The Ukrainian city of Mariupol/CNN

Yaroslav Baran

February 23, 2023

February 24^th marks the anniversary of Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  Both a grim and a hopeful marker, it focuses our attention on two critical facts: that such a comprehensive military assault is still possible, in this age, in the heart of Europe, and that the Ukrainian people are still heroically resisting an invasion most analysts predicted would be over within days.

Every generation has its “where were you” moment. Where were you when you learned of JFK’s assassination? Where were you when you heard John Lennon was shot? Where were you when the Twin Towers came down? This author remembers the last two: a young lad sitting in the back of my parents’ car, driving down Barton Street in Hamilton in 1980 when the radio news came on with the news of Lennon’s death, and Ottawa on 9/11 – with CBC Newsworld on in my West Block office, watching the constant replays before the entire parliamentary precinct was evacuated.

For Ukrainians worldwide, and for many others in Ukraine’s near-abroad, an entire generation will remember where they were when Russia expanded its nine-year-old assault to a full-throttle invasion of the entire country. One night, we were in a world of tension; the next morning, we awoke to images of missiles raining down across the largest country in Europe.

It not only marked a day when everything changed for Ukraine; it was also the day the world changed.

The postwar order of liberal democracies that worked to engage and integrate the remnants of the Eastern Bloc following the Cold War suddenly faced its greatest strain since 1945. Our rules-based multilateral system, where disputes are settled by diplomats and tribunals rather than tanks and fighter jets, was said to be imperilled. And given the seniority of the belligerent, nuclear-armed and UN Security Council-member Russia, the structural flaws of our international institutions became very apparent.

But beyond the war’s threat to the international order, another chilling fact also became apparent: that the same excesses and inhumanity that marked the Second World War could resurge in a 21^st century conflict. Indeed, Russia’s invasion bore the quintessential markers of mid-20^th-century fascism: hypernationalist irredentism, a flagrant disregard for human rights and human life, a denial of the legitimacy of a neighbours’ right to exist, torture chambers, rape squads, and the mass abduction and “re-education” of children – all accompanied by a pervasive propaganda campaign.

With but few exceptions on both an individual and state level, Russia’s brutal aggression was immediately, universally condemned. The world’s last empire now finds that its company extends barely beyond the dictatorships of China, North Korea, Iran and Belarus, a short list of autocracies in economic thrall to Moscow and Beijing, plus the few “useful idiots” (as Lenin called them) in Western academia or journalism who have long parroted the Kremlin line either for cash or self-loathing.

Through a faulty assessment of the international community’s values and resolve, Vladimir Putin has isolated his country. True, Russia may have proven to be more autarchic and economically self-sufficient than expected, but it has become an international pariah with the world insisting it remain so until it halts its war and pays reparations for the unprovoked destruction it inflicted.

Where will the war go from here? How long will it last? These are important questions, but also impossible to answer. More possible is an assessment of what is needed to end the war.

The liberal democratic world has unequivocally declared that this war is unjust, unjustified, and must conclude with Ukraine’s complete victory. Why must it be complete? Why is there no room for compromise or negotiation? If Russia lays down its arms, there will be no more war, whereas if Ukraine lays down its arms, there will be no more Ukraine.

Victory must mean a restoration of all occupied territories to the control of sovereign Ukraine: the zones occupied over the last year, the third of the Donbas that was occupied prior to February 2022, and Crimea, which was brazenly and illegitimately ‘annexed’ nine years ago when the war started.

Victory must mean a restoration of all occupied territories to the control of sovereign Ukraine: the zones occupied over the last year, the third of the Donbas that was occupied prior to February 2022, and Crimea, which was brazenly and illegitimately “annexed” nine years ago when the war started. Victory also means reparations. There is no way a civilized world can forgive the wholesale destruction of entire cities as “let bygones be bygones” just because the Russian army has been repelled. Rebuilding will require hundreds of billions if not trillions – and there is no reasonable debate over who the responsible belligerent is. Victory will also require some robust guarantee of Ukraine’s security for the future: something much stronger than the Budapest Memorandum security guarantees by the U.S., the U.K. and Russia, clearly rendered meaningless by the events of the past year), even if not full membership in NATO.

Any talk of a “negotiated” peace would only appease the aggressor, reward blatant aggression and crimes against humanity with territory or a neutral status of its target, and simply buy time for the Kremlin to re-arm for a renewed invasion several years hence. History – particularly that of the 1930s – shows us that this is where appeasement leads. There can be no modern Munich Conference “compromise” without similar results. The Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of Czech Sudetenland did not prevent the Second World War; rather, global acceptance of these “compromises” hastened and invited it.

The only way forward is to strengthen the international community’s support for arming Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion started a year ago, we have seen countless sacred cows slowly disappear: “Canada only does humanitarian assistance”; “Missile defence would provoke Russia more”; “Germany doesn’t send arms into active conflict zones”; “We can’t send tanks with NATO IP”; “Medium-range artillery would escalate the conflict….”

One by one, Ukraine convinced a still-incredulous West to move beyond its bugbears and provide Kyiv with the defensive materiel required to repel Russia’s onslaught. Imagine, however, how the war might have gone if the international community had given the Ukrainians everything they needed right away, rather than waste precious weeks and months debating each piece of kit as thousands more perished.

More military support would not mean more war. It would mean a shorter war. When a country is fighting for its very survival, as Ukraine is doing, no amount of handwringing, or logical discussion abroad, can affect its resolve to continue fighting. Ukraine will fight to the very end. The one factor the West can influence is how long that will take.

This means tanks, long-range artillery, fighter jets, more missile defence systems, drones, and many more tanks.

As an increasing number of Western statesmen and military leaders are realizing, this is not foreign aid. This is an investment in those countries’ own national defence. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland have centuries of experience to know that stopping an imperialist Russia in Ukraine means they do not have to stop Russia later on their own territory. Canadian and British military trainers are already recognizing that their work now is buying goodwill and reciprocity for the future – because Ukraine’s army is already becoming the most battle-hardened and field-experienced in the world and will soon be training our armed forces.

We are now at a pivot point. As we enter the second year of this war, we will undoubtedly see “Ukraine fatigue”. We are starting to see it in the US Congress, and we see signs of it in an inflation-beleaguered Europe. Leveraging this as an opportunity, Russia’s disinformation and troll campaign will work to exploit this fatigue as they are already doing through alt-right and alt-left alternative media.

Canada and the world must stand firm. If the Ukrainian people have been able to show such brave resilience against all odds as they have demonstrated throughout the last year, the least we can do – in the safety and security of our own homes a half-world away – is to not forget them and their struggle for their very survival.

As our prime minister has said, and as the leaders of the free and democratic world have said, Ukraine can win, Ukraine will win, and Ukraine must win. Witnessing such barbarism – the indiscriminate destruction of entire cities, the intentional bombings of hospitals and daycares, the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war, and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of children — let’s all do our part to realize Ukraine’s victory as soon as humanly possible.

Contributing Writer Yaroslav Baran is on the Executive of the Canada Ukraine Foundation, is former president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in Ottawa, and has co-led numerous election observation missions to Ukraine. He is co-founder of Pendulum, an Ottawa-based communications consultancy.