Fight to win now

Sep 3 2023 The Guardian

Putin is waging a forever war. The west can’t pull the plug on Ukraine now

This piece in The Guardian starts with:

They still don’t get it. Even after 18 months of horror in Ukraine, too many prominent politicians in the US and Europe appear unable or unwilling to grasp the existential threat that Vladimir Putin’s Russia poses to all.

They continue to assume this war, like other conflicts, will eventually end in negotiations. Yet the Kremlin demands nothing less than Kyiv’s total capitulation – and that is not going to happen.

The simple fact is, that Ukraine has to win this war. If Russia will be able to claim any kind of real win, it will reward Russia’s aggression and prove that brute force works. And since it worked now, Russia will threaten Ukraine and other countries bordering Russia in the future.

Remember, this war started in 2014, with the occupation of Donbas and Crimea; Feb 24th, 2022, was just the start of the next phase.

The West has to really fight to win this war, not look for negotiated settlements, which will just embolden Russia to continue to rebuild “the empire”.

In another piece in The Guardian the Ukrainian Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy put it well:

“If we stop advancing, the enemy will gather new forces and strengthen. We will reach the 1991 borders of Ukraine ... We don’t want to see our kids and even our grandkids fighting against Russians, and who is there to stop them? Only us.”

*****

The politicians in the west seem to be focused on poll numbers or the next election; and they don’t seem to see the big picture. Maybe it is denial, or inability to really see the big picture, or focus on domestic issues…

I don’t know, I just hope that they wake up and, so to speak, smell the cordite, and preferably sooner than later.

And in any case, they should definitely read this piece by Brookings Institution analyst Constanze Stelzenmüller:

The return of the enemy: Putin’s war on Ukraine and a cognitive blockage in Western security policy