Ukraine must win. Russia will have to lose. It really is that easy.
So, let’s first determine if you agree with that end goal, as do everyone in the US. President Joe Biden and house speaker Nancy Pelosic to the German Chancellor Olaf Scholzo and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen,
To adopt anything less would be immoral, setting a historical precedent with catastrophic costs, and exposing the remnants of our sinister international order of rules and institutions.
President Biden clearly argued in his New York Times Op-Ed This week. His words should be read closely by all members of his administration and NATO allies, who are still acting very tentatively in providing weapons to Ukraine, and acted in using it to ensure Ukraine’s victory. Freedom.
“Standing by Ukraine in its hour of need is just not the right thing to do.” wrote President Biden. “It is in our vital national interests to ensure a peaceful and stable Europe and to make clear that this cannot be right. If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other aggressors that they will also attack the region.” can occupy and subjugate countries … and it would mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with disastrous consequences around the world.”
In short, we must stop the Russian president Vladimir Putin Now to ensure that the rule of the jungle does not replace the rule of law.
Why write all this now, because Putin’s war in Ukraine has passed its hundredth day? simplest, that’s because Putin is showing grinding advantage This followed a change of strategy in response to Ukraine’s unexpected victory and resiliency, and the heavy losses of Russian troops and a disappointing performance in the early stages of the war.
Putin’s brutal new approach is to destroy Ukrainian population centers in eastern and southern Ukraine with stand-off weapons, thus evacuating their people through death or flight, with little risk to their own troops, copying the brutal tactics they deployed Syria, Once these cities and towns are stripped of their humanity, its troops can “free” the rubble, seize territory, and move Russia to the most advantageous peace settlement, or another offensive. can be kept in position.
At the same time, Putin is attacking Ukraine financially. Blocking its grain exports and either destroying or stealing its available supplies, Although Putin is strangling tough sanctions against him, he is willing to risk starvation elsewhere Betting that he can outsmart Western support For Kyiv through upcoming election cycles and other democratic distractions, such as the recent US school gun shootings and Supreme Court battles.
However, there is a way to counter Putin’s new strategy. This will require the newly united West and its Asian partners to be even more resolute, constructive and proactive through a joint military, economic and public relations offensive that will put Putin back on his feet.
The objective should not be to ensure deadlock, which allowed Putin to take 20% of Ukrainian territoryNor did it pressure Ukraine into a self-defeating peace deal, but rather to give Ukraine the means to retake the region through a counter-offensive – perhaps most importantly in the strategic southern Ukrainian city of Kherson – that spanned Odessa and now will ensure access to the Black Sea. And in any final peace agreement.
Most important is for Ukraine’s potentially weary supporters, and even for countries that still sit on the fence, to recognize the barbarity of Putin’s atrocities and thus the moral responsibility to oppose them. Don’t get lost.
“It is extremely important that we do not forget the brutality,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Told The Atlantic’s Tom McTeague in the Most Emotional Words, “Of course, it’s emotional. It’s about people being killed; it’s about atrocities; it’s about children, raping women, killing children.”
With this in mind, it is wrong for the US or any arms supplier to limit Ukrainian fire to hitting Russian targets on Ukrainian soil only. In his otherwise excellent op-ed, Biden wrote“We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to attack beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war only to inflict pain on Russia.”
Think about that for a moment. If someone is shooting your family members across the fence from your neighbor’s yard, what good is a weapon that can shoot only to the edge of your fence? If you do not remove the shooter, the killing continues. It is this kind of self-defeating restraint that has convinced Putin so much that he can win through renunciation.
At the same time, Collective West, working closely with Turkey, Ukraine’s Black Sea ports need to be opened, to address, especially in Odessa A Putin-led global food crisis and enables Ukraine to sell 28 million tons of grain kept in storage.
For justification, one can call Montreux Convention of 1936 which regulates traffic through the Black Sea and guarantees “absolute freedom” for civilian ships.
David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program“Failure to open those ports in the Odessa region would be a declaration of war on global food security.”
Historians point to winter war Between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940 to demonstrate that a smaller but more determined country with less military power could overtake Moscow and maintain its sovereignty.
It is true that after its invasion in November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, Moscow suffered serious losses and initially made some gains, despite its enormous strength in tanks and aircraft.
Finland held Soviet forces for more than two months, inflicted substantial damage before the Soviets adopted a different strategy, and overcame Finnish defenses in February. Finland reached a peace agreement in March 1940 that ceded 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union. Although Moscow’s reputation suffered, and it was removed from the League of Nations, it came with more territory than was initially demanded.
On the downside, Putin is every bit as resolute as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and shares Stalin’s utter indifference to casualties and human suffering.
On the positive side, Ukraine is receiving dramatically more external support than Finland at the time.
Yet without even more Western resolve, Putin may still win, and Ukraine may still lose. Ukraine and the West need to show Putin a standoff and not an off-ramp.
, Frederick Kempe He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlantic Council.