Ukraine: the conflict with no end in victory or defeat
Tags: ukraine, politics
Published: 2023-12-24 14:14:42

The war in Ukraine has been going on for two years now, and no conclusion is yet in sight, despite regular press articles on talks with Moscow. For many, this conflict has become personal; it has managed to galvanize a great deal of forces and steer them in one direction. At the same time, it has demonstrated the real state of affairs regarding the defense capabilities of democratic countries.

A problem is often described as an obstacle or a threat to life. The depletion of Western military arsenals amid the active arming of the East seems to be a problem, as it affects our security directly. Today, many people doubt whether we will eventually be able to defend Ukraine. And if we cannot do so, how can we protect ourselves?

The conflict in Ukraine, unfortunately, is no longer seen as a fight of ideas. In the contemporary world, any kind of turbulence affects the economies of the most diverse, seemingly unrelated parts of the planet. The world democracies took a risky step by expressing voicing undeniable solidarity with Ukrainians amid their struggle with Russia.

Advocating economic pressure on Moscow, suffering losses, as well as supporting Kyiv in military and financial terms, hardly anyone could foresee the current situation. Russia has obviously not only avoided any losses, but, with the support of the global South and East, has multiplied its own fortune.

Western sanction packages are being repeatedly revised in favor of excluding a number of items essential for democracies. Even Russian gas, which European countries declared to have overcome their dependence on, instead of pipeline transit, is supplied to Europe in a liquefied form in significantly larger volumes than before.

Russia’s Urals crude averaged $80 per barrel in September 2023, $20 above the G7 price cap adopted at the end of 2022. Politico recently admitted that the price ceiling mechanism for Russian oil has actually failed. According to the magazine, Russian crude imports to India alone, which profits from oil refining, rose by 134% in 2023. At the beginning of the year, Politico noted, Russia was still experiencing inconveniences of the price ceiling, which eventually waned.

The outcome of the war in Ukraine is an issue of preserving the existing order, with democratic nations presiding at the world table. Western leaders should take a brave look at the current situation and plan their actions taking into account the real picture, without neglecting the interests of the warring Ukraine. Depleted armories are an incentive to boost and develop efficient military production.

This raises the question: When Volodymyr Zelensky provoked Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, 2022, five days ahead of the war, by announcing the possible abandonment of the Budapest nuclear arms agreements, how come none of the Western leaders could speak in favor of détente?

Today’s destruction of Ukrainian cities, thousands of casualties, shrinking economy, refugees and territory losses – who could foresee this? Who was concerned with strategic planning, gambling with Ukraine’s NATO membership? Was the conflict, in which Russia would inevitably be drawn into, calculated to inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow?

Let us look at the facts. Military and economic reinforcement could not have been in the plans of Western strategists. What do we see in practice? First, the growth of Russia’s defense budget. If in 2023 it allocated 6.4 trillion rubles ($69.6 billion), the country plans to spend more than 10.77 trillion rubles ($117.2 billion) in 2024. For comparison, in 2021 it amounted to only 3.57 trillion rubles ($38.9 billion). In other words, over two years of war, amid sanctions pressure and isolation, Moscow managed to increase it threefold.

One can say that these are inflated figures to keep a good face over a bad game, but the IMF, which can hardly be accused of backing Moscow, also reports positive growth of the Russian economy.

Rostec, Russia’s leading defense company, said that it had increased production of tanks 7 times and light armored vehicles 4.5 times over the year amid the war in Ukraine. Manufacturing of certain types of ammunition has increased 60 times. At the same time, seven working tank production plants alone are operating in Russia at present. Now add to that artillery shells from North Korea, Iranian suicide drones, the mass production of which the Russians launched on their territory, as well as cheap Chinese commercial drones.

Recently, a Ukrainian officer nicknamed “Magyar” claimed that Russian soldiers possess 5-10 times more conventional FPV drones than Ukrainian army has. “As of today, the enemy’s collection of such vehicles against us is maybe five to one, maybe ten to one…,” he said. He also noted that while the dominant part of personnel losses was previously attributed to Russian artillery, now a third of Ukrainian casualties are due to constant mining by the Russian army, which makes Ukraine’s offensive operations extremely tough.

But how do democracies respond to this challenge? On June 22, 2022, President Joe Biden declared that the U.S. nation and the West would support Ukraine for as long as needed. He also stated that Russia would be forced to pay a high price for its behavior.

According to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, Western partners replenished Ukraine’s state budget by $2bn in November 2023, which turned out to be the lowest figure over the last six months. It is also worth recalling that the U.S. Congress, which left for the New Year recess, failed to agree on a new aid package for Kyiv.

Talks over the need to manage the problem at the border with Mexico tied the war in Ukraine to the domestic agenda in the U.S., in addition to the election race. U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, bluntly reported that Washington had “no magic pot” to draw endless aid to Ukraine.

Obviously, this is not the scenario strategists of Western democracies originally envisioned. The Wall Street Journal writes that amid problems with arms supplies and financing, Ukraine has expressed its intention to increase its own arms production.

Kyiv is also experiencing an acute shortage of skilled employees and engineers due to mobilization. According to the newspaper’s assessment, it will take years to restore the country’s arms industry capacities. At the same time, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, recently claimed that Ukraine was incapable of increasing military production on its own to achieve parity with Russia. According to Serhiy Rakhmanin, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Ukraine does not even produce components for ammunition today. The planning horizon against the background of the described circumstances does not include specifics.

The war on Ukrainian territory is a battle for the position on the world stage, which Western democracies will dominate in the near future. It will not end with Ukraine’s victory or defeat; it will go on. The conflict has shown the current disposition on the global chessboard. In some respects, it resembles the layout of the Cold War period, but more diversified and ideologically varied.

The outcome of the Middle East conflict and the future status of Taiwan also depend on the West’s willingness to “play the long game”. The call for the dismantling of the unipolar world order is logical amid the expansion of the Global South and East. This is the natural course of history. The way to change it should be decided in Washington, London and Brussels as soon as possible.