One year after the invasion of Ukraine, has Russia already lost?

Western politicians, military leaders and diplomats are meeting with one goal at the top of their agenda: defeat of Russia. This year’s edition of Munich Security Conference comes almost a year after the Kremlin unleashed its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, unleashing an all-out war on the European continent that has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions, devastated Ukrainian cities and forged billions. dollars in damages. The war has galvanized West geopolitics and led to a I WILL TAKE emboldened and soon expanded.

US and European officials are publicly optimistic. on Saturday at Munichit is expected that the vice-president Harris delivers a speech that “will convey America’s Continued Engagement with Ukraine“, reported The Washington Postand will ensure Kyiv that the vital support and coordination of UNITED STATES who supported Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion will endure In his speech, the French President, Emmanuel Macronplans to discuss how to “ensure Russia’s defeat” and how the West can bolster Kyiv in the coming months.

In meetings this week with NATO defense ministers in BrusselsUS Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, said that a possible Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring has “a very good chance of making a fairly significant difference on the battlefield and establishing the initiative”. On the sidelines of this same session, General Mark A. Milleypresident of the Joint Chiefs of Staffsaid an impoverished and isolated Russia had already failed.

“Russia is now a global pariah and the world continues to be inspired by Ukraine’s courage and resilience,” Milley said. “In short, Russia lost; They lost strategically, operationally and tactically.

There is no doubt that the war waged by the Russian President, Vladimir PoutineIt was a disaster for your country. Estimates of Russian battlefield casualties in the space of a year amount to 200,000. A massive mobilization of some 300,000 troops appears to have been more or less fully deployed on the Ukrainian battlefields and, at the better, to have thwarted certain Ukrainian advances to regain the territory lost by Russia. In recent weeks, the losses of the Kremlin they may have been particularly cutting and demoralizing.

A new Russian offensive could prove even bloodier. “If current casualty rates are any indication, the next attack could result in unprecedented loss of life and cause a complete collapse in the morale of mobilized Russian troops, who are already demoralized,” he noted. Pierre Dickinsonof Atlantic Council. “It would make life very difficult for the Russian military in Ukraine, which would face a lack of discipline that would severely limit its ability to mount offensive operations.”

Moreover, the Russian army saw its arsenal severely depleted. It has lost nearly half of its main battle tanks, according to an estimate released this week by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and draws on inventories of weapons from the older (and sometimes Soviet) era. Russia’s ammunition stocks are dwindling rapidly (as are Ukraine’s).

The war and popular mobilization triggered a staggering exodus of people, perhaps close to a million emigrants, desperate to leave Russia. Activists and independent journalists are gone, but so are 10% of the workforce OF from the country. “This exodus is a terrible blow for Russia,” he told my colleagues. Tamara Eidelmana Russian historian who moved to Portugal after the invasion. “The layer that could have changed something in the country has now been removed.”

Western sanctions against Russia have shrunk its economy, affected the country’s industrial capacity in certain sectors and interrupted an era of Russian integration in Europe. But while these measures took a heavy toll on Russia, they did not force Putin to reconsider his neo-imperialist war of revenge.

“Instead of growth, we have decline. But saying all that, it’s certainly not a meltdown, it’s not a disaster,” he said. Sergei Aleksachenko, a former first vice president of Russia’s central bank, at a roundtable in Washington last month. “You cannot say that the Russian economy is in tatters, that it is destroyed, that Putin lacks the funds to continue his war. No that’s not true”.

This is partly explained by the large amount of revenue still generated by European imports of Russian oil and gas. Regardless of their stated desire to no longer depend on Russian energy, most European countries could not abandon Russian energy even as Putin’s war machine beat Ukraine. But the new geopolitical fault lines created by the invasion could accelerate Europe’s transition to low-carbon economies and further diminish Russia’s influence on the continent.

“The results already speak for themselves; For the first time last year, wind and solar combined to generate a greater share of electricity generation in Europe than oil and gas,” he wrote. Brent Peabody a foreign policy. “And that says nothing about other decarbonization efforts, like heat pump subsidies in the EU, clean energy incentives in the US, and increased adoption of electric vehicles everywhere.”

Despite the certainty of Russian failure, the war still does not seem to be over. Analysts attribute this in part to the personal determination and wishful thinking of the Russian leader himself.

“Since February 2022, the world has learned that Putin wants to create a new version of the Russian empire based on his Soviet-era concerns and his interpretations of history,” they wrote. Fiona’s Hill there Angela Stent at Foreign Affairs. “The launch of the invasion itself has shown that its views on past events can cause it to cause enormous human suffering. It has become clear that there is little that other states and actors can do to deter Putin to go to war if he is determined to do so and that the Russian President will adapt old narratives and adopt new ones to suit his goals.

They quote a former Finnish diplomat who thinks fondly of the days of the Soviet Politburo, because in Putin’s Russia there seems to be “no political organization in Russia that has the power to hold the president and commander in responsible leader”.

Faced with an opaque and implacable adversary, the strategists of Washington they are anxious to avoid a protracted war. Possess Miley he stressed the need for realism on both sides of the conflict. “It will be almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political goals by military means. It is unlikely that Russia will invade Ukraine. It just won’t happen,” he told the Financial Times. “It is also very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to drive Russians out of every square inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen… But it’s extraordinarily difficult. And that would essentially require the collapse of the Russian military.

As The Post reported earlier this week, while the Biden administration remains steadfast in its continued support for Kyiv, it is also making it clear to Ukrainian authorities that the current level of security and economic assistance may be difficult to sustain. , especially with the current Republican. – led house. “We will continue to try to instill in them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” a senior administration official said. The post officereferring to the leaders of Ukraine.

(c) 2023, The Washington Post

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