“This is why Putin didn’t win”

2023-12-05 11:31:36

Is Putin Winning the War in Ukraine? “No. The correct answer is that it has already lost compared to its initial plans (the installation of a puppet government in Kiev, the denial of Ukraine’s national identity). Controlling Ukraine as a whole is now an out-of-reach goal for Moscow. The famous “special military operation”, which was supposed to last a few days, has turned into a long war of attrition. Which will probably require, after Putin’s obvious victory in the 2024 presidential elections, a wave of mobilization” . Marta Dassù writes this in an editorial in “Repubblica”, underlining that instead, compared to the current military objective of completing the occupation of Lugansk and Donbass, which began in 2014, “Putin is not losing: the long-term occupation of Approximately 15-18% of Ukrainian territory is a concrete possibility, after the failures of Kiev’s counter-offensive. In essence: Russia has already partly lost, partly it could still ‘win’ on more limited objectives… The war will still be long. For Ukraine, where cracks are felt between Zelensky and his military, the stakes are so high that giving in does not appear possible. Like Russia, Kiev has sufficient capabilities not to lose: it has succeeded, for example, by repeatedly striking the Crimea, to obtain the movement of the Russian fleet from the Black Sea. But it does not have sufficient capabilities to win, that is, to recover control of its entire territory”.

In this situation, it is the gloss, “the most probable scenario, with two actors who neither win nor lose completely, is a Korean or German-type outcome of the last century: a Western Ukraine guaranteed by NATO and which aspires to “Europe, with parts of the territory under de facto control of Russia. What will count is the Western ability to resist over time, continuing to support Kiev with military supplies and financial aid. And the choices of the EU will count: how to offer Ukraine a landing place in the European Union. If the EU is divided over enlargement with vetoes, the war in Ukraine will ratify the end of the illusions in a “geopolitical” Europe. And the Russian challenge to European security will become even more serious.”