One year into the war, a Russian defeat is the only way out
Dan Hannan
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A year has passed. A hundred thousand Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured, and maybe 125,000 Russians. Some 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have lost their lives. And we are further from a lasting settlement than we were when the fighting began.
The Russian economy has been set back by a decade. About 900,000 people have emigrated — mainly educated young people, especially IT workers. Meanwhile, each new wave of conscription takes more men out of the productive part of the economy.
In Ukraine, where factories, power plants, roads, and bridges have been targeted, the losses are more direct. That country, too, faces a demographic crisis, albeit a different one. Eight million Ukrainians have fled since the invasion, overwhelmingly women and children. Yes, some will return after the war. But the longer they remain abroad, the less likely they are to go back to relative poverty.
Meanwhile, the whole world feels the shock of the spike in oil and food prices. A global economy that had not yet healed from the lockdowns has lost another year of growth. And, to repeat, we are no nearer to peace.
Before the invasion, it was possible to glimpse the rough outlines of a deal. Talks in Minsk were focused on whether occupied parts of Ukraine might determine their future through referenda, though the Poroshenko government had been insistent that any polls must be run by the Ukrainian state and not by the authorities of the breakaway republics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is often forgotten, was elected as a relative moderate, a Russian speaker who promised peace. Even at the end of March 2022, a month after the invasion, he was talking about plebiscites to determine the final status of Crimea and the Donbas and some kind of guaranteed neutrality outside NATO.
But then came the discovery of the Bucha abominations and the start of a successful Ukrainian pushback. Western governments, reassured that their kit would not fall into enemy hands and buoyed by their voters’ unexpectedly strong sympathy for the Ukrainian cause, began to pour arms and artillery into that long-suffering land. In September, the counterattacks began, as Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians out of swathes of territory — first around Kharkiv in the north and then Kherson in the south.
A year on, it is now impossible to discern any acceptable peace terms. There is no space between the minimum demands of the two sides. Ingenious Western diplomats might concoct all sorts of formulae — Ukrainian membership of NATO in exchange for some territorial adjustments, Russian sovereignty over a demilitarized Crimea, self-government for Donetsk and Luhansk under notional Ukrainian sovereignty. But both governments would rather fight on than consider terms even vaguely along these lines.
Rather, as during World War One, the two sides are now too deeply committed to contemplate compromises that they might have accepted before the fighting. To extend that grisliest of parallels, each hopes to wear the other down. Ukraine believes that superior training, morale, and, above all, weaponry will prove decisive. A poll published on the anniversary of the war suggested that 95% of Ukrainians expect to win. Russia, meanwhile, is relying on manpower. So far, about five Russians have fallen for every four Ukrainians. The calculation in the Kremlin is that if that ratio were to rise to 3:2, or even to 2:1, Russia would still end up winning.
Where, then, does that leave us? Each side is preparing for a major push. Russia, possibly with Belarus in tow, may make another grab for Kyiv. Ukraine, which is waiting for Western tanks to arrive and for the thaw to pass so that they can be put to best effect, will continue its drive toward the Sea of Azov, aiming to cut Crimea off. One side or the other will need to accept that it is losing before peace can be seriously discussed.
We should not be neutral about which side. Britain and the U.S. promised to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty within its existing borders when it gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994, a promise also made, never forget, by Russia. In any case, those hundreds of thousands of casualties and that needless global poverty are the responsibility of just one of the two belligerents: Russia attacked a neighbor that offered it no threat.
Yes, we want a settlement so that the world resumes its economic recovery. Yes, we want the suffering to stop. No, we don’t want to sacrifice lives just to teach Putin a lesson. But the quickest way to peace, from here, is a Russian defeat.