The commentator ‘Northern Variant’ is one that I nearly always find thought provoking even when I don’t agree with him on one or more viewpoints. However he’s sadly correct in this piece in which he says that the war in Ukraine is more or less unwinnable.
I agree that sporadic materiel support from Ukraine’s Western allies has played a part in creating this situation. An army needs to have reliable supplies of weapons, ammunition and other goods and services in order to win, something that Ukraine hasn’t had. But this defeat was on the cards ever since Russia managed to annexe Crimea in 2014 which got little in the way of response from the international community afterwards apart from some sanctions. This piece by Northern Variant is uncomfortable to read for me and will be more challenging for those others who have been more personally invested in the Ukraine situation than I have. But the facts are that there are few ways that Ukraine could win this war and a whole host of ways that they could lose and we must not let our feelings about Ukraine stop us seeing that Ukraine cannot win. Maybe if the EU had risked escalation and pumped men and equipment into the war then maybe things might have turned out differently, but that’s not what happened and now this is the result of the decisions that all involved have taken.
Northern Variant said:
Everybody piled in to support the Current Thing when Russia invaded, with next to zero understanding of how this came about. It was sold as plucky little Ukraine, choosing to be an enlightened Western democracy, and very few could cope with the reality that Ukraine was/is a deeply dysfunctional, fragmented, corrupt, shithole kleptocracy of a country. Even fewer could comprehend the fragility of Ukraine’s position, being in Russia’s direct sphere of influence without the protection of NATO. As such, idiot politicians got carried away with the idea that choosing their actions wisely would amount to appeasement.
They blundered in without any thought to the consequences even when an invasion looked like the obvious consequence. If that’s how they were determined to play it, they should have planned for that eventuality. Instead, what military aid came along was obsolete, unfit for the theatre, often with inadequate spares and too complicated to be integrated into Ukrainian defence forces. Ukraine had a great deal of success repelling Russian tanks, but on that basis, got carried away with the idea they were winning and that they could defeat Putin. But those losses were priced in by Russia. Tanks are expendable. Especially when they’re antiques. Tanks were only needed to keep Ukrainian forces busy while they prepared defensive lines, which Ukraine has not been able to overwhelm. That could only be done with overwhelming mass which was never going to arrive.
As such, feeding Ukraine with the promise of equipement, but only delivering it in sporadic batches, meant that Ukraine couldn’t not risk an all out offensive. They were forced to ration ammunition and preserve gun barrels. Even now the West is beginning to solve the ammunition problem, gun barrels still wear out. This unreliable flow of weapons is ultimately what gave Putin the edge. Russia needed time to rebuild its war production, and source manpower, and every delay in supplying Ukraine bought Russia more time. The Ukrainians have been able to maul Russian forces on the front, and mount daring raids to keep Russian forces behind their own lines, but this has only served to give Russia more of a time advantage.
While the EU may double down on its resolve to support Ukraine, they simply aren’t able to put their money where their mouth is. European countries, including Britain, have already run down their own stocks and offloaded their obsolete kit, while new, largely experimental equipment, is still in lengthy procurement processes. It could be another year or more before efforts to restart EU war production starts to pay off, but that’s a year that Ukraine simply doesn’t have.
They were having manpower problems over a year ago. Ukraine is now bleeding out. Without decisive and unified support from the West, this war was always unwinnable for Ukraine, and that support was never going to be decisive given the lack of European unity and and risks of escalation. As a non-Nato member, Ukraine would always be expendable.
Possibly the worst thing that happened for Ukraine in this time was for the Ukrainian army to have performed as well as it has. Giving the outward impression of winning has emboldened the warmongering psychopaths in the West who would happily fight to the last Ukrainian.
That Zelensky was fool enough to believe the assurances of the West, is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all. The sad part is, it’s not as though Trump’s attitude to the conflict has been a state secret. It was anticipated. But did this galvanise the EU response? Did it increase European defence spending? No. And now we’re here, at this very predictable point where Ukraine can no longer sustain the war, and Europe’s economy cannot either.
Trump wants to bring an end to it while to so-called “adults in the room” are pressing for more war and greater escalation with a deadly enemy, based on juvenile notions of “standing up to bullies”. Unless there is a peace agreement soon, it may well be that Ukraine cannot even defend whatever is left of Ukraine. It may even be that Ukrainian lines collapse, and Putin comprehensively wins before a peace deal can be concluded. Ukraine can make it cost Russia, but when Putin is this heavily invested, there can be no climb-down for Russia.
The only sane course of action is for all parties to take the first off-ramp available. That though, is not what the EU has in mind. They have their own designs for Ukraine, and their own strategic goals towards Russia. This is their proxy war. It always was. As such, any notion that the EU exists to maintain peace in Europe goes out of the window. It is now the gravest threat to peace in Europe, especially when we take into account the deindustrialisation in the name of Net Zero. Europe is ruled by the very worst people at the worst possible time.
