Two years and no end in sight

Few New Zealanders had heard of Avdiivka, in the same way they had not previously heard of Bucha, Bakhmut, Mariupol or many other Ukrainian cities that became notorious as sites of carnage, trauma and even war crimes. But this week, Avdiivka fell, just as other Ukrainian cities have, to Russian invaders. Yet it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians. Fewer than 1000 people remained in the devastated eastern Ukrainian city from a pre-war population of 32,000. It has been estimated that the months-long campaign to take Avdiivka cost Russia 16,000 lives and around 300 tanks.

Don’t expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to trumpet those and other losses. We know about them partly because they were made public by a widely read Russian war blogger who reportedly committed suicide only days after posting casualty numbers officials condemned as “slandering the Russian defence ministry”.

Yet they match Western estimates. The Russian lives lost in the taking of one minor Ukrainian city exceeded the entire Russian death toll during the 10-year war in Afghanistan, a war cited as one of the factors behind the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That speaks to Putin’s ruthlessness and determination but also, and this may seem unduly hopeful under the circumstances, his potential vulnerability.

It has been exactly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine in a “special military operation” expected to take just a few days. Putin seemed to genuinely believe that his troops would be welcomed by a population he thinks of as spiritually or culturally Russian rather than what they really are, which is a distinct Ukrainian people with their own language, sovereignty and history.

Putin’s distorted view of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship was laid out in a long essay he released before the invasion and was repeated tiresomely during his recent interview in the Kremlin with US broadcaster Tucker Carlson. While genuine historians consider Putin’s view of Ukraine absurd and dangerous, there are still pockets of support in the West for a perspective of Russia as the wronged party that feels threatened by the US, Nato and so-called Ukrainian “Nazis”, rather than seeing it as the aggressive, neoimperialist state it has clearly become.

It is an increasingly repressive state as well. Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny was widely seen as the unofficial opposition to Putin and many Russia watchers believe that Putin directed Navalny’s sudden death in an Arctic penal colony last week. If so, it was a brazen and defiant act by a leader displaying his power to internal and external enemies, just as he did through the obsequious Carlson.

Nobel Prize-winning Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich explained this week, in an interview after Navalny’s death, that Putin “is a cruel person. He’s a KGB man, not a politician, so he’s capable of anything.”

There is another way in which Ukraine’s loss at Avdiivka was meaningful. Their chaotic retreat is understood to have followed the rationing of artillery. Russia has a much larger war machine and has missiles supplied by North Korea and Iran, while US Republicans dither over military resources. Other European countries, mindful of what a Ukrainian defeat could mean for them, have been stepping up. Denmark is donating its entire stock of artillery shells to Ukraine, but Ukraine still needs US certainty. As historian Timothy Snyder wrote this week, “Ukraine could win, if Americans would help”.

New Zealand is playing its part. The new government is more full-throated in its support for Ukraine than the last one, and Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins marked the two-year anniversary by announcing aid and military support worth more than $25 million, taking New Zealand’s total assistance to more than $100m. There will also be increased sanctions against Russian organisations and individuals.

Some in the West, including in New Zealand, argue that Ukraine should cut its losses and accept a peace plan that would surrender territory to Putin. But more realistic voices in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states know this is naive and foolish. A ceasefire would merely allow Putin to rearm and attack again, and history shows his treaties cannot be trusted.

For now, Ukraine is fighting a defensive war while inflicting wounds in the Black Sea and on Russian infrastructure. But war fatigue has set in and the front line has barely moved in a year, despite Ukraine’s attempted counter-offensive in 2023 and Russia’s greater power. That means neither side is winning and there is every expectation that without a circuit-breaker, such as internal dissent or greater external help, Putin’s cruel and pointless war will drag on for years to come.

Putin’s distorted view of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship was laid out in a long essay he released before the invasion.