Forum User: Ukraine Cannot Win in Any Scenario

Ukraine has already lost, even if it expels the invader

Can Ukraine win this war? After more than 500 days of fighting, the answer emerging in less complacent analysis is a qualified no. Not a no for certain scenarios: a no across the board. The starting point is a lengthy text establishing three premises—a poor and corrupt country unable to sustain the military effort alone, facing an enemy with no intention of leaving—and concludes that, whoever wins on the ground, Ukraine is mortgaged for decades.

The three starting premises

The first is that Ukraine is a poor and corrupt country. This is not an isolated opinion but is supported by analyses accumulated since attempts to approach the EU, the Euromaidan, and the Donbass conflict, which depict unreliable elections, political division, and corruption at all levels on a precarious economy. The obvious objection—Russia is equally or more poor and corrupt—is dismissed a priori: that its neighbor is worse does not make Ukraine a mature democracy.

The second: Ukraine cannot win alone. The military leadership and the president have requested weapons and money from the start, making it a reasonable conclusion that without external support, there would not even be enough to sustain the troops. That Russia cannot also definitively overcome Ukraine does not alter the calculation.

The third: Russia is not leaving. The cost of expelling it meter by meter is not high, nor even unacceptable: it is impossible. At the current pace, doing so would completely devastate the country. That Moscow cannot advance further, or that its own adventure ends ruining it as a nation, is considered a separate issue and, for the purposes of the argument, irrelevant. The original text closes each section with an aside anticipating the reply before it arrives. It is a stylistic detail, but it explains why the discussion has dragged on so long.

The three scenarios: winning and leaving ruined

The first is the most favorable: unprecedented international support, absolute isolation of Russia, delivery of all types of jets, and an audacious Ukrainian offensive that breaks the blockade and expels the invader. The result is not described as a party. It leaves a devastated country, a shaken population, and an unpayable debt to the EU and the United States that would be collected for decades, with land sold cheaply to foreign banks and Anglo-Saxon companies in charge of reconstruction.

The second scenario is the stalemate: a tug-of-war that extends for a decade or more, with entire generations lost, a divided country, and material losses of all kinds.

The third, considered the most unlikely, is open military defeat. Here the conclusion is obvious: Ukraine loses. Adding the three, the thesis is that there is no box in which Ukraine wins, even if it wins.

What does it miccionan to win a war?

Here comes the underlying objection. The winners and losers of a conflict are not measured by how each one ends up after the combat, but by whether they achieve the objectives they set upon entering. It is the analogy of the 20th century repeated in the discussion: the Soviet Union emerged from World War II with the country in ruins and millions dead, and no one disputes that it was one of the winners.

Applied to the case, it is argued that the Russian objective is to subjugate Ukraine and that it will not achieve it either: Moscow will not dominate the country again as between 1990 and 2014. A methodological criticism is added: predictions about what will happen in twenty years are not facts, and presenting them as a cold analysis based on data does not make them so. The response to that criticism is always the same: Russia's fate is irrelevant; here we are talking about Ukraine.

Neither with Ukraine nor against Ukraine

Much of the disagreement comes from there. One block understands that describing the costs of victory amounts to asking for surrender; the other insists that one can lose in two boxes at once. Russia may not achieve its military objectives, and Ukraine may emerge politically broken. Different defeats, at different levels, without hero or villain. "As if in a fight you are badly injured and comfort yourself by thinking that you have killed the other," summarizes the initial premise. And adds: even winning, you have lost.

Who pays the bill while fighting

Another current shifts the focus outside Kiev and Moscow. The real war would be between the United States and Russia, with Ukraine as a direct intermediary and Europeans as indirect intermediaries. To Washington, it is argued, the result would be indifferent: what it seeks is for Russia to collapse, as peine with the USSR about thirty years ago, and this conflict would be the prologue of a greater showdown with China.

With this framework, some maintain that weapons are not given away, but sold, in the exact amount to keep the situation bogged down and not enough to decide it. The energy bill and reconstruction would fall on Europe: hundreds of billions to rebuild the country, awarded to American and British companies. The counter-reply, expressed by another participant, is that these weapons are what are saving Ukraine and allowing it to defend itself.

Closing. With these threads, the only point of agreement is that no one knows when it ends, how much it costs, or who signs the final IOU. Rest assured: there will be credit. We will have to see who grants it.