All the words and thoughts being poured into understanding movements and posture and likely actions elide a basic truth, which is that if Russia plans on conquest it will cause extraordinary harm on a scale unseen in Europe since 1945. This impulse to think about Ukraine and Russia in abstract terms is as seductive as it is pointless. Militaries only train to prepare for future operations-otherwise why waste the money, time, and energy that could be productively invested elsewhere? Even in the best case scenario, Ukraine can’t be thrilled.īiden’s First International Test: Can He Save Ukraine From Putin? In this case, either Russia is carrying out a training exercise designed to simulate an invasion of Ukraine, or they’re preparing to invade Ukraine, and neither option feels particularly reassuring. Russia is not a bear or a shark, it’s a nation led by people who act according to some discernible logic. It is not a thing most civilized people can bear unless they’ve grown up with it, much as people living by the ocean or in the mountains treat wildlife like a nuisance to be respected rather than a tragedy waiting beneath every wave or behind every tree. Not comfortable with it-how can one be comfortable when one’s powerful and hostile neighbor issues threats in a town with no police?-but accustomed. The Ukrainians seemed accustomed to the beating of Russian war drums. Living in Kyiv from 2016-17, the volume of threats involving some mix of invasion, assassination, destabilization, and cyberhacking was sufficient to get me spun up on a weekly basis. Since 2014, when (to them) the unthinkable occurred, every Russian statement and training exercise has been an explicit reminder of what happens when you let your guard down. There, it’s perfectly normal to live knowing Russia might attack at any moment. When I left Ukraine in late 2017, after having lived there on and off since the spring of 2015, I was keen to put the headache of caring about a paradox over which I had no control behind me. If one believes that there is a good worth defending with one’s military in the world as an American, surely it must be that good.Īnd that good is the ground truth in Ukraine. It would be a badly timed mistake, too the lies justifying the United States’ invasion of Iraq and occupation of Afghanistan were based on a powerful truth-that the cause of freedom-loving people is always the cause of Europe and America. This would be a mistake, especially for those observers who feel a certain intuitive connection to a group of people who are and have been fighting repeatedly for their freedom and independence from imperial overlords (Poles, Austro-Hungarians, Lithuanians, Ottomans, Russians, Nazi Germany, and the USSR) since the 17th century. The Russian Public Is Being Primed for Another of Putin’s Wars The effect-perhaps the purpose- of all these cynical and wearisome discussions is that Americans and others with a modicum of interest in the subject throw up their hands in frustration, and say “Let it be.” The usual pundit voices can be heard discussing the geopolitical implications of the buildup, sifting through tea leaves and undisclosed sources to explain why it’s just another training exercise (Russia’s official explanation), or how Putin and Russia have been provoked by the aggressive expansion of NATO westward and why the Budapest Memorandum wasn’t legally binding, or how Ukraine has always been Russian anyway so why shouldn’t they just snap it up and something about spheres of influence. Not content with its annexation of Crimea-when is an aggressively expansive imperialist country ever content with Crimea once it’s got it in the pocket?-Russia has amassed an invasion-sized force at the border of Ukraine and is busily mobilizing reservists sufficient to provide an occupation force.
The Russo-Ukrainian war is in the news again.
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