RUSSIA'S INVASION OF UKRAINE HAS ALREADY CHANGED THE WORLD - Filenews 25/2
By Marc Champion
How has the war changed its protagonists, four years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine? This is a question worth asking, even if there is no immediate end in sight.
For someone who has been visiting Ukraine for 35 years, before and during the war, her reaction was impressive. For decades, Ukraine has had a talented people who have been hampered and poisoned by levels of corruption so corrosive that the country has failed to progress. Russian aggression "shaped" this nation, at the same time as it was trying to destroy it.
This applies not only to the last four years of intense war, but to the entirety of the 12 years of Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack on the country. It all started with the annexation of Crimea and the incitement of a separatist uprising in the east. If Putin had launched a full-scale invasion in 2014, there is no doubt that he would have succeeded. The official Ukrainian army was so weakened that it could only dispose of 6,000 combat-ready soldiers. The country's defense had to be organized by volunteers; Their weapons and uniforms were paid for through crowdfunding or by oligarchs.
Twelve years later, it has turned into a nation of volunteers, forged by the double brutality of its own irresponsible leaders and Putin's increasingly revanchist Russia. It remains fragile and plagued by corruption. The end of the war will bring new divisions, for example, between those who fought and those who did not, those who returned and those who did not. However, its survival alone is extraordinary – the kind of myth on which nations are built.
Russia's path in this tragedy is different. The war has been the catastrophe feared by many even in the Kremlin, including that of their own troops. But this is less because the rapid march to victory that Putin initially expected turned into an exhausting conflict, and more because it changed the nature and future of the country. Putin has returned to a past that many Russians – not to mention the rest of the world – had hoped to leave behind.
Russia, which I also visited for 35 years and where I lived for some time, was, for a while, easier to love than Ukraine. But this, at a time when any future seemed possible – either a return to communism, or a crude proto-fascist nationalism, or something much softer towards prosperity. The choice has now been made.
We behave as if US President Donald Trump's uncontrollable, transactional nationalism was something new and shocking. This has been the modus operandi of Putin's Kremlin since the early 2000s, after he took office. The emerging Russia is in many ways returning to the Soviet-era regime, as a resource economy attached to a war machine.
Russia will recover economically once the sanctions and distortions of the war are lifted. However, it will also find it difficult to escape its war economy, its own propaganda and its current heavy dependence on China. In schools, children are once again being taught a toxic mixture of Russian victimization and predestined glory. Demobilizing millions of enraged soldiers will be more dangerous than continuing to pay them. Reducing arms production for the transition to a consumer economy will be even more difficult than it proved before the war.
It took too long, but Moscow's transformation finally woke Europe up from its refusal to believe that history and geopolitical competition never stop. The war exposed Europe as militarily and politically weak, making it unacceptably dependent on the U.S. to fend off threats.
However, Europe's reaction has also been one of the most positive surprises of the war. Who would have thought on February 24, 2022 that Germany – dependent on Russian gas and mocked for offering Ukraine only helmets to repel tanks and fighter jets – would now be Kyiv's largest arms supplier? Or that the EU, a bloc of 27 nations, divided even in its best moments, would remain united on sanctions and funding to help Kyiv for four whole years? I, however, did not.
Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has been a thorn in the side of this unexpected unity from the start, threatening to use its veto to extort money and energy exemptions from the rest of the bloc in exchange for concessions. Now, as he retreats in the polls ahead of the April 12 election, Orbán has backtracked on approving both the new package of sanctions on Russia and the €90 billion loan for Ukraine, arguing that Kiev must first repair an oil pipeline damaged by Russia.
This could also be the point where allied support will be "derailed", as it occurs at a time when Europe is being called upon to shoulder almost the entire burden of financing Ukraine's defense. But I wouldn't bet on such an outcome. Orbán may even be in his last two months in power.
The US approach to the Russian invasion is the one that has changed the most, but this is driven less by the conflict and more by Trump's arrival in the White House. Under his presidency, the US withdrew all funding for Ukraine's defense, as part of what it calls a redefinition of its foreign policy in the national interest. Along the way, Trump turned the war into a profitable business, forcing Europe to pay for American weapons destined for Ukraine. Its peace talks are linked to parallel bilateral trade talks with Russia.
All wars must end, just like this invasion. The question is on what terms, because these will determine how allies and enemies around the world will assess the credibility of the US as a defense partner, whether Moscow will see a future in gaining territory and influence by force, whether Ukraine will emerge as an asset or a burden for Europe's security and economy, as well as the future stability and wealth of Europe, which remains the most important trade and investment partner of the US.
The stakes are simply too high for a "quick" peace agreement, even now, after four years of bloodshed.
Adaptation – Editing: Lydia Roubopoulou
