Opinion | Russia is not unbeatable on Ukrainian soil

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its seventh month and is widely seen as a war of attrition, many Western analysts are repeating over and over that peace negotiations must take place, because – what do you think? – Russia cannot be beaten. Commentators from the left and right use different arguments, but come to the same conclusion: Russia is too powerful and too strong to be overrun on the battlefield. According to Henry Kissinger, Ukraine should give up some territory to Putin, because Russia has never been defeated. Edward Luttwak points to Russia’s 140 million inhabitants and a territory through which it can economically support itself, emphasizing that “total victory is the wrong strategy; do not strive for total victory against a power like Russia.” Jeffrey Sachs admits that “it is reckless to talk about a victory over Russia.” Some authors even foresee that a Russian defeat would not be a ‘clear victory for the West’. More importantly, though, these views are shared by many Western policymakers who, while still advocating financial and military aid to Ukraine, rule out any possibility of supplying the struggling country with weapons that could reach targets in Russia.

I think the whole basis of such a discussion is wrong. Yes, it’s early September and so we may be thinking back to Napoleon being with Borodino on September 7, 1812 grande bataille fought with the Tsar’s army and saw a great victory in it because he entered Moscow a week later. Or the German Wehrmacht who broke the Soviet resistance on September 13, 1942 and reached the banks of the Volga north and south of Stalingrad, while the vanguard was already fighting in the center of the nearly destroyed city. And a few years later, the culprits were all defeated and the French and Nazi empires both ceased to exist.

Historical lessons

But the remarkable thing is that all these cases (including the invasion of the Crimean Tatars in the 16th century, that of the Poles in the 17th century, and that of the Swedes in the 18th century) can tell us nothing about the present situation. We know that Russian martial art assumes that any loss of people, property and land is acceptable for the sake of final victory, and that deep-seated patriotic feelings contribute to military success. It is true that Russia has not been defeated by any European power, although it has paid an unbelievable price for its triumphs. But all these historical lessons that formally support the argument of the aforementioned Western strategists arise from the cases where the Russians defended their own beloved homeland.

In most other cases, where Russia encountered an enemy other than a tribe or suppressed a domestic insurrection, it has been much less effective. Since the mid-19th century, the Russians lost the Crimean War of 1854-55, suffered a humiliating defeat by the Japanese in 1905, were pushed to the brink of national collapse by the Germans in 1917, failed attempts to conquer Lithuania and Estonia in 1919, they endured a formidable humiliation on the outskirts of Warsaw in 1920 and were finally nearly crushed by the Finns in 1939-1940. And last but not least the Soviet Union lost its last battle in 1989, when it withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.

No mobilization

The only example of successful wars that Russia has waged outside its territory in the past 200 years have been those against the Turks, in which Russia has been victorious almost continuously since the late 18th century. I would therefore argue that virtually any conflict aimed at conquering other people’s land or any foreign struggle without being part of a coalition of major powers (think of the Siege of Beijing in 1910 and a very successful part of World War I until the February Revolution of 1917) has mostly been lost by the Russians – and this may be explained by the fact that in most cases they did not mobilize to conquer foreign territories, as they always did when defending their own territory. .

Also read: Should Kherson be recaptured from the Russians, it will be a major shock to the Kremlin

If you now look at the Russian war in Ukraine, you see a patriotic war on the part of the Ukrainian side and an imperialist and unjust attack on that of Russia. Therefore, most of the arguments traditionally advanced to explain Russia’s strengths now apply to Ukraine, I believe, making it unbeatable (something that came as a surprise to many Western countries). At the same time, “Russian defeat” now means something very different from what Kissinger or Sachs mean: nobody even believes in the possibility of expelling the Russian troops and then continuing the attack until the Moscow Kremlin is taken like the Berlin Reichstag. On the contrary – the real meaning of Russia’s defeat in its imperialist attack is to drive it out of the countries it is trying to conquer, as happened in 1855 when the Russian Empire attempted to conquer Wallachia, in 1920 when the Soviets Poles tried to recapture or in 1940 when they attacked Finland. And I think this is all perfectly achievable now that the Russian troops are losing strength and the ‘new locals’ are running in panic at the first attacks on their positions in Crimea. From the defending country that the Soviet Union was in World War II, Russia has turned into an imperialist power trying to exterminate a free and brave sovereign people. In doing so, it has entered a path that almost inevitably leads to a military fiasco, and no one should want to tell her or his public otherwise.

Nuclear weapons

Of course, there is one factor that makes the current situation very different from the past: Russia is a nuclear power and according to many experts it can deploy its nuclear weapons if the Kremlin feels that the war is lost. That may be so, but I can’t imagine Russia ever opting for a full-scale nuclear war with the West, while a ‘limited’ deployment of tactical warheads on the battlefield would make it an eternal outcast in world politics. Therefore, this factor cannot in any way change the outcome of a local war like the one going on in Ukraine. I would like to say once again that in today’s world nuclear weapons secure national defense but cannot serve as a means of successful advancement.

All this, in my view, supports my view that the main – and reasonably feasible – aim of the Western powers should not be to seek arguments proving Russia’s military superiority, but to seek the most effective way of undoing it. . The Russian hordes can and must be defeated militarily on Ukrainian soil – and only such a defeat could change Russian history, but also the fate of all of Eastern Europe. I would like to point out that defeat (as in 1855 and 1905) or a widespread sense of impending doom (as in 1916-1917 and the late 1980s) may not be the most effective, but the only real means of profound political change. within Russian society. My rather paradoxical conclusion, then, is that any Western effort that contributes to the Kremlin’s military humiliation in the current war would benefit the West, Ukraine, and even Russia. Throughout Russian history, military victories have only perpetuated the country’s dictatorial and anachronistic regimes, while Russian military failures have always opened the way for change—for Russia and the world.