The Ukrainian Patriotic War
Today is Victory Day in Russia, a time to remember the past. For the last two months, I wondered what previous conflicts to compare the current war to. For Russia, thus far, one recalls the disastrous Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939. Tiny Finland, expected to lose, held back the Soviet onslaught and ground the Red Army down, at the cost of losing its southern part. For Ukraine, this war is a typical struggle for one’s country, a patriotic war against invaders who have come to destroy it, indeed are destroying parts of it as we speak. President Zelensky wants to draw comparisons to the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, however, for Ukraine, this is an anti imperialist and anti colonial war.
The idea of desperately fighting a larger, stronger neighbour with a revanchist grievance wanting to seize all or parts of your country for its natural resources and for the fulfilment of their own imperial ambitions is stuck firmly in the minds of every European, which is perhaps why it resonates with us so well. We read about this in the history books, and now it is happening, once again, before our eyes.
Russian propaganda — which, since my last post almost 2 months ago, has fully blossomed after a quiet start — fights hard against this narrative. They claim this is a proxy war — that Ukraine is somehow a pawn in the larger conflict the West is waging against Russia. They cite the — very substantial — aid that the NATO nations have given to the Ukrainians, as well as the training that the Ukrainian armed forces received prior to Russia invading in February. Yet, colonial struggles have involved rival powers helping the newly independent colony against its former overlords. No one called the US leaders a French proxy during the War of Independence despite the very substantial French help, which France provided in order to weaken the British. It was seen, quite rightly, as a struggle for independence against an empire in which help was sought from elsewhere.
The West is not, of course, helping Ukraine out of altruism. For them, this is a way of weakening Russia — but that does not make Ukraine any less worthy of support. It so happens that the interests of Ukraine and NATO coincide in this conflict. It is difficult for us to accept, used as we are to US aggression in Iraq and weapons sales to the Saudi Arabia regime waging a bloody war in Yemen but some countries welcome Western weapons purely to ensure their own security. Some countries want to be in NATO and want to have US military bases on their soil. There is an assumption in some circles that any country that receives Western aid is a puppet regime, however it is entirely possible that countries enter into that arrangement of their own free will. Eastern European countries, with a long and painful history of Russian aggression against them, belong to that category.
Propaganda does not acknowledge chance or coincidence. It seeks to create a conspiracy theory, a plot in the place of what, in reality, is a coincidental alignment of interests. It will never acknowledge that Ukraine’s history encourages a majority of its people to gravitate towards the West. It is not a sinister plot: more a marriage of convenience. Of course, not every Ukrainian wants to be closer to the West: some are bitterly opposed, some are pro-Russian, including most people in Crimea and the separatist-held areas: they still decry the 2014 ‘coup’ that deposed the president, Victor Yanukovich. However, the democratic elections held since 2014 showed again and again that these views were in a minority as the pro-Russian parties and politicians received relatively few votes.
These narratives also rely on the trick of mixing up cause and effect. Western help started arriving because Russia started seizing Ukrainian territory. It arrived in a trickle since 2014 and in much larger amounts after late February of this year. One cannot use the Western military aid that has arrived and conclude ‘see, they wanted to weaken and destroy Russia all along’, but people do just that.
The narrative of ‘destroying Russia’ happily cohabits with the narrative of the ‘inevitability of Russian victory’. Russia is supposedly both fighting, desperately, for its own survival (on the territory of Ukraine) and emerging totally victorious. Putin is both wildly popular and in danger from a pro-Western coup if Russia loses in Ukraine. Ukraine both posed a danger to Russian security so extreme as to require a bloody invasion and at the same time is doomed. The ‘inevitability’ narrative claims that the defeat of Ukraine is only a matter of time and the West should stop encouraging them with weapons, that ‘Western arms prolong the conflict’. As the Ukrainian socilaist Taras Bilous points out, it is a colonial mindset: the West is being asked to force Ukraine to comply with another imperial power’s demands. I would add that the idea of carving up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence is terribly reminiscent of the ‘carving up of Africa’ between the great European powers in the 19th century.
How is the war really going? Reliable information is scarce, despite OSINT being able to accurately pinpoint the location of the fighting by tracking fires visible in the live satellite imagery. Geolocated video evidence of Ukrainian equipment losses is thin on the ground, due to Ukraine strongly discouraging its dissemination on the grounds of not giving away the precise locations of its troops. Russia, likewise, suppresses the reporting of its own casualties. We can only guess at the relative rates of attrition that will decide which side is likely to crack first. However, there are some pointers. Take these two (plausible-looking) accounts of separatist fighters: one volunteer and one drone mechanic in action around Rubizhine. They hate Ukraine with a passion but also complain about Putin and the DNR/LNR authorities, filled with corrupt loyalists and not ‘freedom fighters’. They describe:
- Complicated Ukrainian defences, prepared over many years, competently defended by a determined Ukrainian army.
- Drones being used by both sides to aim artillery fire, with great success. (The separatists are using French-made Mavic drones).
- Russian military making steady but slow progress, however the losses on both sides are terrible.
- Since, officially, this is a special operation, many of the best troops are not required to fight. Some choose to leave as it’s too dangerous. On the other hand, male Ukrainian residents of DNR and LNR are conscripted en masse.
- The ineptitude of Russian high command causes many unnecessary losses.
- Shortages of equipment require many parts to be crowdsourced.
- Without a full mobilisation, Russia will run out of troops.
Of course, they can only report on the state of things on their part of the front, in the separatist army. And yet, these are the areas where the most promising advances are being made.
For Ukraine, the question of ‘can we realistically win’ has become academic. The reports from Bucha, from countless other towns and villages under Russian control show a systematic pattern of war crimes. Looting is widespread, sexual violence is widespread, people are tortured and executed, escaping cars with civilians are shot at, homes are booby-trapped by mines — clearly Ukraine have to win, to save their people, much like the USSR had to win in 1941–5. Win or die trying. Even if the most brutal Russian divisions, responsible for the bulk of the atrocities, are withdrawn, even if obliterating bomb shelters from the air stops, there is still the problem of the arrested activists, of textbooks being re-written, of teachers being re-trained, of street signs being changed, of people being deported, all to culturally erase Ukraine, its language and history. This is why I called what is happening a patriotic war — Ukraine is fighting for the lives of its civilians and its national culture. What other choices do they have?
Many people, myself included, have been shocked by the brutality of the Russian forces towards non-combatants. Even though there were massacres of civilians in Chechnya, and afterwards beheadings in Syria, everybody expected the civilians of Ukraine, a supposedly fraternal people that Russia claims to be rescuing, to be treated differently. Why were Russian forces allowed by their commanders to commit war crimes on this scale, war crimes that redouble the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight to the bitter end whilst also causing horror in the West? I do not buy any conspiracy theories of ‘false flags’ — it would have been impossible to stage all this in so many towns and villages north of Kiev and Chernigov without a lot of witnesses. Many sources agree that former members of the Ukrainian ex-military and current members of the territorial defence, as well as anyone connected to government, were in many places rounded up, tortured and shot following orders from the top. Escaping cars with civilians were sometimes shot because soldiers were told that they were dressed-up spies or spotters for the artillery. For the other atrocities, there are two possibilities. Either the Russian command structure is so corrupted that the elite divisions — such as the Chechens or the VDV, enraged by the losses they suffered in what was expected to be an easy special operation — are able to do as they please without fear of repercussions. Or, which is more likely, this is a deliberate terror strategy whose aim is to depopulate those border regions.
Ukraine already had a demographic crisis before the invasion. The Russian calculation could be that a significant part of the people who run away from Ukraine in fear for their lives will not come back, especially if they face coming back to a burnt-out home in a town haunted by their dead relatives which is itself in a country with a destroyed economy. The Russian deportations of over a million Ukrainians to Russia could also be part of that strategy. A depopulated area would be easier to take over in any future conflict. As an added bonus, Russia may hope to destabilise Europe with the millions of Ukrainian refugees currently there, increasing support for friendly alt-Right politicians such as Orban, Le Pen or Salvini.
Russia and the pro-Russian elements in the Western public discourse have expended a lot of effort attempting to spread false information about the Russian atrocities. Supposedly, Bucha was an operation by the Azov battalion to ‘frame’ the Russians. Supposedly, the missile attack in Kramatorsk was carried out by the Ukrainians. Supposedly, ‘the Nazis’ shelled civilian buildings in Mariupol and Kharkov and pretended the damage was from Russian bombs. Supposedly, the drama theatre in Mariupol was a military HQ. In the West, those have largely not been believed — not least because of the efforts of the OSINT community, countering propaganda with verifiable facts — drone footage, satellite photos, videos and so on. However, elsewhere in the world they have been more successful — most of all in the Middle East and South America. (Also in China, however that represents more the line of their government and not Russian propaganda). For instance, in Brazil, both Lula and Bolsonaro have had to pay lip service to Putin’s narrative, blaming both sides for the conflict.
It probably is not a surprise that the places who suffered most from Western invasions and ‘regime changes’ are particularly unsympathetic to supporting the side backed by the West. This may change in the case of the Middle East if Russia continues to blockade Ukrainian ports, the grain from which, in a large part, is destined for the Arab world. Let us not forget that the Arab spring was preceded by rising food prices.
What makes this conflict different to either the war in Finland or to a typical war against a current/former imperial ruler is that Putin cannot just call things to a stop. Stalin could stop in 1939 when the losses became too heavy because he faced no popular opinion. When colonies fought for independence, the public back in Europe was not hugely concerned about them gaining it. But in Russia, the public craves a victory. Behind Finland looms a far darker historical event — the destruction of two thirds of the Russian navy and a large part of its army in the war against Japan in 1904–5, a war that Russia was expected to win easily. The shock of that defeat contributed to a revolution in 1905 and possibly to the one in 1917, ultimately sending the Tsar, Nicholas II, a figure highly revered in modern Russia to the point of being canonised, to his execution. Putin is trapped between the battlefield realities and the need to feed the devil he himself created, the ultra-patriotic crowds brandishing Z signs and demanding that the ‘Nazis’ are destroyed that might just decide to turn on their leaders in the case the ‘Nazis’ win. He does not give an impression of a leader who knows what do to next.
Contrary to some expectations, Putin’s Victory day speech did not contain announcements of a mobilisation, merely rehashing the same platitudes. However, Russia will soon come to a point at which it will have to choose between mobilisation and stopping the war. It remains to be seen whether Putin chooses to up the ante in a conflict that is currently on a knife-edge.