War in Ukraine (still) matters the most

Even if you "support Russia", they want to kill you anyway

Russian actual neo-Nazi Ivan Okhlobystin, proclaiming “goida” - Russian equivalent for jihad - against the whole West during a rally with Putin in Moscow, September 2022. Can you reason with this guy?

I apologize for neglecting this blog. My only explanation is simple, so many other things have been going on. However, in a classic self contradictory manner, I will try to explain once again why I think war in Ukraine matters more to us in Europe than anything else.

It is bigger than elections in Poland, elections in Holland, war against Hamas, everything that keeps us distracted. Of course, I’m guilty of that distraction too.

It’s a common cognitive error: issues that are more recent seem to be more important, even if they obviously are not. Covid is still killing people, but we pretend it is gone.

If you live in Europe (not necessarily Eastern Europe), there is still no issue bigger than war in Ukraine. All your current worries - should I take this job, is this the right moment to take a mortgage, or even the eternal “are you the one I’ve been waiting for” - might become irrelevant if Russia wins, just as the corresponding dilemmas of our ancestors in 1938-1941.

Before I go into detail, let me define what I mean by “if Russia wins”. There are two scenarios I would call by this name.

One is the decisive Russian victory - Russian flag flying over Presidential Palace in Kyiv, Zelensky fleeing in panic, Russian troops reaching the Polish border. That would be the end of the world as we know it, but I don’t think this is even remotely possible. Russia simply lacks the potential.

I am mostly concerned with the scenario of a minor Russian victory. This would happen if the Western allies force Ukraine into some kind of de facto surrender, such as a peace treaty allowing Russians to keep whatever they managed to occupy - or even worse, the “annexations”, which would mean giving up the cities Russians never even reached, such as Zaporhizhia.

I hope this will not happen - but the voices in the West promoting this idea are getting louder and pro-Ukrainian voices are getting quieter. “Give peace a chance so people will stop dying”, we hear that from Musk, we hear that from Orban, we hear that from the usual Russian assets in the West.

One cannot stress it often enough: peace on Russian terms WILL NOT STOP KILLING AND DYING. That was the miserable outcome of the Minsk agreements - in 2015 the line of contact was frozen for 7 years, but people were still dying from shelling on both sides. Russia always finds a way to violate cease-fire by saying “it’s not us, it’s the little green men”.

It is very unlikely that this kind of peace or ceasefire is to be accepted by any democratic government of Ukraine, so this would mean Zelensky overthrown in a coup - this time for real - and replaced by some Russian puppet, Lukashenko/Kadyrov style. This, in turn, means extremely brutal suppression of resistance - in other words, people dying from tortures and executions, like in Chechnya or Belarus.

Actually, it would be much worse. Ukrainians are used to defending their liberty by public unrest. They would react with another Maidan. It would have to be slaughtered for this puppet government to survive.

Even if you react with cynical “so be it” - it will be your problem, too. The very obvious result will be another wave of refugees, much bigger than the one from the first days of the invasion.

They will be impossible to stop by the EU, because at least the Polish border will remain open. But due to significant Ukrainian diaspora in North America, this wave will certainly cross the Atlantic. So even if you are pro-Russian in the West (the only place to be pro-Russian!), you will still suffer the inevitable disruption of your economy.

If you live in the collective West, Russia perceives you as the enemy. Even if you are “liking” on social media the pro-Russian statements of Western fringe politicians or maybe even have a pro-Putin bumper sticker. It is in your best personal interest to keep Russian troops far from Kyiv and Kharkiv, even if you are a die-hard follower of tankie left or MAGA right.

It is rather easy to imagine what would happen if Putin got his chunk of Ukraine. We’ve been there already.

Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, © Andrei nacu, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia

In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia, creating puppet states of “South Ossetia” and “Abkhazia”, comprising roughly 20% of Georgian territory. The world did not react with sanctions.

On the contrary, Russia was rewarded for this land grab by the Western policy of “reset”. Back then, everybody (me included, I must admit) was so panicked about “escalation” that we reproduced the classic Munich appeasement fallacy. We had hoped if Putin gets what he wants, he will quit invading his neigbours.

How silly of us! This appeasement ended like all appeasements. In 2014 Putin invaded Ukraine for the first time, expecting the same reaction - but to his dismay, this time there was some half-assed reaction from the West. But the sanctions were mild enough for him to repeat this in 2022.

You can see that Russian pundits and diplomats are genuinely surprised by the West. “Why are you sanctioning us now, while you didn’t do so back in 2008? What’s the difference? Why we can’t just ignore the suffering of Ukrainians and keep trading? Are they so much different than Georgians?”

It’s very easy to predict what will happen if Russia gets another “reset” and the West accepts another land grab. They will lick their wounds, rebuild their military potential - and make another invasion in 10 years.

These invasions get only worse each time. When they invaded Chechnya, you could say it wasn’t even an invasion, formally it was Russian territory. When they invaded South Ossetia, you could say Southern Ossetians wanted to be reunited with Northern Ossetians (which, ironically, never happened, they are still separate entities, divided by hard border). When they invaded Ukraine in 2014, you could say “well, the Russian speaking population want to be raped and looted by Russian speaking occupiers”.

These causes were only getting more and more far fetched and the invasion goals more and more unclear. The next country to be invaded could be Finland, could be Turkey, could be Poland - Russian politicians and Russian media are already full of such ideas. And again, it will hurt you too, even if you “support Russia”.

There are other wars, other humanitarian disasters, other pressing issues. But war in Ukraine remains the only one capable of directly hurting Mr Joe The Average from Small Town, The West. Or - for that matter - you, dear reader.