I read article after article warning that Russia could win the war in Ukraine. I am surprised There's no way I'm going to win. Everyone loses, of course. As Martha Gellhorn, a writer who lived through the Spanish Civil War with her future husband Ernest Hemingway, said, "in war there is neither victory nor defeat; there is only catastrophe".
But Russia will not win in Ukraine. Not even in the event that Vladimir Putin achieves his initial goal: to conquer all Ukrainian territory and impose a puppet government in Kyiv. Because in the long run this is the worst thing that could happen to him.
Imagine the mess the Russians would get themselves into. They would have to install an army of occupation in a country twice the size of Germany, where the majority of citizens detest them. The resistance would consist of a militia of at least 100,000 combat veterans armed by Western governments. Military orthodoxy says that under such circumstances the troops of the occupying army need to outnumber the partisans by a factor of 25 to 1.
In other words, Russia would have to deploy more than two million soldiers to Ukraine sine die, all of whom are vulnerable to death under fire every day. The wear and tear in lives and money would be permanent; the consequences for Russian domestic politics, serious. Sooner or later there would be the possibility that the suffering Russian people would lose, first, their legendary patience and, second, the fear inspired by Tsar Putin's regime.
Let's move on to a less improbable scenario. That an end to the war be finally negotiated in which Ukraine cedes Crimea and a large part of the territories in the south-east of the country that are now controlled by the Russians. A defeat for Ukraine? At first glance, maybe yes. But consider it.
By far the largest part of the gigantic cost of the post-war reconstruction of cities like Mariupol, which the Russian army has reduced to rubble, should be paid by Moscow. The Ukrainian Government would be free to invest the billions that would come from friendly countries in the development of a nation with dimensions that would be perhaps 80% of what they were, but with enormous potential. Ukrainian fertile land is abundant; young talent in new technologies, too. The Ukrainian army would be the most formidable in Europe.
Europe: here is the crux of the matter. Ukrainians would only accept the cession of territory to Russia in exchange for security guarantees and a reasonable prospect of future prosperity. A negotiated solution to end the war should include Ukraine's access to the European Union, its citizens' dream and Putin's nightmare. That is why it is necessary to continue giving weapons to Ukraine: so that, when the time comes to negotiate, Ukraine will be in the best military conditions to insist that EU membership is an inalienable part of the plan.
In fact, if this were the final outcome Putin would have lost the war. His reason for the invasion on February 24, 2022 was the desire of the Government of Ukraine to join the European club and free itself from the Russian yoke. Putin, let's remember, considers that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century". The dictator also thinks, according to his particular reading of history, that Ukraine is "an artificial state" that belongs to the Russian sphere. It is hard for him to think of Ukraine as an independent nation, as was seen in the grotesque interview he gave a couple of weeks ago to that journalist parody, the American Tucker Carlson.
The interview began with a half-hour rant in which Putin explained that Russian sovereignty over Ukraine dates back to the 9th century (he also explained, among other nonsense, that Poland, not Germany, started WWII World...). Ultra-Trumpist Carlson had arrived in Moscow convinced, like so many of the international right and left, that Putin had invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO from invading Russia. Afterwards, Carlson himself confessed that he was "shocked" to discover that he was not; that Putin had done it because of Russia's "historical claims" to Ukrainian lands.
What Putin didn't tell Carlson was the other reason he can't stand the idea of Ukraine choosing the European path. He fears that such a large neighboring country, with so many cultural ties to Russia, will become an example of Western prosperity and democratic freedom. He fears it precisely because of the message it would send to the crushed Russian people, half of whose inhabitants live in poverty, but colder than those in Mozambique or Haiti.
There are other possible scenarios for war in Ukraine. May it last until Putin completes his umpteenth presidential term in 2030, or beyond. Let Russian mothers rebel, and let them, types of the butchery to which Putin subjects their children, press for a withdrawal of troops, as happened during the failed and equally absurd Soviet war of the 1980s in Afghanistan Or that there is a miracle and the Ukrainian army expels the Russian. Either Putin dies of natural causes, or they kill him, so who knows what would happen.
In any case, in any imaginable or unimaginable scenario, the Russian fiasco is assured. Putin's idea was to obliterate the concept of Ukraine as a free nation and return it to the Soviet status of a submissive daughter of Mother Russia. Well no The war has forged an unprecedented nationalist sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in an endless hatred of Russians.
Incidentally, far from weakening democratic Europe, a habit implanted in his brain from his time in the KGB, Putin has managed to rearm the continent and for NATO to be extended to two more countries, Sweden and Finland. There is nothing to celebrate, of course. Ukrainians have had to suffer a tragedy as catastrophic as it is unnecessary. But there is a prize. there is light No one in the world - no one with two fingers on their forehead - who aspires to decency and freedom will doubt from now on, and even less after the death of the charismatic Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny, that Putin and his regime represent not only the worse, but the most stupid of mankind.
