AP

Jeremy Kinsman

February 21, 2023

Nothing transforms a society like total war, especially in a country defending itself against an invading enemy. Ukraine will never be the same, but not in the way Putin intended. When it ends, a united Ukraine will be set on the path of European integration it had sought while a degraded Russia, again a police state, snarls sullenly on the fringes.

There are really three “wars” being waged: the frontline battlefield takes precedence. But the communications and diplomatic-industrial competitions will also shape the outcome.

The contrast between Ukraine’s fighting performance and Russia’s is striking.

Yet, Putin believes that Russia’s threefold population advantage, its relentless attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, and its vast space and capacity to amp-up arms production while being immune to reprisal homeland attacks will enable Russia to outlast the West.

Ukraine has lost perhaps a hundred thousand killed — by some estimates, half the casualties of Russia; there are 10 million displaced persons, internal and external; the World Bank calculates reconstruction costs at $350 billion, twice Ukraine’s GDP. But the war has united the Ukrainian people for the first time, across linguistic, regional, and even historic lines.

From within his bubble of total control, Putin may assume Russians are united because he has crushed all protest. But only about 20 percent of the population, from the xenophobic hard-right. buy into Putin’s re-set of nationalist aggression, nostalgia for Russian grandeur, and hostile sense of victimization by the West, though they monopolize TV and what remains of social media. Another 20 percent who hate the war are silent, excluded from social media and intimidated by the harsh costs of demonstrative protest. A remaining 60 percent have tried to ignore the war, a task increasingly difficult as body bags come home and economic costs go up, though the Russian consumer economy shows more resilience to sanctions than expected.

Ultimately, it is people who decide history, not demagogues trying to orchestrate popular sentiment behind historical myths of concocted national grandeur.

The two peoples in this war are propelled by contrasting zeitgeists of national spirit. Putin drives his assault on Ukraine from his reverence of vlast – force, power – as the command motif in Russian history.

Ukrainians draw from a contrary force – volya – popular will, freedom. Their volya to defend their homeland and their freedom has shown its motivational superiority to the vlast channeled by conscripted invaders. If the West provides President Volodymyr Zelensky with timely and decisive arms and ample munitions, Putin will not achieve his objectives.

Ukraine is clearly winning the communications war. Zelensky, its Churchillian champion, has inspired free people with the power of his message of Ukrainian volya. European leaders and publics grasp the war’s existential stakes, and continue to accept the obligation of full if costly support for “as long as it takes.” Europe has welcomed eight million Ukrainian refugees, another outcome beyond Putin’s woeful inability to understand the human factor.

Ukraine is clearly winning the communications war. Zelensky, its Churchillian champion, has inspired free people with the power of his message of Ukrainian ‘volya’.

The international communications war intersects with that of global diplomacy, bearing on sanctions policy and a competitive race to replenish military equipment. A critical question today is about China’s intentions, with the threat of Beijing supporting Moscow with lethal weapons having been dangled following US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting with Wang Yi, China’s highest-ranking diplomat, in Munich last week.

Beyond the West, most of the world is not directly engaged. Eighty-five percent of the world’s population is in countries whose leaders are not sanctioning Russia. Most of the world’s peoples have not experienced a gain in living standards in the 15 years since the 2008 financial crisis that depleted confidence in the rules-based international system that seemed to them to sponsor growing disparity and unfairness.

They are primarily preoccupied with the impact on their lives of the inter-active “polycrisis” of climate, pandemic, massive debt, migration, etc., and the sheer difficulty of delivering satisfactory governance against the tumult promoted by illiberal populist nationalist opponents.

The motif of defending freedom is a motivator for legislators and publics in democracies, reinforcing Ukraine’s support from democratic citizens everywhere. But for much of the world this is abstract. A more relevant message would emphasize the universal existential need to defend the shared postwar norm that forbids invasion by force. There is no shortage of countries in the world whose populations fear aggression from a more powerful neighbour. Deterring and punishing aggression is for their protection as well as Ukraine’s.

Our somewhat exhausted democratic governments, while staying the course on supporting Ukraine, must reserve enough policy bandwidth to pursue the one-world obligations that enable the rules-based system to address the needs of the rest of the world. That will help to solidify an international consensus against this invasion and war and hasten a negotiated conclusion once the sides are more ready.

Right now, it is unlikely either side can wholly defeat the other, though expected competitive winter and spring offensives aim to improve respective territorial positions on the map, which today shows Russia occupying 17 percent of pre-2014 Ukraine, before its occupation of Crimea.

Until belief in decisive wins on the part of both parties subsides, there will be no serious negotiation. The war of deadly attrition and urgent supply of weapons of increasing range and force will continue.