Ukraine Must Win
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The war in Ukraine has reached a turning point. The Russian troops that invaded the country from the north, south, and east are now scarcely moving. They have targeted schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and a theater sheltering children, but they are not yet in control even of the places they occupy. And no wonder: Few Ukrainians are willing to collaborate with the occupiers. The overwhelming majority, more than 90 percent, believe they will defeat them. The Ukrainian army refuses to surrender, even in cities badly damaged by bombardment.
Russian planners expected the entire war, the conquest of Ukraine, to last no more than six weeks. More than half that time has already passed. There must be an endgame, a moment when the conflict stops. The Ukrainians, and the democratic powers that support Ukraine, must work toward a goal. That goal should not be a truce, or a muddle, or a decision to maintain some kind of Ukrainian resistance over the next decade, or a vow to “ bleed Russia dry ,” or anything else that will prolong the fighting and the instability. That goal should be a Ukrainian victory.
Before you can achieve something, you have to imagine what it will look like. And in this war, victory can be imagined without difficulty. It means that Ukraine remains a sovereign democracy, with the right to choose its own leaders and make its own treaties. There will be no pro-Russian puppet regime in Kyiv, no need for a prolonged Ukrainian resistance, no continued fighting. The Russian army retreats back over the borders. Maybe those borders could change, or maybe Ukraine could pledge neutrality, but that is for the Ukrainians to decide and not for outsiders to dictate. Maybe international peacekeepers are needed. Whatever happens, Ukraine must have strong reasons to believe that Russian troops will not quickly return.
Imagine, too, the consequences of such a victory. In Washington, most people have long believed that Ukraine is part of a regional conflict, and that Ukraine is a piece of territory that the Russians care more about than we do and always will. But this is no longer true. The Ukrainians, and especially their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, have made their cause a global one by arguing that they fight for a set of universal ideas—for democracy, yes, but also for a form of civic nationalism, based on patriotism and a respect for the rule of law; for a peaceful Europe, where disputes are resolved by institutions and not warfare; for resistance to dictatorship. Zelensky has urged Americans to remember Pearl Harbor . He appealed to the German Parliament with the phrase “ Never again ”—a mantra used to mean that no Hitler would be allowed to arise again—and told members that, in light of the brutal war in his country, those words are now “worthless.” He called on the European Parliament to “prove that you indeed are Europeans” and admit Ukraine to the European Union.
This language is effective because it evokes the principles that bind together the majority of Europeans, Americans, and many other people around the world, reminding them of how much worse the world was in the bloodier past, and how much worse it could be in the future if those principles no longer matter. The words Zelensky uses also reverberate because they are true. A victory for Ukraine really will be a victory for all who believe in democracy and the rule of law. Citizens of existing democracies and members of the democratic opposition in Russia, Cuba, Belarus, and Hong Kong will all be emboldened. “Their struggle is ours,” a Venezuelan acquaintance told me last week. The institutions protecting the states that embody those ideas, most notably the European Union and NATO, will be strengthened too.
Zelensky’s words resonated further because the Russians have also given this conflict enormous significance. The Russian foreign minister has just declared that this war will change global politics: “This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order. The current crisis is a fateful, epoch-making moment in modern history. It reflects the battle over what the world order will look like.” Much as Stalin once declared that, when the Second World War ended, “everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach,” President Vladimir Putin had planned for the Russian army to impose Russia’s autocratic, kleptocratic political system on all of Ukraine. Already, the Russian occupation of some eastern-Ukrainian towns resembles the Soviet occupation of Central Europe at the end of World War II. Public officials and civic leaders—mayors and police but also members of Parliament, journalists, museum curators—have been arrested and not seen since. Civilians have been terrorized at random. In Mariupol, authorities report that citizens are being forcibly deported to Russia, just as Soviet secret police deported Balts, Poles, and others to Russia after the invasions of 1939 and 1945. In the case of a Russian victory, these tactics would be applied all over Ukraine, creating mass terror, mass violence, and instability for years to come. And, yes, if we accept that outcome, autocrats from Minsk to Caracas to Beijing will take note: Genocide is now allowed.
Precisely because the stakes are so high, the next few weeks will be extremely dangerous. Putin will do what he can to create fear. The extraordinary speech he made last week, describing Russian critics of the war as “scum,” “traitors,” and “gnats,” had exactly that purpose. He spoke of Russia’s need for “self-purification” using a word with the same root as purge , the term that Stalin used when ordering the liquidation of his enemies. Putin is deliberately evoking the worst and bloodiest era of Soviet history to avoid even a hint of domestic opposition. He has just thrown away 30 years of economic gains, 30 years of Russian integration with the outside world, 30 years of investment in order to turn the clock back to the era of his youth—an era that the majority of Russians no longer remember and few wish to see restored. He seems to believe that only elevated levels of fear will prevent them from protesting, once they understand what has happened to their country. He may be right.
Putin and his propagandists are dropping hints about chemical and nuclear weapons for the same reason. They want outsiders, and especially Americans, to fear the consequences of helping Ukraine. The use of hypersonic weaponry ; the threats of nuclear wa r made on Russian television; even the habit, established a few years back, of practicing the use of nuclear weapons during military exercises, sometimes to simulate a hit on Warsaw, sometimes to simulate a bomb exploding in the air—all of that has a purpose. So does the strange, ranting, anti-Polish letter issued by Dimitri Medvedev, the Putin crony who briefly served as president of Russia before Putin decided he wanted the job back again. This screed contained insults, veiled threats, and an old Soviet-era complaint that the Poles were “ungrateful” that the Red Army pushed Hitler out of Poland, and then established a brutal new occupation regime in Hitler’s wake. Among other things, Medvedev was sending a reminder: Poland could be next. The recent Russian strike on a base near the Polish border sent the same message.
How should the West respond? There is only one rule: We cannot be afraid. Russia wants us to be afraid—so afraid that we are crippled by fear, that we cannot make decisions, that we withdraw altogether, leaving the way open for a Russian conquest of Ukraine, and eventually of Poland or even further into Europe. Putin remembers very well an era when Soviet troops controlled the eastern half of Germany. But the threat to those countries will not decrease if Russia carries out massacres in Ukraine. It will grow.
Instead of fear, we should focus on a Ukrainian victory. Once we understand that this is the goal, then we can think about how to achieve it, whether through temporary boycotts of Russian gas, oil, and coal; military exercises elsewhere in the world that will distract Russian troops; humanitarian airlifts on the scale of 1948 Berlin; or more and better weapons.
The specific tactics will be determined by those who best understand diplomacy and military strategy. But the strategy has to be clear. A month ago, nobody believed this war would matter so much, and I’m sure many people wish it did not. But it does. That’s why every move we make must have a single goal: How does it help Ukraine win?
“It’s not our war” was something we might have been able to say three weeks ago. Not now.
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Push has become shove, has in which direction become as clear? I am starting to believe so.
It's been ''our war'' going back to the first invasion of Chechnya.
Russia’s defeat should include massive restitution to Ukraine. It won’t happen because they will be too broke to even support themselves, and the rest of the world will have little interest in relaxing sanctions. Being geographically situated next to Russia is just a curse.
It wasn't that long ago that the new Russian Federation paid off the foreign debts racked up by the USSR. It took 28 years.
Hopefully 30 years from now Ukraine will have many brand new rebuilt cities, but better than Soviet designs...
paid for by what ever replaces the Russian Federation.
I can't believe I am actually agreeing with some of the liberals here. Where we still may disagree is what help and assistance we should give the Ukrainians. I think we should give them the most sophisticated weapons we have and send the necessary troops to train them in their use. We should allow the Poles to send their MIGs in ASAP. We should send some green berets in to train the Ukrainian irregular troops and free up the Ukrainian soldiers that are in training them now for front line status.
Much of that simply takes too long.
It sounds good in theory but won't make much difference, the older migs have a third of the capability of the MiG 31 and the newer Russian planes can spot the Mig29s at three times the distance. They need Patriots, S300 Russian systems or Iron Dome systems to maintain their own no fly zone.
Sounds like Viet Nam doesn't it? But I would have sent in trainers by now...
British SAS (Special Air Service) is there now according to recent reports.
Morning....yes there are 34 nationalities that have rolled up to help Ukraine since Russia invaded it...
Many are ex Afghanistan and Iraq vets...around 250 Brits went over from our reports... there are a few Aussies in there but any with dual citizenship have been warned it will be revoked if they leave from Australia to go...but after seeing what Russia has done they are going...
The Ukraine embassy was fielding 50 calls a day here with people wanting to go over and fight..
So Putin's plan for over in a few days is caput and now realising Ukraine is not the push over he thought it would be...
We are sending over a ship load of coal that will be off loaded in Poland to make its way hopefully into Ukraine...with our compliments..plus approximately 200 million worth of military and humanitarian aid...that will go in from Europe as we are just a tad to far away...but every little bit helps...and I am more than happy to put my name on any of it...
There are also Americans and Canadians fighting there. There was video of a fierce firefight outside of Kyiv and you could hear the different languages being spoken. There are a number of Chechnya's fighting with the Ukrainians along with a fairly large number of Georgians called the Georgia Legion and also a fair number of Belarusians.
There was an interview yesterday on US TV of a Ukrainian fighter. He sure didn't look Ukrainian and was asked by the interviewer and he was Lebanese who immigrated from Lebanon a few years earlier and was married to a Ukrainian. A battle hardened fighter that fought for years in the Lebanese civil war. In perfect English he said, ''fuck the Russians'' I have to kill a few more.
Yes heard a few American accents in the videos I have seen..plus getting reports from people on the ground there are foreigners in their towns etc and they are very happy to see them...
I was just reading a report here that the Ukrainians have taken back a part of Kyiv the Russians had taken...
Who knows could be just the beginning of the end for the Russian invaders..🇦🇺🇺🇦
Yes, it was confirmed here in the states that they had taken back a suburb of Kyiv.
More is always better and the MIGs that the Poles would send couldn't hurt
Just saw this this morning...
The US Army's Green Berets quietly helped tilt the battlefield a little bit more toward Ukraine (msn.com)
from 2014 to 2022.
All this propaganda rings hollow because everyone is ignoring the framework that was negotiated in 2014 to resolve the conflict. Russia is implementing the Minsk Agreement by military force.
Russia is employing the same military tactics the Ukrainian government has employed in Donbas. Russia is committing the same war crimes that the Ukrainian government has committed in Donbas, as described by Volodymyr Zelenski.
If Russia wanted to install a puppet government then the focus of attention would have been Kyiv. Annexing Ukraine would have involved decapitating the Ukrainian government and then exerting Russian control out from Kyiv. Attacking Kherson and Mariupol first would be a waste of time and resources. A goal of capturing and annexing Ukraine would have involved squeezing the Ukrainian military between Russian forces in the west and pro-Russian Ukrainians in the east. Russia would have made a concerted effort to control Ukrainian airspace. The Russian navy would have been more active in the fighting. Russia hasn't been utilizing its military capability in a manner to capture and annex Ukraine.
The brass heads of the United States military have been lying. President Joe Biden has been lying. The Obama administration attempted to undermine the Minsk Agreements in 2015. Biden is following Obama's plan to use Ukraine as a proxy to confront Russia. The bloody fingerprints of the United States are all over the Ukrainian conflict and Russia's invasion.
Russia is doing the same thing to Ukraine that the Ukrainian government has been doing to pro-Russian Ukrainians in Donbas for the last eight years. Putin's justification for invading Ukraine cited the same points and conditions that were agreed to in 2014 in the trilateral Minsk protocols and agreements.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has been performing a monitoring mission in Ukraine since 2014 (as part of the Minsk agreements). The OSCE mission has reported ceasefire violations and human rights violations by both sides in Donbas since 2014. The OSCE has reported the use of landmines in Donbas that is threatening the safety of civilians. The OSCE mission has not reported evidence of the Russian military operating in the contested region of Donbas. Russia has provided arms and training to pro-Russian Ukrainians in eastern Donbas. The United States government has been providing arms and training to the Ukrainian military.
Volodymyr Zelensky has been utilizing the propaganda ploy that claims pro-Russian Ukrainians are not Ukrainians. Zelensky has claimed that pro-Russian Ukrainians in Donbas are Russian terrorists. And the Zelensky government has excused human rights violations in Donbas as a war on terror. The Obama administration supported Zelensky's propaganda.
What will Ukraine win by defeating Russia? The right to kill its own people? The right to buy airplanes, tanks, artillery, missiles, and bombs from the United States? The right to deploy sophisticated military arms on Russia's border to protect the interests of the United States in Europe?
The Minsk Agreements of 2014 provided a framework that allowed Ukraine to protect the integrity and control of its national borders, allowed pro-Russian Ukrainians autonomy and self government within Ukraine, and protected Russian interests in the Black Sea. The United States has meddled to undermine the Minsk agreement from the beginning. Why?
Why are you taking the Russians side of this conflict. They are truly the aggressors in this conflict. Crimea and Donbas and the other eastern provence we're and are Ukrainian territory. They were taken or encouraged by the Russians. Do you think we would stand idly by if Mexico decided to attempt to take over Arizona? (Of course it could be said that that is exactly what Biden is doing in our border.)
Vladimir Putin agreed that Donbas was Ukrainian territory in 2014. That was an important condition in the Minsk Agreements negotiated in 2014. That's a critical point that everyone ignores.
That was in 2014. Immaterial now.
Well it was once part of Mexico, lol.
It could be, but it isn't.
Texas national guardsmen say mission to secure the border is a waste of time and resources - CNNPolitics