As the third year of the war is starting things look dire for Ukraine.
With the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine having passed it is remarkable just how much have changed in two years. At this time in 2022 the battle of Kyiv was raging and plenty of people, myself included, expected the city to fall. One year later Ukraine was on the offensive and Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that Ukraine would be able to get everything back, including Crimea, seemed possible. Now, the mood is completely different, the idea that Ukraine could win seem farther off than ever, and the recent firing of general Zaluzhny raises concerns about the political unity and priorities of the leadership in Kyiv. In my predictions for the year I speculated that the war will end this year, and the situation on the battlefield hardens that belief.
The last major development is the fall of Avdiivka, a fairly unimportant town in the greater scheme of things, but an important symbolic victory for the Russians. I would expect that momentum to continue as France and Germany are having a dispute about how to support Ukraine while the American congress continues to struggle to get a deal to send aid. Given the immense imbalance in resources and arms production capacity in favour of Russia Ukraine needs help from foreign powers to stand a chance, and as I’ve discussed before, military support is a feedback loop where strong battlefield performance begets more aid, and weak performance begets less aid. The struggle to get an aid package through congress is directly hindered by the fall of Avdiivka, and that makes losing further ground more likely.
With the previously positive feedback loop starting to sour it might be time to think about a negotiated peace. Zelensky almost certainly isn’t thinking about it as it would undermine all his rhetoric about a complete victory; but rest assured, decision makers in Paris and Washington DC certainly are. In an ironic twist it is precisely Russia’s aforementioned loss in the battle of Kyiv which makes Ukraine’s allies so unreliable. If Russia was seen to be able to push all the way to the Slovakian border then central Europe would feel threatened so the need to support Ukraine would be a lot stronger. It doesn’t really matter who controls the Donbass and the areas east of the Dnieper to America, France, or Germany so their reasons for stopping Russia comes down to morals and schadenfreude. Morals are a luxury one can seldom afford in international politics however, and I expect the talking points to change as it becomes clear that Ukraine will not win. But Russia will have no reasons to sue for peace when they are advancing, at least not with Ukraine. Instead I expect the Western powers to sell out Ukraine in a peace deal without consulting Zelensky.
In short, things look bleak for Ukraine. I wonder what history will make of Zelensky. He might go down in history as a heroic figure who was sabotaged by the West. Or he might be remembered like Karl XII, militarily a hero but terrible at strategic thinking which ultimately did more damage than his victories in the field did good. I think Ukraine should have pushed for peace after the liberation of Kharkiv. But that’s the thing about looking back; history always seems inevitable in hindsight.
For the sake of the soldiers and their loved ones whichever flag they are fighting under I hope there won’t be another anniversary of the war. It easy to sit here writing about it in a detached way but it’s a matter of life and death for hundreds of thousands of people. For their sake peace at the current zones of control is probably the best outcome. There is after all only one iron law of international relations, as Thucydides put it: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Ukraine is looking weak at the moment and that weakness can only lead to more suffering.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson