Filenews 18 December 2023 - by Marc Champion
You may not have noticed, but Russia and the European Union almost simultaneously set the parameters for the next phase of the war in Ukraine on Thursday, as each recommitted to the fundamental positions that led to the start of the conflict in 2014.
By the time he renewed his vows at his traditional year-end press conference, Vladimir Putin had already aligned his country's industry and the conscription of Russian youth with his rhetoric. Europe, by contrast, has drifted into a mismatch of rhetoric and commitments that risks turning into a humanitarian tragedy and a serious strategic defeat.
The illusion of "peace" with Putin
As I wrote recently, the idea that Ukraine should now reduce its losses after failing to retake its occupied territories this year by offering a ceasefire and talks based on the status quo is an illusion, because that cannot be done. Russia's actions on the ground have long made clear that it is not interested in settling for the status quo — and on Thursday Putin made that clear. "There will be peace when we achieve our goals," he said, reiterating that these are "denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine and neutrality status for it."
All three are euphemisms for propaganda purposes, but they are quite clear in practice, given that they are applied daily in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. By denazification, Putin means regime change, covering not only Ukraine's Jewish president and other leaders in Kiev, but the murder, imprisonment, or dismissal of any local official or teacher who believes Ukraine is an independent nation and state. By demilitarization, after all, Putin means disarmament and by neutrality, submission to Moscow.
On the same day, the EU granted Ukraine the start of talks on the country's accession to the bloc. This project will take years to complete, as well as a different type of regime change – the adoption of tens of thousands of pages of laws and measures to reduce corruption, build an independent judiciary and strengthen other building blocks of a democratic state. It is, however, a voluntary procedure. It was this vision that Ukrainians revolted by the millions in 2014, when Putin directed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to refuse his commitments to sign a trade and association agreement with the EU. It's what Ukrainian citizens wanted when they elected President Volodymyr Zelensky with 73.2 percent of the vote in 2019 — and that's what they're fighting and dying for today.
Incompatible scenarios
These two possible scenarios for Ukraine's future are incompatible. The war will continue until either Putin decides he cannot go any further or Ukraine's resistance collapses. On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – a Putin ally – vetoed the creation of a €50 billion EU fund that would help ensure Ukraine's ability to continue fighting. With a U.S. aid package for next year also blocked in the U.S. federal Congress, Kiev's supporters are close to leaving Ukraine, a move that would dramatically shift the balance of power in Europe and prove to governments from Budapest to Beijing that the once-dominant West lacks the will to protect its values or interests.
There is still a good chance that both European and U.S. aid packages for Ukraine will take effect in the new year. Orbán isolated himself at the EU summit, with the other 26 countries backing the aid package. If they cannot convince him in January, they can and should create the fund outside the EU's institutional framework, bypassing Hungary's veto. It has been done in the past, and with Europe's security at stake, bureaucratic courtesies must be put aside.
However, there is one side on which sceptics of aid to Ukraine are right: neither Ukraine nor its supporters have articulated a clear narrative of victory or the strategy for achieving it, over the previous one — recovering all territory lost since the 2022 invasion, if not since 2014 — which has become highly unlikely with this year's failure to achieve a significant Ukrainian advance on the battlefield.
Narrative
The Estonian Ministry of Defence has just issued a document for consultation, which tries to fill the gap. The plan is both encouraging and frightening. It is clear that the Ramstein Group's combined annual GDP savings of $47 trillion that have supported the Ukrainian war effort so far can easily afford the roughly $100 billion that would be required next year. Also encouraging is that Russia already needs to spend 29.4 percent of its annual federal budget on defense in order to compete on the battlefield. The part of the case that is frightening is the time, the political will and the unity needed to do what it would take, at a time when all three are in short supply.
The Estonian plan starts from the simple and straightforward assumption that Russia's goal is not simply to conquer Ukraine, but "to reshape the security architecture in Europe to its liking." For now, Putin is unable to compete directly with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to achieve this, however, if he prevails in Ukraine, these calculations would change within five years, according to Estonians. Russia has redesigned itself as a war economy over the past year and now obsessively produces at least 3.5 million artillery shells a year and 100 long-range missiles a month. Armed with evidence of Western weakness and convinced that he is already in an existential struggle with the US and its allies, it is naïve to assume that Putin would not try to exploit his advantage.
Russia is counting on a protracted war of attrition which is literally leading to Ukraine's bleeding. The Alliance's goal should be to thwart this effort by blocking it on the battlefield and tightening sanctions to squeeze Russian revenues and access to technology until "the enduring cost of war, and particularly its prospect for Russia, rises to a level that becomes unprofitable for the Kremlin." states the Estonian document.
This requires massively accelerated — and relatively cheap — training programs outside Ukrainian territory for new Ukrainian soldiers to compensate for Moscow's much larger recruitment pool. It will also require significant new supplies of anti-aircraft systems and missiles, as well as F-16 and Gripen fighter jets, so that Kiev can continue to challenge Russia's air superiority, as well as its goal to destroy Ukraine's key infrastructure and terrorize its cities. It will require artillery ammunition in huge quantities, a gradual change in drone development and production, and many other long-range systems such as HIMARS and ATACMS from the US, as well as cruise missiles such as the UK's Storm Shadow from Europe.
War production
As the report examines the details and figures needed, it becomes clear that the biggest challenge will be for Europe and the US to heed all the commitments they have made to increase production capacity in their arms industries. This is less a demand for a new arms race and more a call to reverse the atrophy that followed the end of the Cold War, which led to a deficit of EUR 920 billion. Dol. NATO's defence spending since 2014, relative to the alliance's target of spending at 2% of each member state's GDP. For Europe, in particular, it finally means centralising and aligning the continent's fragmented procurement and production systems to achieve strategic goals.
What politicians need to make clear to their taxpayers is that the costs are small compared to the spending levels that a Russian victory in Ukraine could cause. Even more important is to emphasize that these costs are not only incurred for the sake of Ukraine, but ultimately for the sake of the citizens of Western countries. Putin's invasion proved that a large-scale war is possible again and that Europe's armies need to restore their ability to fight.
War tends to fall on the heads of the unprepared.
