The Russian invasion of Ukraine, to date
The Russian invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, 2022. It is now two and a half years since then. The Russians started with overwhelming advantages in equipment, money, manpower, and geography. How has it gone? How might it go in the future?
Geography matters
On the eve of the invasion, the Russians had troops poised to Ukraine’s north in Belarus, east in Donbas, and south in Crimea. Ukraine was poorly defended in the north and south. The Russian armored column aimed at Kyiv, only 100 miles from the Belarus border, proceeded well. The Russians made it to the suburbs and the airport before the Ukrainians stopped them and decimated their lengthy armored column as well as the forces they intended to deploy at the airport.
Despite weeks of effort, the Russians failed to take Kharkiv, a Russian-speaking city less than twenty miles from the Ukraine/Russia border. The Russians were more successful in Donbas and the south, where they advanced, respectively, westward from territory occupied in 2014 and northward from Crimea. The fall of Mariupol in May 2022 was a major defeat for Ukraine.
The Russians largely held on to their gains in the south and east, but the Ukrainians stopped them from taking all of Donestk and short of Odesa. Ukrainian boat drones sank the flag ship of the Russian Black Sea fleet. A Ukrainian offensive in the summer of 2022 failed to make more than marginal gains in the south, but it forced the Russians to leave the east poorly defended. That enabled a Ukrainian offensive that retook a substantial area near Kharkiv by fall. Kyiv then also managed to retake Kherson in the south.
Stalemate
Since then, the confrontation lines have moved little. Russian forces during 2023 dug in, preparing multiple lines of defensive fortifications along the 600-mile front. Only in the winter of 2023/24 and spring of 2024 did Russia gain significant territory near Kharkiv. That was courtesy of the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, which held up assistance to Kyiv, and the Biden Administration, which blocked Ukraine from bombarding staging areas inside Russia. Once aid started to flow again, the Biden Administration authorized Kyiv to strike the staging areas. The Ukrainians within weeks began pushing the Russians back to the border. They have also forced the Russian Black Sea fleet out of Crimea.
In short, neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians have much to show for the past year or even two. The Ukrainians have foiled the Russians’ most ambitious hopes: to take Kyiv, Kharkiv, or Odesa, But the Ukrainians have been unable to roll back the Russians from territory gained in 2014 in the east and in 2022 in the south.
People matter too
As notable as the geography is the sociology. Ukrainians mostly fled west to Ukrainian-speaking areas as well as European Union member states rather than Russia and Belarus. There were instances of spying for, and defections to, Russia from the security services. But the Russian-speaking population, including the President, mostly chose loyalty to Kyiv. Support among Ukrainians for continuing the war flagged some in 2023. And it is weaker in the east and south where most of the ground fighting has taken place. But continuing the fight has remained the majority view. Throughout, support for President Zelensky and for regaining control of 100% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, has remained high.
Russian human rights abuses during and after combat were rife. These included murder of civilians and prisoners of war, shelling of civilian targets, kidnapping and trafficking of Ukrainian children, and pillage. The Russians did not spare Russian-speaking Kharkiv and Mariupol, where indiscriminate attacks and other abuses were intense. Russian President Putin nevertheless proceeded in September 2022 with annexation of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, despite not controlling their entire territory.
A more authoritarian Russia turns to totalitarians for help
The war in Ukraine has also had global repercussions. In Russia, it has enabled President Putin–reelected with a ridiculous 87% of the vote in March 2024–to widen his autocracy. He has chased liberal media and civil society from the country, ended any pretense of an independent judiciary, and murdered political opponents. The Russian governing system has earned the epithet “hybrid totalitarianism,” which requires not only obedience but also vocal support.
Moscow has turned to much-sanctioned Iran and North Korea to acquire weapons. While China hasn’t supplied weapons systems, Russia depends on Beijing for political support, oil and gas sales, and dual-use components. Thus Moscow’s westward thrust into Ukraine has increased its political, economic, and military dependency on Asia while cutting it off from the West.
The West rediscovers geopolitics
In the U.S., the 2022 invasion reawakened concern about Russian intentions and European security. But it also generated among some Republicans a return to isolationism reminiscent of the 20th century inter-war era. President Biden attempted to forestall the invasion by releasing classified information concerning the Russian preparations. He also mobilized NATO to provide massive military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Kyiv and the EU to sanction Moscow.
NATO has deployed additional forces along the easternmost flank of the Alliance. European NATO members are raising their defense budgets and planning responses to any future Russian moves against Moldova or Alliance members on its eastern flank. Concern about Russian territorial ambitions gave Finland and Sweden a strong push toward joining NATO and the EU good reason to reduce dependence on Russian energy.
The unipolar moment of Pax Americana was short. It reigned uncontested only a decade or so until 9/11. It then ended definitively with the withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2011. Now Russia and China are not just building up their capacities but also using them. Russia is applying in Ukraine the skills it acquired in Syria after deploying its air force there in 2015. China is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and near Taiwan.
The division of the world will not be so neat as during the Cold War. India, Hungary, and Serbia, for example, are trying to straddle the growing divide between East and West, as the Philippines did in the Pacific during the presidency of Rodrigo Duerte. Much of the global South likewise aims to hedge and extract benefits from both East and West.
The East is doomed, but the West may not fare well either
Hard as it may be to picture on any given day, the contest between East and West has a foreseeable eventual outcome. The Russian economy, though growing faster than anticipated, is increasingly dependent on oil and gas exports to gain funds for military expenditures that do not benefit consumers. China faces a major financial crisis. Its local governments are deeply in hock. Both countries are in dramatic demographic decline. The Iranian theocracy is aging and limping economically, crippled by sanctions. North Korea is a nuclear armed totalitarian state that keeps its population in dire poverty. If these were the main threats to liberal democracy, we would have little to fear.
But they are not. The main threats to the West are internal. Racism, protectionism, populism, and charlatanism are combining with greed, corruption, inequity, and disinformation to produce political forces that aspire to permanence in power. Liberal democracy is at risk in both the US and Europe, where only centrist right/left coalitions are keeping extremists out of power. The decisive factor in the Ukraine war may no longer Russia’s staying power, but rather the West’s. The Ukrainians will continue to fight, but they will have the means only if we continue to support them. That is only one reason why the election of Kamala Harris is vital.
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As Yogi Bera quipped, “it is deja vu all over again”. The West is in a situation much akin to the late 1930s. History is repeating itself as a farce, if we allow Ukraine to fall. Then totalitarianism will have won abroad and at home.