Like a judo master, the Russian aggressor tires out his opponents until they break. Then he comes back for more.
By Yaroslav HRYTSAK
I have a friend, an American author, who writes about war. Over the past few decades, he has been to South Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and other conflict zones. In the case of Ukraine, he said one thing stood out: here it was clear who was the aggressor and who was the victim. Along with Bosnia, Ukraine’s resistance to Russia remains, in his opinion, one of only two truly just wars. After three years of fighting a just war against Putin’s aggression, we are now faced, with Donald Trump, with an unjust peace. Ukraine will lose land and will not receive compensation for its losses.
War crimes will go unpunished and Ukrainians will not be provided with the security guarantees necessary to protect them from future Russian attacks. It is not a new scenario.
Consider the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. Russia attacked neighboring Georgia, yet then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country held the presidency of the European Council, did his best to appease Russia, forcing Georgia into a humiliating peace. Russia’s war against Georgia had another, less well-known consequence. After Russia’s victory, Vladimir Putin then approved plans for a full-scale war against Ukraine. The weak Western response to Russia’s aggression in Georgia gave Putin reason to believe that it would react similarly in the case of Ukraine.
Just as his war against Georgia was largely a reaction to its pro-Western revolution of 2003, Ukraine would be “punished” for the 2004 Orange Revolution that threatened to remove Ukraine from Russia’s orbit.
Putin’s plan was revealed, and its details appeared in a 2009 newspaper article written by two leading Ukrainian security experts. But at the time it was considered so fantastic that few people took it seriously. In any case, Ukraine was spared whatever fate Putin had in mind for it in 2010, when pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych came to power. In 2013, Yanukovych surprisingly supported Ukraine’s journey toward European integration. But in a surprise twist, when it came to signing a historic association agreement with the EU that year, he pulled the plug.
This sudden change came after a meeting with Putin. There was speculation that Putin forced Yanukovych to step down by threatening to launch his own war against Ukraine if the country continued its move westward.
Yanukovych’s unilateral refusal to sign the EU agreement triggered a new wave of protests that began in Kiev in November 2013 – and eventually became known as the Euromaidan revolution. The conflict dragged on for months, and by early 2014 it became clear that a Russian invasion was only a matter of time. I speak from experience: during Euromaidan, I worked at an ad hoc institute and was briefed on Putin’s plans. We knew we only had until the end of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Immediately after they ended, the annexation of Crimea began. In the Kremlin’s thinking, this was supposed to start a “Russian spring” – an uprising of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population against Kiev.
It failed to materialize. Most Ukrainians, regardless of the language they spoke, did not want to allow war in their homes. Instead of a civil war in Ukraine, Putin got a low-intensity war in the Donbas, which he could not win. However, he knew how to wait.
Those who know Putin well say that the philosophy by which he lives is similar to that of judo – a sport he has practiced since his youth. In judo, you stay close to your opponent and wear them down until they give up. Despite failing to achieve his goals in 2014, Putin has not given up on anything. The full-scale invasion of 2022 confirms this. More than once, Putin and his spin doctors have insisted that Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but with the West in Ukraine. He sees Ukraine as an artificial nation, created by the West to subvert Russian power. Independent Ukraine is guilty of its own existence. A ceasefire is possible in such a war, but not peace.
However, a ceasefire would solve little if anything. And for Ukraine it would bring additional danger. Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians have sought a just and lasting peace. Now, instead, they will get a shaky and unfair ceasefire.
The discrepancy between high expectations and humiliating reality is one of the most reliable indicators of a pre-revolutionary crisis. Unlike in 2004 and 2014, a new revolution could be led by people who have returned from the front and feel betrayed by their government. The resulting civil conflict would give Putin the perfect opportunity to invade Ukraine again – this time under the pretext of establishing political stability. In February 2022, Putin’s goal was to conquer Kiev in three days. What he failed to do then, Trump could help him achieve within the next three years or even sooner.
And then, the whole world is before him. Experts say he will be ready to attack the West within the next three to five years.
Many in the West are ignoring his long-term ambitions now, just as they ignored them in 2008. But if history has anything to teach us, one of its lessons is this: you can’t appease an aggressor who thinks long-term. The Ukrainians learned this the hard way. Before the full-scale invasion of 2022, we were warned of war, but we didn’t want to believe it. Perhaps it is human nature to mobilize only after a threat becomes real. I would like to be wrong, but the historian’s soul tells me that in February 2022 the world entered a decade of war.
The saying “if you want peace, prepare for war” remains as relevant after three years of war in Ukraine as it has been for 2000 years. (The Guardian)
