What’s the Endgame in Ukraine?

May 19, 2022

The Big Question is a new feature in which Project Syndicate commentators provide compelling answers to a timely question.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine clearly not going according to plan, many are now asking whether Western-backed Ukrainian forces may win. But what would that mean in practice, and what might the longer-term consequences be?

In this Big Question, we ask Anders Åslund, Pascal Boniface, Anastasia Edel, and Charles Tannock to consider how the conflict might unfold from here.

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Henk Crop Jun 6, 2022

The end game should be a free Ukraine but also a stable Russia.
Russia is not only a big and proud country but also has plenty of nuclear missiles.
We also should learn from history, the Versaillers treaty that concluded WW1.
At that time France and Belgium thought that Germany should pay for the damages of WW1.
Eventually they occupied vital parts of Germany ( the Rhineland ), thereby helping Hitler to come to power. The lesson is you cannot humilate a people over time.

Russia has a sad and autocratic history. However at the time of Jetsin they realised that and proposed, as an example, to join NATO. That proposal was promptly and arrogantly rejected by the West.
Obama told Putin that Russia was now only a local factor. Verhofstad, EU MP, went to Kiyv to tell the the Ukrainians that they were the real Europeans.
Putin started this War. But Western diplomacy completely failed to normalize relations with Russia, which could have prevented this War. Cold War. Rethoric prevailed, wisdom and historic considerations were absent.
( see also PS, Orenstein )
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Elizabeth Pula Jun 2, 2022

"Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, French, Italian, German, and English. Russian is the most spoken native language in Europe; and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language."
"Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. An estimated 250 million Europeans are native speakers of Slavic languages, the largest groups being Russian (c. 110 million in European Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe, Russian forming the largest linguistic community in Europe), Polish (c. 45 million), Ukrainian (c. 40 million), Serbo-Croatian (c. 21 million), Czech (c. 11 million), Bulgarian (c. 9 million), Slovak (c. 5 million) Belarusian and Slovene (c. 3 million each) and Macedonian (c. 2 million)."
Or have any of the Europeans ever had any random preference for Chinese or Arabic?

Once upon a time there were 40-million Ukrainian speakers, that has fallen drastically by the wayside most recently due to circumstances within their control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe
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Christoph Assheuer May 25, 2022

Pascal Boniface: "But to regain the lost territories, Zelensky will need continued and maybe increased US and European aid. America and Europe seem to be on board with that, for the time being."
Still, so far, some of the military aid has been too unspecific, it's a great regret how little powerful democratic countries have actually done to prevent the huge number of civilian deaths due to indiscriminate artillery and rocket terror. Sound Ukrainian demands based on military realities, especially Russian air power, have been rejected.
Non-involvement looms large despite much sympathy for the Ukrainian cause.
Some aid is either not getting through or not reaching places fast enough; the situation in some places (Donbas, Mariupol, Kherson) is dire. I'm far less optimistic about the outcome than some of the authors above. As soon as public attention wanes, my fears are that tough sanctions and embargoes towards the Russian kleptocracy may weaken, along with the efforts of the international community to safeguard the political and economic independence of Ukraine within its legal borders.
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Elizabeth Pula May 22, 2022

RE:"Ultimately, either Putin goes or Russia becomes like North Korea." Oh really, that's a good line, like just how much and what percentage of the European continent is going to be shunned by who, the little teeny tiny EU? Yeah, sure. Expect extremely violent civil war across EU before it ever happens in Russia. Hot air is quite a bit different than gas or oil, especially when you haven't got either of the second "inflammatory agents".
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Elizabeth Pula May 22, 2022

Ukraine is another black hole that is sucking up every last shred of principled existence based on any reasonable contracts in real time by the millisecond. The EU needs to recognize that Turkey is not on the North Atlantic in any sense of the word, nor a kindly neighbor mowing any one's backyard for free or a hand-shake.
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Ron Batten May 21, 2022

Putin was born on October 7, 1952. He is now 69 years old. His term in office lasts until 2026, but he may die of natural causes. Life expectancy in Russia is now 73, but when Putin was born it was around 65.
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Ron Batten May 21, 2022

Russian military power has been devastated many times before in history. And it has always resurfaced. The last example was the 1905 Russo-Japanese war in the Far East. Japan won because it had naval ships that could go one or two nautical miles faster than the Russian ships. Forty years later, overwhelming Russian military might kicked Japan outof Manchuria.
Besides, as Helmut Schmidt has said: "Russia is Upper Volta with nukes." Even if Russia were the poorest country in the world, with a tiny population and no natural resourses to speak of, it still has more nucleair weapons than most other countries combined.
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