President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says world order is at stake in the Ukraine war.
“If Ukraine falls, what will happen in ten years? Just think about it. If [the Russians] reach Poland, what’s next? A Third World War?” Zelenskyy told Scott Pelley in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday. “We’re defending the values of the whole world. And these are Ukrainian people who are paying the highest price. We are truly fighting for our freedom, we are dying. We are not fiction, we are not a book. We are fighting for real with a nuclear state that threatens to destroy the world.”
Zelenskyy on U.S. funding for Ukraine against Russia
Citing the roughly $70 billion the United States has contributed to Ukraine’s war effort, Pelley asked Zelenskyy if he expected that level of support to continue.
“The United States of America [is] supporting Ukraine financially and I’m grateful for this,” Zelenskyy said. “I just think they’re not supporting only Ukraine. If Ukraine falls, Putin will surely go further. What will the United States of America do when Putin reaches the Baltic states? When he reaches the Polish border? He will. This is a lot of money. We have a lot of gratitude. What else must Ukraine do for everyone to measure our huge gratitude? We are dying in this war.”
“What will it take?” Pelley asked, “Another $70 billion?”
“I don’t have an answer,” Zelenskyy answered, “The whole world [has to] decide whether we want to stop Putin, or whether we want to start the beginning of a world war. We can’t change Putin. Russian society has [lost] the respect of the world. They elected him and re-elected him and raised a second Hitler. They did this. We cannot go back in time. But we can stop it here.”
Zelenskyy on threats of nuclear war, 2024 U.S. election
Zelenskyy says Putin will use the threat of nuclear war to stoke instability in the United States and Europe.
“I think that he’s going to continue threatening,” Zelenskyy said. “He is waiting for the United States to become less stable. He thinks that’s going to happen during the U.S. election. He will be looking for instability in Europe and the United States of America. He will use the risk of using nuclear weapons to fuel that [instability]. He will keep on threatening.”
Uncertainty surrounding the upcoming U.S. presidential election concerns Zelenskyy. Although he says he hasn’t received some military aide fast enough, he has been grateful for President Biden’s support.
Zelenskyy on Ukraine’s slow counteroffensive, drone strikes in Russia
Zelenskyy admits progress has been slow in the counter-offensive, but says Ukrainian troops comprised mostly of draftees are moving forward. The 700-mile frontline has become an artillery duel with both Russians and Ukrainians firing 40,000 shells a day. Drone warfare has also slowed progress.
“It’s a difficult situation. I will be completely honest with you. We have the initiative. This is a plus,” Zelenskyy said. “We stopped the Russian offensive and we moved onto a counter-offensive. And despite that, it’s not very fast. It is important that we are moving forward every day and liberating territory.”
“We need to liberate our territory as much as possible and move forward, even if it’s less than [half a mile or] a hundred [yards] we must do it,” Zelenskyy continued. “We mustn’t give Putin a break.”
Zelenskyy also commented on the drone strikes against Russia, which Ukraine doesn’t officially acknowledge.
“You do know that we use our partners’ weapons on the territory of Ukraine only,” Zelenskyy said. “And this is true, but these are not punitive missions, such as they carry out killing civilians. Russia needs to know that wherever it is, whichever place they use for launching missiles to strike Ukraine, Ukraine has every moral right to attack those places. We are responding to them saying: ‘Your sky is not as well protected, as you think.'”
With reference to the numerous non-military targets Russia has attacked, Pelley asked Zelenskyy what he thought Putin was trying to accomplish by killing civilians.
“To break [us],” Zelenskyy said. “And by choosing civilian targets, Putin wanted to achieve exactly this – to break [us]. This person who has made his way with such bloody actions, with everything he has said, cannot be trusted. There is no trust in such a person because he has not been a human being for a long time.”
Zelenskyy is scheduled to travel to the U.S. this week to address the United Nations General Assembly and visit the White House and Congress.
The results of the Levada Center’s latest installment in its series of polls on Russians’ attitudes’ toward Russia’s war in Ukraine indicate that the share of peaceniks continues to exceed the share of war hawks among common Russians.
In fact, if adding the shares of those who definitely support and those who rather support the launch of peace negotiations (Option 1) with those who definitely support and those who rather support the continuation of the so-called special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine (Option 2), then total support for the launch of peace talks (Option 1) has exceeded total support for continued war (Option 2) in (almost) all monthly polls since September 2022,1 except for May 2023 (see Graph 1).
Levada’s August poll shows that Russians’ support for peace talks decreases as their age increases, but peaceniks still outnumber war hawks even among those 55 and older. As many as 64% of those aged between 18 and 24 called for peace talks in August.2 In comparison, of respondents aged 55 years and older, only 44% favored such talks in August (which is, however, still 1 percentage point more than the share of respondents in this age group who favored continuing the SVO), according to Levada.
That the overall majority of respondents consistently favors peace talks is particularly remarkable given that all Russian-state-controlled media outlets promote the Kremlin’s pro-war views, as well as the fact that in Russia, expressing a dissenting view on the war even privately (e.g., in a private chat on a messaging app) can land one in jail.
It should be noted, however, that if one were to compare attitudes among those that have strong views, then staunch peaceniks have actually been outnumbered by staunch supporters of war for months, and August is no exception (23% versus 22%, see Graph 2). When comparing the shares of those who “definitely” favor the launch of peace talks (Option 1.A) and those who “definitely” favor continuing the SVO (Option 2.A), the share of those who favor Option 2.A exceeded the share of those who favor Option 1.A in all monthly polls, except for October 2022 (see Table 2). Perhaps this enduring trend is one argument that the dominant hawkish wing in the Russian elite invokes when arguing for the continuation of war.
Footnotes:
A simplified version of this poll in August 2022 asked respondents if they support continuing the war or launching peace negotiations. Between the two options, 48% of respondents chose continuing war, while 44% supported launching peace negotiations.
It should be noted that multiple Levada polls have revealed that younger Russians tend to take a less hardline stance on political issues.
Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, unless otherwise stated. Photo by Mil.ru shared via a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Angelina Flood also contributed to this blog post.
Naval base at Sevastopol; photo by Natylie Baldwin, October 2015.
I have made some comments parenthetically that may provide some additional insight into the type of Crimean Tatar Rustem Umerov is, based on research I did for the in depth article I published after my 2015 trip to Crimea. RT has also published a lengthy article on Umerov here – Natylie
By Elizaveta Antonova (translation by Sam Breazeale), Meduza, 9/7/23
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has a new leader for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion. After a recent series of corruption scandals at the agency, previous Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov resigned from his post at Zelensky’s request on September 4. His replacement, Rustem Umerov, is a Muslim and an advocate for the rights of Crimean Tatars. Though he has no military experience, Umerov does have connections in Turkey and several Arab countries, which could prove valuable as Kyiv seeks to convince largely neutral countries to take Ukraine’s side in the conflict. He’s also joined multiple rounds of peace talks with Russia (and may have been poisoned in the process). Meduza examines Umerov’s biography and shares insights from sources in Ukraine about the country’s new defense minister.
A member of the ‘Crimea lobby’
Rustem Umerov is 41 years old. He was born in Uzbekistan to a Muslim family of Crimean Tatars who had been deported by the Soviet authorities from the Crimean city of Alushta in 1944. The family returned to their native peninsula in the late 1980s.
After studying economics in college, Umerov started his career as a manager for the Ukrainian mobile operator Lifecell in 2004. In 2010, he entered the investment business, working as a managing director for ICG Investments and iCapital before starting his own investment firm, Astem, together with his brother, Aslan Omer Kyrymly.
According to the Ukrainian outlet New Voice, the brothers also founded the Astem Foundation, which has contributed funds to Stanford University’s Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, a fellowship for Ukrainian lawyers, businessmen, public figures, and entrepreneurs.
In 2007, Umerov helped create the Crimean Tatars’ Association, a nonprofit representing Crimean Tatars’ interests in Ukraine. From 2007 to 2019, he served as an advisor to longtime Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev. [Dzhemilev was associated with the Majlis which was, for many years, the self-proclaimed Tatar assembly in Crimea, serving as its chair for many years. The assembly was admittedly not very popular among the general Crimean Tatar population and was ineffective at solving the many problems that the Tatar community had faced within independent Ukraine since the 90’s. These included naturalization, enfranchisement, legitimization of land acquisition, and poor infrastructure. Dzhemilev supported the 2014 coup in Ukraine (and was rewarded with influence in Petro Poroshenko’s government), was notorious for dismissing concerns about the activities of Ukrainian ultranationalists and actively supported the economic blockade of post-coup Crimea and the cutting of electricity to the peninsula. You can read more here. – Natylie]
In 2012, Umerov became a co-founder and board member of the Crimean International Business Association, and in the summer of 2021, he was elected co-chairman of the international summit Crimea Platform. Last year, he described the conference as an “international venue at which we’ll discuss the fate of our Ukrainian Crimea in the future.”
A source from the Ukrainian government who knows Umerov described the new minister to Meduza as a “representative of the new generation of the Crimean Tatar elites”: “These are guys in the Ukrainian government and business world whose fathers and grandfathers fought for their people’s rights. Like Mustafa Dzhemilev, for example.”
According to the source, other members of this group include Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova, Permanent Ukrainian Presidential Representative in Crimea Tamila Tasheva, and several officials in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. “It’s sort of like a lobby for Crimea and Crimean Platform,” he said. “They fight to ensure that Crimea will always remain part of Ukraine. It’s an important part of [Rustem Umerov’s] life and work.”
An experienced negotiator
In the spring of 2022, after the start of the full-scale war, Umerov took part in the Russia–Ukraine peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey. On March 29, 2022, he attended a meeting in Istanbul where Kyiv offered “permanent neutrality” to Russia in exchange for international legal guarantees.
Umerov’s knowledge of Turkish and his links to Turkey came in handy during his talks with Russia, in which Ankara frequently served as a mediator, a source close to Ukraine’s security forces told Meduza. According to the source, Umerov managed to establish good relations with Turkey’s foreign minister (who previously served as its intelligence chief), Hakan Fidan.
Another source in the Ukrainian government said he has also heard about Umerov’s connections to Turkish politicians. Before branching into politics, Umerov was an investment advisor for the Turkish company Turkcell, Turkey’s leading mobile operator and owner of the Ukrainian company Lifecell, where Umerov began his career.
Poisoned at a peace negotiation?
In March 2023, Umerov joined Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, on a visit to the UAE and shortly afterward accompanied Volodymyr Zelensky to Saudi Arabia, according to Forbes Ukraine. He also helped organize talks between Zelensky and the Saudi authorities in July 2023, a source close to Ukraine’s security forces told Meduza.
Umerov’s many connections have made it possible for him to help the Ukrainian president’s office and its head, Andriy Yermak, to build a strategy for working with the Middle East and the Global South, according to a Ukrainian official who knows the new defense minister:
Thanks to Rustem, some very significant things have happened for Ukraine. This includes [prisoner] exchanges, Ukraine’s involvement in the fate of our Azov fighters, and President Zelensky’s participation in the [2023] Arab League Summit — a first for Ukraine. Furthermore, we understand the level of influence Russia has on these countries, and the [Ukrainian] president was allowed to participate despite that.
The official emphasized that Umerov has played a crucial role in establishing Ukraine’s bilateral relations with the Muslim world.
Additionally, the Ukrainian outlet Babel has reported that Umerov was involved in the Black Sea grain deal negotiations.
In September 2022, Umerov flew to Saudi Arabia during the large prisoner exchange there, according to a Meduza source close to Ukraine’s security forces. This is consistent with other sources’ accounts of Umerov’s international relationships, as Turkey and Saudi Arabia served as the deal’s mediators. A source familiar with the exchange process confirmed to Meduza that Umerov indeed “may have [flown] to Saudi Arabia as part of the exchange,” but the source did not elaborate.
Vitaliy Shabunin, who heads the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote about the exchange process on Facebook. “Since February 2022, Umerov — an important member of the group that conducts all of the closed negotiations over the release of POWs — has freed more than 2,000 of our people, including the Azovstal fighters,” explained Shabunin.
Umerov’s appointment as defense minister says a lot about Kyiv’s current approach to the war, a source in the Ukrainian government told Meduza. On one hand, they said, it shows how important Crimea still is for Ukraine. On the other hand, Umerov is among the most active proponents of Zelensky’s “peace formula” at international forums.
Zelensky first presented his “peace formula” to the leaders of the G20 in November 2022. The plan comprises 10 principles: nuclear, agricultural, and energy security; the release of all prisoners linked to the war; the restoration of Ukraine’s territory according to the borders agreed upon in 1991; the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and the cessation of hostilities; the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes; environmental protections; the prevention of further escalation; and a signed document confirming the end of the war. The “formula” was developed by the Ukrainian president’s office along with the country’s Foreign Ministry, and Rustem Umerov has helped promote it at international venues.
“Ukraine’s new defense minister is a good diplomat. He will actively recruit other states to support the Ukrainian ‘peace formula.’ First and foremost, he’ll recruit governments that haven’t defined their position on the war: the Global South, the Arab world, Africa, and Asia,” said a Ukrainian politician who spoke to Meduza. “I wouldn’t consider any of those things good news for Russia.”
A ‘strong manager’ who ‘brought in cash’
In 2019, Umerov was elected to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada as a member of the Holos party. As a parliamentary deputy, he was actively involved in issues related to the economy and ethnic minorities and helped draft dozens of bills.
On September 7, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada appointed Umerov as the head of the State Property Fund, an executive agency responsible for state property’s privatization, leasing, and use. “The proposal [for me to lead the State Property Fund] came from the president during one of the reports on POWs and armaments,” Umerov said in an October 2022 interview with Forbes Ukraine.
According to Umerov, one of his main goals as the fund’s leader was to attract foreign investors in Ukraine, even with the war still raging. “Umerov is a strong manager who understands how systems work and how to build these systems. In his year as the head of the State Property Fund, he achieved major results, bringing in the kind of cash it hadn’t seen for decades — largely thanks to his business-minded approach. He found good investors and started selling [Ukrainian] assets,” a source in the Ukrainian government told Meduza.
In the source’s view, all of these qualities should help the country’s new defense minister continue the reforms he’s initiated, including the development of Ukraine’s recently created Defense Procurement Agency and the digitization of the Defense Ministry.
A new kind of defense minister
Umerov’s appointment as Ukraine’s new defense minister would have been impossible if it weren’t for his “decent relationship” with Zelensky Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, a source close to Ukraine’s security forces told Meduza. Support from Ukraine’s international partners has also played a role, and Umerov’s candidacy received active endorsements from public organizations and anti-corruption activists such as Vitaliy Shabunin and Daria Kalenyuk, who spoke about it with their Western partners, according to Meduza’s source.
“Umerov is a new kind of person for the [Ukrainian] Defense Ministry. He has no military training or experience in the ministry. But we’ll see,” a source close to the Ukrainian security forces told Meduza.
The source added that he doesn’t foresee Umerov’s appointment directly impacting the court of the war: “In any case, under a law on security forces passed in 2018, only a civilian can become the head of the Defense Ministry.”
The Defense Ministry is responsible for the army’s budget and logistics, its awards, and strategic issues, while decisions about military operations fall to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a post currently held by General Valeriy Zaluzhny. Meanwhile, the General Staff determines the army’s resource requirements.
“So, Umerov is not going to be in charge of combat operations but will focus on matters related to the military-industrial complex, Ramstein negotiations [with NATO partners], and so on,” said Meduza’s source close to the Ukrainian security forces.
In his resignation statement, outgoing Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that one of Ukraine’s priorities moving forward will be to build long-term partnerships with key allies in order to establish real security guarantees and defense capabilities.
Umerov is expected to work on these issues as well — or, more precisely, to continue working on them, if the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s Vitaliy Shabunin is to be believed. According to Shabunin, “Umernov has been overseeing covert shipments of heavy weaponry from countries since the start of the war, which are not publicly disclosed.”
“Hopefully, it strengthens the Defense Ministry. Because before this, it seemed like we were having bad luck with appointments in this agency. Within the ministry, we understand all of our problems,” a source close to Ukraine’s security forces told Meduza.
According to the source, Reznikov’s dismissal was the result of numerous corruption scandals linked to the ministry.
“The defense minister allows that kind of thing in contracts and claims that he can’t control it, while meanwhile the whole world is collecting [donations] for drones for Ukraine, and volunteers are trying to help bring [victory] closer… Of course, trust [in Reznikov] was undermined,” he said.
During an appearance on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken explicitly said that the U.S. would not oppose Ukraine using U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory, a move that Moscow has previously called a “red line” which would make the United States a direct party to the conflict.
“We understand that the United States is considering sending those long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for for a long time,” Karl said in the interview. “These are long-range missiles, 200 miles in range. Are you okay if those missiles allow Ukraine to attack deep into Russian territory?”
“In terms of their targeting decisions, it’s their decision, not ours,” answered Blinken after some bloviation.
“We’ve seen an increasing number of attacks on Russian territory by Ukrainian drones, some in Moscow, Rostov-on-Don just a couple of days ago. Did you bring that up?” asked Karl.
“No,” said Blinken.
“Are you — are you okay with — I mean, obviously, they’re — it’s their decisions, but is this war now escalating into Russia?” asked Karl.
“Jon, we haven’t encouraged and we haven’t enabled any use of weapons outside of Ukraine’s territory,” Blinken said.
“Having said that, let’s take a step back for a second. Virtually every single day the Russians are attacking indiscriminately throughout the entire country of Ukraine. Just during the 48 hours that I was there going in, more missiles were launched at civilian targets, including in Kyiv while I was there; a horrific attack on a marketplace, people just going to buy food, civilians, had nothing to do with this war — killed 17 people. This is the daily life for Ukrainians. This is what they face every single day. So they have to make the basic decisions about how they’re going to defend their territory and how they’re working to take back what’s been seized from them. Our role, the role of dozens of other countries around the world that are supporting them, is to help them do that. And ultimately, what we all want is an end to this Russian aggression and an end to the aggression that, again, is just and is durable. That’s what Ukrainians want more than anyone else. That’s what we’re working toward.”
The interview then concluded without any further follow-up from Karl. By successfully winding down the clock babbling about what Ukraine has a right to do, Blinken avoided discussing the real issue of what the U.S. itself is doing.
Nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to attack Russian territory; Russia is attacking Ukrainian territory, so of course Ukraine has a right to retaliate. That is not being seriously debated anywhere. What’s being debated is whether the U.S. should be backing those attacks, because doing so could lead to nuclear war.
A year ago when Ukraine first started urging the United States to send it the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) — which has nearly four times the range of the HIMARS [high-mobility artillery rocket system] weapons the U.S. has been supplying — Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova immediately responded with a warning that their use on Russian territory would make the U.S. a direct participant in the conflict, and Russia would respond accordingly.
“If Washington decides to supply longer-range missiles to Kyiv, then it will be crossing a red line, and will become a direct party to the conflict,” Zakharova said, adding that Russia “reserves the right to defend its territory.”
As Michael Tracey noted on Twitter, Blinken was saying last year that Ukraine had provided assurances to the U.S. that it would not use the other weapons systems the U.S. has been supplying “against targets on Russian territory.”
Going by Blinken’s current statements and the attacks we’ve been seeing from Ukraine inside the Russian Federation, this agreement appears no longer to be in place. Blinken has already previously voiced support for Ukrainian use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Crimea, and now he’s saying the U.S. is fine with any U.S.-supplied weapons being used on any Russian territory.
Which means there appears to have been yet another massive escalation between nuclear superpowers, which is once again going alarmingly under-reported by the Western press.
In an article published in Antiwar in July, “ATACMS: Be Very Afraid of This Acronym,” West Suburban Peace Coalition President Walt Zlotow wrote that this missile system “has potential to draw the U.S. and NATO into all out war with Russia.” He continued:
“ATACMS are long range U.S. missiles that can strike up to 190 miles. Top U.S. officials, likely including President Biden, are seriously considering giving ATACMS to Ukraine in their battle to take back all Russian gains in Ukraine, including Crimea. They can reach both Crimea and the Russian mainland.
If so used by Ukraine to attack Russia, it may be a missile too far that could ignite Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Further escalation into nuclear confrontation between Russia and the U.S./NATO alliance seeking Russia’s defeat becomes more likely.”
The U.S. and its allies keep providing Ukraine with more and more offensive weapons that they had previously refused to supply for fear of getting drawn into the war and provoking a nuclear conflict.
Last year then Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov correctly predicted that the U.S. would wind up supplying the tanks, F-16s and ATACMS it had previously deemed too escalatory, because that had already been established as the trend from the beginning of the war.
“When I was in D.C. in November, before the invasion, and asked for Stingers, they told me it was impossible,” Reznikov told The New Yorker last year. “Now it’s possible. When I asked for 155-millimetre guns, the answer was no. HIMARS, no. HARM [high-speed anti-radiation missile], no. Now all of that is a yes.” He added, “Therefore, I’m certain that tomorrow there will be tanks and ATACMS and F-16s.”
As Branko Marcetic explained earlier this year in an article for Responsible Statecraft titled “Mission Creep? How the U.S. role in Ukraine has slowly escalated,” this continual pattern of escalation is actually incentivizing Russia to start taking aggressive action against western powers so that its warnings and red lines will cease being ignored.
“By escalating their support for Ukraine’s military, the U.S. and NATO have created an incentive structure for Moscow to take a drastic, aggressive step to show the seriousness of its own red lines,” Marcetic writes. “This would be dangerous at the best of times, but particularly so when Russian officials are making clear they increasinglyview the war as one against NATO as a whole, not merely Ukraine, while threatening nuclear response to the alliance’s escalation in weapons deliveries.”
“Moscow keeps saying escalatory arms transfers are unacceptable and could mean wider war; U.S. officials say since Moscow hasn’t acted on those threats, they can freely escalate. Russia is effectively told it has to escalate to show it’s serious about lines,” Marcetic added on Twitter.
And it’s just so strange how this isn’t the main thing everyone talks about all the time. The fact that we are drawing closer and closer to nuclear conflict should dominate headlines every single day, and the subject of how to avoid planetary disaster should be the constant focus of mainstream political discourse. But it isn’t, because that would interfere with the grand chessboard maneuverings of a globe-dominating empire working to secure unipolar planetary domination by undermining disobedient nations like Russia and China.
It’s hard to think about the end of the world. It’s hard to even wrap your mind around it, much less stand staring into the harsh white light of deep contemplation about what it is and what it would mean. A lot of cognitive dissonance and discomfort comes up, and it’s easier to shift one’s attention to something easier to chew on like the presidential race.
But this is something that urgently needs to be looked at. Because the people steering our world today appear to be driving blind.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Davis is a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.
In Washington, Brussels, and Kyiv, a never-ending stream of government officials, military officers, and opinion leaders often and defiantly declare they will support Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s illegal invasion “for as long as it takes.” The war’s objective, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is to drive every Russian out of Ukrainian territory. In the face of overwhelming and mounting evidence that there is no viable military path to a Ukrainian victory, such defiance and confidence is more likely to cause harm than to help.
Far from enabling Ukraine to win the war, the most likely outcome of continuing to resolutely fight is to doom Kyiv’s most valuable asset — its people — to ever deeper levels of loss. Providing blanket support to a country so it can continue fighting a war it is very likely to lose is, in my view, immoral.
If we truly care about the people of Ukraine, it is time to chart a new path forward — and before tens or scores of thousands more Ukrainians needlessly pay the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of a militarily unattainable objective.
Most of my adult life has been spent preparing for war, engaged in high intensity combat, or analyzing ongoing conflicts. During my four combat deployments I was shot at, bombed, or rocketed numerous times. And I have seen, on far too many occasions, the devastation and sorrow — the so-called collateral damage — imposed on the men, women, and children helplessly caught between warring parties. It is an egregious waste of human life.
I will concede up front that while any war is being actively fought, there are no guarantees of any outcome. It is theoretically possible Kyiv could win, Moscow could win, or that the conflict degenerates into a bloody stalemate of indefinite duration. Yet based on my personal experience with both peacetime training and active combat operations, I assess, with a high degree of confidence, that the chances Ukraine will attain Zelensky’s objectives are so remote as to be unrealistic.
At the moment, there is no appetite in either Kyiv or Moscow to even contemplate active negotiations to end the war. Both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin are hardened into their corners, each apparently believing that with enough time, their side can amass sufficient numbers of trained personnel, armored platforms, air power, and ammunition to prevail on the battlefield. Odds are strong that neither is correct.
Whether Ukraine and Russia come to a settlement now, a year from now, or five years from now, the ultimate outcome will likely be the same: a negotiated end in which neither side gets everything it wants. Every delay in reaching that point condemns untold thousands to unnecessary deaths.
My colleague Rajon Menon, who has made three trips to Ukraine since the war began, has met with civilians, government officials, and combat troops at the frontlines. The citizenry of a nation that has been invaded will endure remarkable lengths to resist, he told me in a recent email, “enduring losses that outsiders may deem irrational.”
Wars only end, he continued, when one side comes to the point where they conclude “it’s better to compromise than to suffer additional losses.
“Not one person, soldier or civilian I’ve ever met on any of my wartime visits to Ukraine,” he somberly observed, “has said that the death and destruction had gotten so bad that it was time for talks and a settlement involving territorial concessions.”
Based on a number of Russian Telegram channels I have read, the opinion of many in Russia would seem to mirror such views. It is virtually certain, therefore, that without something changing the dynamics from the outside, the war will slog on mindlessly for the foreseeable future.
If a rational, unemotional analysis of the balance of power between Russia (with its few supporters) and Ukraine (with the support of 50 nations) suggested a valid path for Ukraine to achieve Zelensky’s objectives via military means, it would be reasonable for the United States to continue supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces “for as long as it takes.” Not that there would need to be a guarantee of success. Perhaps as little as a 25% chance of success would be enough. Fully committed nations and soldiers have sometimes succeeded against great odds.
But those cases are rare.
The vast majority of major wars have predictably been won by the side that holds the most fundamentals of combat power on its side. In this case, that means Russia.
Cathal J. Nolan, author of the 2017 book The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars have been Won and Lost, argues that his research of studying wars over many centuries reveals that most major state-on-state conflicts are not decided by which side is in the moral right, which has the highest morale, or even which side employs the best commanders. “Wars are won by grinding, not by genius,” Nolan explained.
“Celebration of genius generals encourages the delusion that modern wars will be short and won quickly,” he explained, “when they are most often long wars of attrition. Most people believe attrition is immoral. Yet it’s how most major wars are won.”
Similarly, a 2015 Naval Postgraduate study analyzed more than 600 battles around the world from the 15th through the 20th centuries. The researchers found that force ratios — the side with more troops and equipment — were one of the biggest factors in determining the winner. The study also found that in the latter centuries, the side with more artillery, and in the 20th century the side with more tanks, tended to win. Russia has more available troops, more tanks, and more artillery than Ukraine can likely ever field (not to mention an enduring advantage in air power and air defense).
Based on historical precedent, then, the longer this war continues, the greater will be the chance that Russia wins. This owes nothing to brilliance or superiority in fighting ability. Rather, the conclusion rests on the banal calculation of the vast superiority of Russia’s natural and human resources over those of Ukraine. Russia has a population that is now five to seven times greater than Ukraine’s (owing to lost territories and to people who have fled Ukraine). Though sanctions have had a limiting effect on Moscow’s ability to produce weapons and ammunition, Russia still has a robust military industrial capacity that is likely to grow over time.
If this war simply grinds into an attrition contest, and if both Zelensky and Putin decide to continue fighting, there is no rational basis to suggest Ukraine can come out on top. Put bluntly, to continue supporting Ukraine in a war of attrition against Russia is likely to condemn tens or even hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainian lives, invite the destruction of yet more Ukrainian cities, and in the ultimate end, yield a military victory to Putin.
If nothing more, the West should be highly motivated to bring this conflict to an end in a negotiated settlement in which Putin will have to settle for less than his maximalist demands. But morally, the West should not continue to press forward in a vain attempt to accomplish the militarily unattainable objective of a Ukraine victory — especially when such support will most likely result only in the pointless loss of Ukrainian lives and territories.
We will either admit the unpalatable realities of how wars are fought and won and seek to engage in a diplomatic effort to gain all we can for Ukraine, or we will ignore the evidence we dislike and blindly press for a victory that will likely never come.
