91 - Six Months of War: Ukraine Resilient
What was meant to be a blitzkrieg, with the swift capture of Kyiv by Russian shock troops, has after six harrowing months become a slow-moving war of attrition, with little short-term likelihood of Putin conquering more than his current 20 percent of Ukraine and little chance of highly-motivated but under-resourced Ukrainian defenders pushing the Russians back. Nor does it appear that Russian generals are chafing, potentially planning to oust Putin. There is little talk, too, of both sides cutting their losses and negotiating peace.
A Ukrainian offensive, announced today in the south, may give Russia grief, but it is too soon to tell.
Saving Putin’s Face
Unless the new offensive succeeds against major odds, we are in for a long, possibly a very long, slog. No matter how thoroughly six months of war has punished both sides --- perhaps 80,000 Russian casualties and an equal loss on the Ukrainian side, plus innumerable civilian losses and the destruction of whole cities--- Putin still thinks that his war of attrition will win. He expects Ukraine’s supporters to tire of supplying the armed forces of Ukraine and their citizens to complain soon about energy shortages and influxes of refugees. Indeed, given the abysmal performance of his forces and their seeming inability to convert battering rams into conclusive military accomplishments, at this point Putin has no good options. Nor is there an immediate way to save Putin’s face and to let him declare “victory” and go back home as a self-proclaimed triumphant victor. How to save his face must be the urgent task of foreign diplomats and planners; no one inside Russia would dare.
Meanwhile, Putin has succeeded in uniting much of the world against Russia, not only for now, but for years to come. Belarus and China are allies, but neither have been enthusiastic fellow warriors. China may slowly be seeing Putin as little more than a useful acolyte. Certainly his standing, and the standing of Russia and Russians in the West has plummeted. How to bring Russia (without Putin?) back into Europe or even into the international arena is bound to be difficult. The bridges have been badly burned.
The Ukrainian Advance
To everyone’s surprise, Putin has accomplished the unexpected. He has rejuvenated Ukraine, creating a mostly united people and enterprise on the back of a hitherto pluralistic country with large Russian sympathies and linguistic affinities and, previously, little feeling for the entity now proudly called Ukraine and the language that before the war was regarded as inferior to Russian.
Putin’s malevolent genius has transformed a country with mixed loyalties and little confidence in its leaders or in its national purpose into a highly energized patriotic enterprise emboldened with an acute sense of noble mission driven by an evangelical surge to remain free and ineluctably Ukrainian.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, earlier a comedian, has powerfully inspired his people to accept greatness, and to believe that they could prevent Putin’s Russia from decapitating their until now little formed democratic destiny. Originally a mostly Russian speaker himself, Zelensky has transformed himself and his avid followers (including many Russian-mother tongue civilians) into Ukrainian-firsters. Together they have fostered new loyalties to the Ukrainian language and thus to Ukraine as a rapidly fully forming nation. In other words, under the shadow of all-out war, Zelensky and his followers have swiftly proceeded to build a nation – to construct a metaphorical wall to obstruct Putin’s Russian material and spiritual onslaughts.
Putin calls the Ukrainian language a “regional peculiarity.” But both have equally authentic origins in seventeenth century Old East Slavic and at no time was Ukrainian just a form of “bad Russian,” something Putin and his ilk may still attempt to believe. Until the invasion, eastern Ukrainians and citizens of Odesa preferred to speak Russian. Now, according to reports especially from Odesa, Ukrainian is the language of choice.
According to high quality opinion polls, whereas Ukrainians in 2012 only at the 62 percent level “supported” Ukrainian “independence,” figures published last week show that such “support” has climbed to a formidable 97 percent. Ukrainians, say the polling experts, are now “overwhelmingly proud” of Ukraine (at the 75 percent level). They want to be identified as Europeans (up from 35 percent last year to 60 percent now). They prioritize independence first, freedom second, and prosperity a distant third.
A reputed 92 percent of Ukrainians say that they will win –that they will be victorious over Russia. But, despite some amazingly effective guerrilla-like thrusts behind Russian lines, the blowing up of ships, airfields, and ammunition dumps, re-ordering the actual battle lines is proceeding very slowly. Ukraine has been trying for weeks to make a breakthrough that will prevent Russian forces from advancing from Kherson toward Odesa. Likewise, Russia has not been able to overcome Ukrainian resistance there or even on the other edges of the eastern front. All Putin’s army seems able to do is to shell railway stations in the region and to pummel parts of beleaguered Kharkiv (still in Ukrainian control).
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is another standoff that illustrates the futility of a war that has lost whatever purpose it may once have had for Russia. Holding it gives Russian troops a place from which they can fire on nearby Ukrainians with little fear of retaliation. Otherwise, it is a terrible calamity waiting to happen as a result of Russian errors of omission or commission. And the free world largely wants the Russians out. If the International Energy Authority can really take charge this coming week, then a Chernobyl-like tragedy for the world and Ukraine might be averted. Otherwise it may remain a monument to Russian blackmail just as much as the invasion of Ukraine and today’s plodding war are central to Putin’s vanity project.
Squaring the Circle
If we look for possible glimmers of encouragement in addition to Ukraine’s nation building and Putin’s loss of esteem globally, the UN breaking of the grain blockade in the Black Sea, and the possible demilitarization of Zaporizhzhia, are hopeful signs. But the West and the UN still have to give Putin an exit opening if much of eastern and southern Ukraine is to be spared a long, sad, winter in the trenches, a la the Somme.