. 2024.
Ukrainian soldiers Dec. 2023, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Serhii Nuzhnenko/Reuters.
The loss of Avdiivka to Russian troops has been described in the Western press as not terribly important. The town, which used to have a population of 30,000, is a complete ruin.
But:
New York Times 2/17/24
The point is that Russia is advancing in various sectors, the Ukrainians are retreating. There is literally not much room for Ukraine to maneuver, or to persuade the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill already passed by the Senate to give $95 billion in aid to Israel and Ukraine (more than 40 b would be for Ukraine). This is more than a bit cynical: the plea for more money is at least in part tied to jobs in the U.S. President Biden wants to assure Americans that more than 2/3 of the money intended for “Ukraine” would go to factories here at home.
So Americans will get to work–nothing against that in principle, of course–while people die in Ukraine.
Fantasy 1: the Ukrainians can still “win.” Please, if winning means getting back the Crimea and the Donbass, forget it. In fact, forget about driving the Russians out. But Major Rodion Kudriashov, deputy commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, Ukrainian, which covered the retreat from Avdiivka, told the Economist (2/24/24) “We have lost a small battle but we have not lost the war.” President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on 2/26 to win the war and to be prepared for the lack of new aid from the U.S. Zelensky said that 31,000 Ukrainian servicemen and women have died in the 2 years of war. CNN cannot independently verify that figure, but US officials estimate the toll could be closer to 70,000. I think the figure is probably a lot higher.
Fantasy 2: the Ukrainian people are solidly behind the war effort. “Morale is driven by the desire of Ukrainians to be free. The Ukrainian people are fighting for freedom, people’s rights, their choice – of the way to live, of whom to elect, of whom to love, of where to rest. They are fighting absolutely bravely and strongly.” Zelensky to Western big shots at Davos, Jan 16, 2024.
Nope. “Ukraine struggles with morale and recruitment,” says the NY Times on 2/20. Actually, there have been numerous articles for months and months on daft dodging, men fleeing Ukraine, and so on, for some time now. See, e.g., Reuters Nov. 28, 2023, months before the fall of Avdiivka.
- “Psychological toll grows on families of soldiers
- Darker mood seen creeping into Ukrainian society
- Army chief fears stalemate, wants more reserves”
People do not fight, at least not for very long, for abstract notions like freedom and justice. They fight for vengeance, to defend their homeland, for the men and women next to them in battle, for money.
Look, the Russians have behaved atrociously. But there is a background to this war that needs to be understood–see my posts from March 2022. This background means that Ukraine is a special case for Russia, which leads us to another fantasy:
3: that Russia will keep on going into Eastern Europe, maybe Western Europe, maybe Santa Monica and Hawaii, if not stopped now by the good countries of the earth. “Europe remains unprepared,” says the Economist, i.e. for a Russian attack. This is pure fantasy because, to cite just one figure, in 2023 NATO possessed 3,398 fighter jets and interceptors. Now Sweden, with its highly capable Saab fighters, will join NATO.
The russian federation has at its disposal one and a half thousand fighter jets and helicopters of strategic aviation
This number is from the British Defence Express, but the article relies on a Ukrainian spokesman. So who knows? Anyway, a lot fewer fighters than NATO has–and the above number includes helicopters; I would also say that American fighter aircraft, although often plagued by problems, are technologically superior to anything Russia has. I do not think that 1 F-35 could take down 20 Russian jets, but I would not put a lot of money on the Russian air force.
Ok, so there is one statistic. Readers might like to look up population, gross national product, etc. All the figures are far, far in NATO’s favor.
So that leaves us with Russian history to judge by. A reminder: Russia has repeatedly sent troops into Eastern and Western Europe (Prussia in the 1760s, Paris in 1814) and then withdrawn them. After 1991, Russian soldiers left Eastern Europe, which then joined NATO. Russia, contrary to some assertions or unsubtle hints, is not pathologically inclined to expand. That honor might go to Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. To the U.S.? Nah, no way.
Stephen Kotkin of Princeton is the American left-center-right all-purpose historian of Russia. He has written and spoken several times on Russian expansion from the time of Ivan the Terrible (a mistranslation of groznyi, which would be better rendered as awesome): “Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years.” This is “Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics,” in Foreign Affairs, America’s all-purpose self-appointed guardian journal of righteousness, May/June 2016, and elsewhere. So there is no stopping Putin, equated so often now with Stalin (whose forces moved into Eastern Europe and Germany to defeat the Nazi regime), until he is utterly stopped.
No indication from Kotkin that Russia expanded east into Siberia, much as we did into the West–or more accurately, like Canada did–for furs. More importantly, Russia expanded to the south, including into what became Ukraine, to defend territory and people from the Mongols (Tatars, if you wish).
Fantasy 4: that Ukraine can and will recover demographically from this war and from its earlier population losses. See Kennan Cable 88 from the Wilson Center, America’s all-purpose (ah, forget it), February 2024. Ukrainian refugees are supposed to return to the country–to what, exactly? What are the economic prospects of the country at best?
Most useless in the Kennan Cable is the idea of boosting Ukraine’s birth rate. No “advanced” country has been able to do that, not even France, where the birthrate, or total fertility rate, is falling after years of effort to raise it. Now women 15-40 in France have–this is a statistical guess at a moving target–1.83 births on average. 2.2 is needed just to replenish the population.
Ukraine’s tfr has been falling pretty steadily since 1960 and is now said to be 1.22. There has not been a census in the country for years, for good reason. If there were 51 million people living in Ukraine in 1991, including in the Crimea, now we see figures like 32 million, even 28 million when refugees are taken out of the total.
I liked Ukraine in many ways when I was there on numerous trips. I do not want Ukrainians, or Russians for that matter, to die needlessly. Peace and compromise are in order right now.
America, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe: A Historian Looks at the World in Pieces 