires strongman rulers like Stalin, Peter the Great, and Alexander Nevsky, and has Irredentist dreams to reconstitute Greater Russia. His fantasies are punctured by the truth that Russia’s economy is the same size as Australia’s, despite having five times its population and 11% of earth’s land mass.
Third, he wants to undermine the United States, Europe and the Western alliance. On this front he has notched a few wins. His financial and propaganda interventions in the 2016 Brexit referendum and US presidential election tipped the scales in both. The repercussions unleashed paid off in spades. Last month he signed a “no limits” friendship pact in Beijing with President Xi Jinping of China that underscored his intent.
Fourth, he wants to crush democracy on his doorstep. It’s democracy he fears most. Democratic nations nearby, with their examples of freedoms and prosperity, might give ideas to Russian citizens. He can’t abide that. In recent months he sent troops into Belarus and Kazakhstan to prop up tottering dictatorships against popular uprisings.
One thing this war is not about is NATO expansion. That’s a fig leaf to justify Putin’s aggression. NATO is already at Russia’s borders, both in the west and the east. When asked in 2001 about the Baltic nations joining NATO, he replied: “We of course are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people to make certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a particular way”.
In 2002 he stated: “The decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.” He even mused at times that Russia might some day join NATO.
Putin does not fear NATO because he thinks NATO and the West are weak and feckless. And why wouldn’t he? From his perspective he has never faced real consequences for his crimes. He razed Grozny to rubble. He invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea, and launched a guerilla campaign in Donbass. He annihilated Aleppo. He murdered political rivals and journalists at home and abroad. He resurrected state-sponsored sports doping.
At every turn the various sanctions imposed were laughable. Instead he was rewarded with the Sochi Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, and flattered by Donald Trump. No wonder he thought he could do as he pleased.
Not this time. Putin was expecting Anschluss. He told his soldiers they would be welcomed as liberators. He expected to capture Kyiv within days.
Ukraine and the world have shown him otherwise; 141 nations condemned his actions in the UN General Assembly. Only four — Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Eritrea — sided with Putin.
Kenya’s UN ambassador Martin Kimani summed up the mood: “Today, across the border of every single African country, live our countrymen with whom we share deep historical, cultural and linguistic bonds. At independence, had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later … Rather than form nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia, we chose to look forward to a greatness none of our many nations and peoples had ever known.”
Putin remains undeterred. A man who thinks force always wins out, he will escalate his brutality. It won’t change the outcome. Every war crime committed will only harden Ukrainians’ hatred and steel their resolve. Ukrainians have endured, and overcome, far worse. Four million killed by Holodomor, Stalin’s genocidal famine. Another 7 million dead in World War II. Ukrainians suffered more combat casualties than the US, the UK, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined.
No matter how much territory he conquers, or how many people he massacres, Putin will never subdue Ukraine. He has neither the manpower, nor the treasury, to sustain an occupation. His plan to install a pliant puppet regime will never stand. Any collaborators would be overthrown the moment Putin withdrew. The Orange and Maidan revolutions prove that.
Meanwhile Russia’s economy is in freefall. The rouble is collapsing, access to foreign currency has evaporated, and the sharemarket remains closed. Western companies are bolting and imports are drying up. Planes will soon be grounded due to lack of maintenance parts and software, in a country that spans 11 time zones.
Not even China can save Russia from this meltdown. As the conscript coffins pile up, and the economic blowback wipes out their savings, Russians will turn against Putin’s war.
Wars are ultimately a battle of economics and willpower. As long as the West keeps funnelling weapons, money and other support to Ukraine — and they will — Ukrainians will fight. Eventually they will prevail.
We don’t know whether this war will last months or years. We don’t know how much carnage will be inflicted, nor how many lives ruined. We don’t know Putin’s fate. We do know things will get much worse before they get better.
However, measured against his four principal goals, Putin will come up empty-handed. He will never erase Ukraine. He will leave Russia diminished in the world, an isolated pariah state. He has reinvigorated the Western alliance. And democracy will not be extinguished from Russia’s doorstep.
Vlad has already lost his war. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Thanks for this. It’s a good case against Putin and carries a hopeful but grim message. I think that, in the senses you allude to, Putin is losing and will likely lose. Unfortunately costs of the loss will be born by ordinary Ukrainians and Russians. The Soviet Union eventually defeated Hitler but the losses incurred are mind numbing. Stalin, like Putin now, cared little for the lives of his people and even less his soldiers, so he threw them away in a war of attrition, magnifying the cost the Soviet Union paid. It seems likely that Putin will, as he has already elsewhere, be willing to reduce Ukrainian cities to the level of Stalingrad and Leningrad under the German assault. This is not a win for Ukraine or humanity in any way.
I commented yesterday that there is a disconnect in the meaning of this war for Putin and as it being understood by many in the West. The dominant narrative has NATO expansion at its centre and frames the war as about realpolitik, state v state military tension/conflict. This is a focus for Western commentators and also sits at the centre of Putin’s official propaganda.
Putin is actually in a battle with the West’s, sometimes called, neo-imperialism. This form of imperialism is not about territory control (so 19th to mid 20th C) but hegemony. By hegemony I mean economic and political dominance expressed through and and by culture as well as ownership and its laws. This hegemony rests upon answers and offers of what is a desirable and achievable lifestyle and crucially, what is expected of government and what makes government legitimate. Putin in running an authoritarian gangster capitalism that loses in comparison to all the elements of Western hegemony on offer. The constant stealing that is integral to the system undermines the Russian economy and the whole thing is propped by exporting cheap resources, with a small amount of the hard currency profits going to buy Western goods to prop up the regime with the people. Which ironically, because they are Western goods, favours Western hegemony.
From Putin’s (really quite irrational) point of view Ukraine is a “weapon” of Western hegemony. It provides a demonstration of the road Russia could follow. Now he can’t fight on the Western terrain of hegemony, any more than Communist command economies could, so we have the resort to raw power with state military instruments, censorship, laws to control political expression and so forth.
The horrific question is, will the hegemonic war he is losing knock him off via internal dissent soon? Or will the horror he is unleashing drag us all down into his preferred terrain, war?
Could be sooner than we think, AP7. I just read that China will not supply Russia with spare parts for its military. If this is true, it means that China has decided that this is a no-win situation for Putin and the the sooner they distance themselves from him, the better.
Interesting, if so, two cheers for China. I suspect their own form of Party capitalism and their geo-strategic considerations don’t find much positive in what is really little more than the brutal behaviour of a stereotype of a Latin American dictator. They have a much more sophisticated and more successful adaptation to the threat Western hegemony posits. And they have the economy to do it. In the medium run at least.
Oh and they probably didn’t want an ideologically revitalised and unified West. What does that mean for the belt and road? Maybe not too much but will be on their mind.
The BRI could be used by PRC as the Russian component appears to be a glorified ‘spur line’ (albeit a very long one) or indirect add on, but the main game follows the Silk Road through Central Asia, along with gas pipelines to central western Europe; without Russian involvement there would be little impact on PRC’s objectives.
Further, it does not make sense that PRC would want to disrupt one its most important trade markets/partners i.e. the EU, and existing investments they have made.
Although, many radical right libertarians (masquerading as conservatives) in the Anglosphere of UK, US and Oz seem to have concurred with Putin’s strong antipathy towards the EU, open society, liberal democracy etc. aka Brexit, Trump and ongoing ‘clown car’ governance in Oz.
I’d find the argument presented in the article a tad more persuasive if I had not read much the same here several years ago about President Assad in Syria and his doomed attempt to cling on by ruthless violence.
I also think the writer’s inclusion of the destruction of Aleppo as a Putin crime a little off. At least the Russians were there with the consent of Syria, and this was a civil war.
Doomed?
He seems to be welcome, as the least worst on offer, by the multiconfessional, secular and intelligent country over which he presides.
The many religious groups, from xtian through heretic muslims and Jews know what their fate would be under the salafi/wahabist insurgents.
Your sarcasm detector seems to have gone on the blink. The clue was supposed to be Assad’s evident continuing undoomedness. And it is not so long since we were both pointing out in Crikey‘s comment space the Assad regime’s relatively reasonable handling of ethnic and religious diversity.
Apologies SSR, had I noticed that it was your comment I would have been alert to the sarcasm.
I forgot to mention that the Syrian population is 2/3 Sunni and still they fought off the wahabis.
My bet is that he wont get the chance to come up with the favorite, “I’m leaving politics to spend more time with the family”.
I suspect an insider will do a “KGB” on Putin.
You’re dreaming. Putin understands very well how to ensure those around him owe all they have to his favour. His immediate circle is made up of long-term supporters from decades ago, they are as deep in his crimes as he is and they have no alternative. When he goes they must all fall too. They will never turn on him because it would be mass suicide.
Gosh I’ve always thought that’s the same principles Morrison’s been using – why he never sacks anyone in his ministry or even criticizes them.
Depends I think. I suspect their crimes would be overlooked by the West and were it unilateral and responsibility denied it might be possible.
During Saddam’s reign there was a short story about a double (one of a group) as stand-in for an often targetted, unnamed Dictator for Life™ ®.
As the assassination attempts became more effective, the stand-ins had to have increasingly severe surgery to imitate the injuries which Dear Leader had survived.
The end of the tale is that he’d already been dead for years, unbeknownst to any except those on the ruling council who trundled along nicely without the inconvenience of the nutcase’s wild ideas.
For all the rote distaste for Scummo, what is the point of changing the bucket if the contents are indistinguishable as promised/threatened by the Invisible Man?
Well the CIA was good for something when they engineered the elimination of inconvenient democratic trends, way back, with the Organisation of American States.
Never forgetting the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.
This article seems to have been written very much with an American influence.
Firstly, I don’t believe all the hype around Putin “losing”.
I think its very hard to tell at this stage, but I don’t believe he is, despite a lot of what I am reading on a daily basis in the “Western” Media.
Secondly, I’m sick of reading all of these “analysts” that seem to believe they know exactly what Putin wants out of this conflict. (Quite a few of them have already been proven wrong with some of their predictions).
I am certainly not an expert but from all I have read about the geopolitical history of the area, coupled with the multitude of articles in the media over the last fortnight, and attempting to determine the real facts and not just the western propaganda version of events taking place, and coming to a more pragmatic view.
My thoughts are that Putin has several demands, with the main ones being:
(1) True Independence for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This would include firm borders and a cessation of the fighting that has been continuing in the region for the last 8 years.
(2) A firm agreement that Ukraine does not join NATO, thus limiting the advance of NATO bases around Russia’s borders.
There may also be some additional demands, such as:
(3) A further expansion of the Independence of the Crimea region, with perhaps the inclusion along the seafront to Odessa.
So capitulation of three regions who consider themselves Ukrainian and would actually rather not be part of Russia despite Russian propaganda and an agreement they would never join NATO. That’s all!? In other words become a puppet regime like Belarus through which country Russia is waging this war. Against the will of the Belarusians, where army personnel are resigning in droves. And than what? Is Moldova, where Russia is also funding an insurgency, next? Romania? Bulgaria? Where does it stop. We don’t really have to think too hard about it, because the Ukrainians have decided. It’s going to stop right there, right now!
Are you fully aware that the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have more ethinc Russians than Ukrainians, and that there has been fighting in these areas for 8 years. To me, giving those small areas their own independence seems a small price to pay to stop what is a futile exercise – war.
And if the majority of them wanted that, I might agree. From what I’ve seen and read that’s not the case. What is true is that Russia has been funding insurgencies there as they do on the border of Moldova. Together with non stop, relentless propaganda, which you seem to have bought into…
Russia is such a tiny country, it could do with a little more territorial expansion to the south and the west.
Why should Putin be trusted to uphold any mooted agreement on these issues?
If we were ok with taking the word of the German Führer back in the day when he too was adding bits of other countries to his collection just prior to the Great Unpleasantness, why should we not trust Russia’s dictator also to deliver peace in our time?
It’s a bit odd that PeterM sneers at a perceived American influence in the article, and then reproduces very nearly the peace proposal described in rather greater length and detail by very much American Fred Kaplan in Slate magazine on 9th March, ‘How to End the War in Ukraine’.
I have not read the Fred Kaplan piece. But prior to the start of the War, the “peace proposals” were clearly defined by Putin himself.
So? Your original point seemed to be saying Americans were not thinking along those lines. Yet there it is, an American presenting a plan much like the one you outline.
Why should the West? We reneg on agreements constantly
“We”? Talk for yourself.