Three months into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the prospects for a decisive Kremlin victory have evaporated. Yet even amid Russia’s battlefield failures, the heroic Ukrainian resistance, and abundant Western military aid, the tide has not completely turned.
Washington Must Ramp Up Support for Vulnerable Partners—Before It’s Too Late
It is too soon to predict how Russia’s brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine will end. But for now, it is clear that the Russian military has shockingly underperformed in the first phase of the war, whereas the Ukrainian military has punched far above its weight. Other revisionist powers contemplating aggression will be looking closely at Russia’s failings to avoid making the same mistakes, and the countries they threaten will be looking to Ukraine’s example for insight into how to fend off a larger, better-equipped adversary.
How His War Has Erased Russia’s Past—And Endangered Its Future
If a Ukrainian grandmother with pro-Russian views did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her—or at least that is what the Russian government decided in April. At the time, Anna Ivanova inhabited a village near Kharkiv. One day, mistaking a group of arriving Ukrainian soldiers for Russians, she took out an old Soviet flag and waved it vigorously at them to remind them of their shared past and try to deter them from destroying the village. Instead, the Ukrainian forces, outraged at the sight of the hammer-and-sickle, took the flag from her and trampled it.
Putin’s genocidal war on Ukraine may have less to do with empire and far more to do with profits.
Enormous profits.
There has been considerable commentary about Putin’s war motives, from a belief that Ukraine is little more than an insurgent province of Mother Russia to a fear that Ukraine is becoming a satellite of Western democracies. But those motives miss the fact that Putin rules by allowing oligarchs to enrich themselves and — by extension — himself. And like any criminal, he is going where the money is and there is much money buried in the ground of Ukraine.
As of last week, NATO seemed well on its way to expanding, when Finland and Sweden formally submitted their applications for membership. When they officially join, becoming the 31st and 32nd member of the alliance, it could potentially mark the fastest accession process in the alliance’s history. This is reflective of the sudden about-face in the two countries’ foreign policies in the months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both went quickly from countries content with a posture of non-alignment marked by occasional cooperation with NATO, to expressing increasing support for the alliance, to applying for full membership.
It is too soon to predict how Russia’s brutal, unjustified war against Ukraine will end. But for now, it is clear that the Russian military has shockingly underperformed in the first phase of the war, whereas the Ukrainian military has punched far above its weight. Other revisionist powers contemplating aggression will be looking closely at Russia’s failings to avoid making the same mistakes, and the countries they threaten will be looking to Ukraine’s example for insight into how to fend off a larger, better-equipped adversary.
In 2022, there will be great interest in Asia’s summit season because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The annual East Asia Summit, ASEAN and APEC meetings always attract attention due to the proximity of many world leaders, but the less glamorous work of the multilateral mechanisms goes on throughout the year in efforts to drive cooperation as well as to prepare for the jamborees at the year’s end.
As Russia continues to wage its war in Ukraine, several Western leaders have openly hinted at their wish to see Russian president Vladimir Putin go. US president Joe Biden declared on 26 March that Putin “cannot remain in power”, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said on 1 March that the sanctions on Russia “are to bring down the Putin regime.” Yet while their ambition to see the end of Putin’s regime is understandable, there is no guarantee that what comes after will be any better.
Just as the world appeared to be on its way out of the health crisis caused by the pandemic, with societies returning to normalcy, the Russian invasion of Ukraine dashed all hopes of the world getting better again (and lately, COVID-19 has been resurging as well). This war is set to have devastating worldwide consequences, adding a new layer of turmoil to what the world has been through for the last two years. The pandemic and associated problems made Russia’s invasion of Ukraine possible in the first place. Would Putin have carried out this invasion back in 2019 or 2018, when world’s leaders weren’t drowning in problems that compromised their ability to respond in a unified manner?
As a Ukrainian living in Germany, Anna Vlasiuk has spent countless hours on the phone to make sure her family in north-western Ukraine was safe. Then one day, the war came to her local grocery shop.
“I went to the supermarket and there was a sign saying, ‘No sunflower oil in our store, due to the war in Ukraine,’ the 32-year-old human rights worker told IWPR. She added that her father, a farmer in the region of Rivne near the Polish and Belarus border, had been warning her that it was just a matter of time until the Russian invasion would hit the tables of millions in Ukraine and around the world.