The Guardian view on Putin’s Ukraine war: promoting bloodshed, not ending it
Just a few weeks after its 30th anniversary, the Russian Federation has gone to war with Ukraine, a country proud of its history, but which spent 700 years largely under foreign rule. The initial Russian offensive began on three fronts on Thursday to the sound of a missile barrage. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sent tanks to pound Ukraine’s cities. His warships attacked from the sea. Innocent civilians are being killed, their homes reduced to rubble. With Russian forces closing on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the government asking its three million people to take up arms, Mr Putin’s war “to stop genocide” may promote one.
Mr Putin is acting like a thug. He is threatening the international system by taking what he wants, irrespective of the human cost. A humanitarian crisis looms as tens of thousands of refugees cross into eastern Europe. The images beamed from the streets of Ukraine have rekindled memories of the wars of the 20th century – of a kind that once seemed unimaginable in 2022. Many have been left to wonder: is this a new cold war? Or the beginning of a third world war? Of the two, the former is unwanted but preferable to a global conflagration.
This explains why Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s pleas for help from the west have gone unanswered. Mr Zelenskiy may get more weapons. There is also diplomatic condemnation against Russian aggression. But Ukraine will not receive any military assistance – such as a Nato-enforced no–fly zone – that would shift the odds decisively in Ukraine’s favour. Mr Putin’s threat to those who try to intervene with nuclear retaliation is dangerous and reckless. Only someone prepared for a war of extinction would utter such a warning.
Western nations have decided, for the moment, that tough sanctions would hurt them more than they would hurt Russia. In the 24 hours after Mr Putin signed a decree recognising two breakaway Ukrainian territories, the Bloomberg financial news service calculated that the EU, the UK and the US spent $600m on Russian oil and gas products. This would explain why the west’s sanctions package against Moscow’s banks is designed to allow energy payments to continue. But the dependence on Moscow is unsustainable – as is a wider economic war of attrition. Instead, the west, and Europe in particular, must start managing without Russian gas by ramping up supplies of greener sources of energy.
Russia’s determination to impose a military solution to the political problem of Ukraine is a criminal mistake resting on a might-is-right argument. Russian officials claim to be open to talks, but Mr Putin’s description of the Ukrainian government as “a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” shows Moscow is not serious. The world is sliding into a protracted international struggle for spheres of influence between great powers. A Ukrainian defeat would see Washington pivot to a Europe where potentially Russia and the US see each other as enemies. Yet hostilities would have to remain below a certain threshold.
Even if Mr Putin achieves quick success, parts of the Ukrainian military that are not defeated are likely to continue fighting – raising the prospect of grinding guerrilla warfare against Russian occupation or a puppet government. Mr Putin’s primary goal is for Ukraine never to join Nato. His other demand would limit Ukrainian sovereignty so that the country would be firmly in Moscow’s grip. Without compromise, the Russian president will isolate himself and his country from the European continent. Ukraine’s people should be able to choose their governments and these ought to be able to face both east and west without hostility. Mr Putin’s war is putting paid to this, which is a tragedy of immense proportions. But history does not end when victory is declared. Wars are never won forever.