The Guardian view on Putin’s war in Ukraine: a bleak new beginning
There is no shock today, only profound horror at what Russia has already unleashed upon Ukraine, and at what is to come. The invasion launched in the early hours is illegal, immoral and outrageous. It is, above all, a catastrophe for Ukraine: a massive assault by an aggressor with a well-documented ruthlessness and disdain for civilian lives.
But as the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned: “The fate of not only our state is being decided, but also what Europe will be like.” A country that endured so many 20th-century traumas is now experiencing the continent’s biggest attack by one state on another since the second world war.
The unprovoked assault does not merely destroy the hopes of 1991. It is also a terrible blow to the broader international system. Vladimir Putin launched this attack even as the UN security council made its last desperate attempts to stave it off, and as the secretary general, António Guterres, pleaded with him publicly to call off his troops. It is true that the rules which prevailed after 1945 have been honoured perhaps as often in the breach as the observance. But the Russian president has spelt out his utter contempt for the teetering rules-based international order at its very heart.
Russia claimed for months that it would not invade; its assurances that it will not occupy Ukraine are worth nothing. Even on its own supposed logic, the request for military help from the breakaway “republics” in the east cannot explain why troops are advancing from the north and south, and bombarding targets across the country. Mr Putin says that he wants to “demilitarise” and “de-nazify” a democratic country that freely chose its Jewish president. Kyiv believes his aim is to topple the government and install a puppet regime.
How far the Russian president goes may be determined in large part by the
Ukrainian response, and the costs its military can inflict. Mr Putin warned against other countries “meddling”, with the chilling warning that otherwise there would be “consequences you have never encountered in your history” – a barely coded nuclear threat – though Ukraine has long known it will fight alone, albeit strengthened by the recent influx of arms and advice.
A brave minority in Russia have publicly decried this war. Even allowing for his work to insulate his country – amassing foreign currency, reducing western imports and increasing links with China and others – it is likely to pay for this assault with a weakened economy, increasing isolation, a reinvigorated Nato and a bitterly anti-Russian Ukraine. Though state media is pumping out propaganda, and internet censors threatened others with fines if they used non-official sources in their reporting, Mr Putin has done strikingly little to prepare the public for the invasion, or its costs. Yet a president who has twinned aggression abroad with repression at home seems indifferent not only to those costs, but also to the public response to them.
Ukrainians now need and deserve the staunchest support. Those who flee must be given a true welcome by western Europe as well as neighbouring countries. But the big question is what price Ukraine’s backers are willing to pay. The UK and EU promised “massive” sanctions, but hours after the invasion, states were still bickering over how far to go. A further hike in energy prices could tip countries into rampant inflation and potentially recession, with the danger of political destabilisation and further division as citizens struggle to get by.
Mr Putin has reason to believe that he can weather the reaction. Nord Stream 2 is now on hold; yet its construction began just one year after Russia annexed Crimea. Ukraine’s friends must make clear that this time is different, with a sustained as well as large-scale response. Serious attempts to counter Moscow’s aggression must start now, but will be the work of years. It will take years, too, to understand the new era on which we are all now embarking.