Ukrainians believe they are fighting two enemies, Russian invaders and domestic deficiencies, corruption in particular. But some also mention a third adversary, Western fears, biases and procrastinations. Ukraine is “battling Western hesitancy, as well as the Russian army,” as a British observer sardonically remarked.
On “Our people” and “Others”
A legend is quite popular in Ukraine these days about something that allegedly happened on the first day of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. US President Lyndon B. Johnson was reportedly approached by his aides with a long list of military equipment requested urgently by the Israeli government. “Give them everything and twice as much!” the president allegedly said in this apocryphal story, without even taking a look at the list.
The story, regardless of its dubious authenticity, is a perfect reflection of Ukrainian feelings — both in a positive way, as a pipe dream (“What would have happened if we had had such a response in 2022”), and in a negative way, as a gloomy reality (“Give them half the amount and as late as possible”). These feelings reached a pinnacle earlier this year when Ukrainians suffered heavy losses in Donbas after Western military aid was dramatically delayed as a result of partisan bickering in the US Congress. And then, in April, those feelings arose again, after Western allies spectacularly helped Israel to intercept Iranian missiles during a massive aerial assault.
The argument that Russia is not Iran and cannot be pacified the same way was more or less understandable. But the fact that Ukraine is not treated the same way as Israel was more difficult to swallow. Resentment built up and the ghosts of past betrayals — in Munich, Yalta and, of course, Budapest (with its ill-conceived Memorandum and ill-famed “security assurances” for Ukraine) — were inevitably invoked. Grievances over Western “hypocrisy”, “double standards”, immoral selfishness and cynicism flooded the press and especially social media. Overwhelming support for NATO declined from 82% in February 2023 to 77% a year later, — quite notably although not dramatically, reflecting both disappointment in partners’ policy and recognition that there are no other partners in sight, so let us do our best with those available.
When the debate reached a peak, several sensible voices reminded fellow Ukrainians that we were not on a par with Israel for a simple reason: our European credentials are still questionable, our commitment to Western values, especially rule of law and division of powers, is not yet proved; we are not recognized yet as a member of their family. So far, we are just a suspicious candidate, a “nowhere nation” (in Jack Matlock’s words) that bludgeons its way from a grey zone in misty “Eurasia” to the uncomfortable edge of Europe. One should not be surprised that assistance for “our people” and “others” is different; we may call it double standards but it is human: we practice these “double standards” daily when responding differently to the needs and requests of “ours” and “others”.
Oleksy Panych, a Ukrainian philosopher, explains comprehensively in his blog that the West does not sacrifice values for interests (as its critics claim) but simply pursues the value-based policy vis-à-vis “our people”, i.e. nations that share the same norms and principles — the community of values. And they pursue a more balanced, interest-based policy vis-à-vis “others”, i.e. nations that are not committed to the same values and therefore cannot demand from the West a policy that is solely based on values. This means, in practice, that Ukrainians should complain less but make more efforts, in words in deeds, to become “our own” for the West, leaving no reasons for any doubt.
Ukraine’s tested resilience
Ukrainian domestic politics and institutional reforms are definitely a major part of these efforts. So far, they have brought mixed results. On the one hand, we observe the huge efforts of Ukrainian civil society, international donors, and reform-minded officials and politicians to promote changes and keep them irreversible, yet on the other hand we still notice the inertia of old structures and institutions, old habits and basic instincts, and a distressing lack of political will, of professional competence and integrity at the very top of Ukrainian leadership. Ukraine’s low institutional capacity that had largely been compensated by high civic mobilization in the first months of the war, has resurfaced in time, as the war turned protracted and routinized, and old ills and deficiencies came anew to the fore. Once again, as in 2005 and 2014 (after the “Orange” and “Euromaidan” revolutions) Ukrainians appeared to be good sprinters but bad stayers; their spontaneous efforts, however impressive and sometimes heroic, have not translated into a systemic and stable institutional framework. The president who excels at international and domestic communication, appears much less efficient when it comes to institutional management, relying too much on his office and its notorious head, at the cost of all other institutions, including the parliament and cabinet of ministers. The recent shake-up of the government intended to pour some fresh blood into the stagnant bodies and bring the “new, innovative ideas in the war effort”, turned out to be a mere reshuffling of the same, rather limited set of people, mostly from, or close to, the president’s office. The personal changes are poor substitutes for systemic changes of institutions, approaches and ways of management.
The war tones down the criticism, not so much by censorship (very limited, despite the war), but by a certain public consensus not to dangerously rock the boat for the enemies’ benefit. Ukrainians overwhelmingly agree that no elections should be conducted until the end of the war, even though both the president’s and the parliament’s mandates expired this year. (The Ukrainian Constitution actually forbids any elections under martial law). Crucially, Ukrainians still express their trust in key institutions (the president, armed forces, security apparatus, local authorities), still support the war efforts and still strongly believe in Ukraine’s victory.
This stoical optimism may run against the reality on the ground where the Russian forces slowly but steadily advance in the southeast, in particular in Donbas, and barrage Ukrainian cities daily (or rather nightly) with bombs and rockets. But Ukrainians know something that too many international “peacemakers” fail to grasp: it is an existential war where Ukraine’s existence — as both the state and the nation — is at stake. Muscovites are actually very open about their genocidal intents, stating openly that Ukraine is a tumor, a pathology on the healthy Russian body that should be eliminated. Ukrainians have signed too many “friendly” agreements with Russia in the past to be well aware of their worth — much less than the paper upon which they were written. And, remarkably, not a single “peacemaker” has yet explained how the much vaunted peace deal with Russia would be practically enforced and observed, and who would protect Ukraine from another, quite possible and very probable, Russian assault. So far, all these “peacemaking” initiatives have had no impact on Russia. It continuously sows death and destruction on Ukrainian soil but all these initiatives steadily undermine Ukraine’s war efforts. Either intentionally or not, they discourage reluctant governments from giving support for Ukraine, they divert attention from mounting Russian war crimes, and create a popular illusion that the “peace talks” are in principle possible, it is arguably only Ukraine’s perversity and obduracy (plus the proverbial “American pressure”) that prevents it. The Kremlin’s principled “Ukraine denial” and the essentially genocidal aims of the war are remarkably removed from this picture.
Changing the narrative
Ukraine’s successful military operation in the Kursk region of Russia has notably boosted Ukrainians’ morale, encouraged Ukraine supporters, but also provided additional argument to “peacemakers” who would like Ukraine to negotiate a peace deal with Moscow and who consider the Ukraine-occupied territories of Russia as another bargaining chip in these negotiations. In fact, Ukrainians pursued quite different goals with the Kursk operation: it was probably more an act of despair than part of a well thought out and minutely elaborated strategy.
The first and perhaps the main goal of this operation has not materialized: Russians did not withdraw any of their troops from Donbas, proving clearly that further advance in that region is their top priority. Putin did not rush to repel Ukrainians from Kursk, downplaying instead the incident as a minor “provocation”, which was, in a way, correct. On the one hand, he does not need to hurry since there is no public pressure in this regard (actually there is no public opinion as a social institution in Russia to be concerned with). And, on the other hand, he knows perfectly well that Russia is huge, so the further Ukrainians move the more vulnerable they would become — as both the French and German armies learned in the past. It took Russians several weeks to stabilize the front line in the Kursk region and to prepare the counteroffensive that is likely to push Ukrainian troops back. So, to disappoint the peacemakers, there would be no bargaining chip for an exchange, besides perhaps a few hundred Russian conscripts taken as POWs by Ukrainians on the first days of their advance.
But other goals of Ukraine’s sudden incursion into Russian territory might also be important. First, the Ukrainian operation reminded us of something we already knew (since 2022 at least) but tend to forget — that the Russian army is not as formidable and invincible as many think — and that Ukrainians can still surprise not only enemies but also partners who knew nothing about the possible operation (and not without reason: in the past, several Ukrainian operations failed, either because of leaked information or an explicit ban from partners, persistently scared of “escalation”).
The second goal was to change the narrative on the war, to bring the war back to international headlines, and to prove that Ukraine could still be inventive, resilient and ultimately victorious. Last year, after Ukrainians failed to capitalize on their real success story, the effective expulsion of Russian military ships from much of the Black Sea, and were damaged instead by their own overblown promises about a counteroffensive (that has ultimately failed), the need for a new, more optimistic narrative became urgent, just to prove that “Ukraine has not perished yet,” as the first line of Ukraine’s national anthem famously contends.
The third goal of the Kursk incursion was an extension of the second: to send a message (or, rather, two interrelated messages) to partners: about the fictitious Russian “red lines” that preoccupied Western imagination and paralyzed their will to effectively and timely assist Ukraine, and about the urgent need to remove any restrictions on the use of Western weapons against military targets on Russian territory. The lobbying for this decision has greatly intensified in the past weeks, with numerous op-eds and expert commentaries, open letters from activists and retired generals, and even with a supportive voice from an unexpected corner — a large group of republicans from the House of Representatives, including influential heads of several parliamentary committees.
After severely criticizing Biden’s administration for “senseless restrictions, combined with the longstanding slow-rolling of critical weapons approvals and deliveries, [that] are hindering Ukraine’s ability to bring this war to a victorious conclusion,” they urged the government to reverse the course and lift restrictions on “Ukraine’s use of U.S.-provided weapons against legitimate military targets in Russia,” so that Putin’s regime should not have a “sanctuary from which it can execute its war crimes against Ukraine with impunity.” The signatories dismissed the two main excuses that the Biden administration provided for maintaining restrictions. The first, of a purely technical nature, maintained that Russia had moved much of its military equipment out of range of U.S.-provided weapons, so that very few potential targets remained. The Institute for the Study of War, however, assessed that, “excluding airfields, there are over 200 legitimate military targets within range of U.S.-provided weapons to include military bases, logistics nodes, fuel depots, ammunition warehouses, and command and control systems”.
The second excuse is more serious since it is based on many assumptions which are difficult either to prove or disprove. Usually it is defined as fear of “escalation” but essentially it is fear of nuclear war. Russia is fully aware of this Western fear and skillfully manipulates it. Every time the West considers delivering new types of weapons, Moscow resorts to nuclear sabre-ratting and thinly veiled blackmail. Since the beginning of the war there have been many “red lines” that Westerners were reluctant to cross because of that fear — either with Javelins, or Himars, or tanks, or aircraft, or attacks on Crimea, or on the border regions of Russia, or, now, on targets deeper in Russian territory. The fact that Russia did not respond with a nuclear weapon to any of these line-crossings does not mean, of course, that it cannot and would not respond this way in principle. There many reasons, however, why such a response is very unlikely, and all of them are perfectly outlined by experts.
Shifting the “red lines”
The simplest reason not to use the so-called tactical nuclear weapon is its practical uselessness. As Stephen Blank, a seasoned expert in the field contends, the “Soviet simulations in the 1970s proved that troops could not exploit nuclear strikes or advance into a nuclear cloud.” The strike, of course, might cause significant casualties, especially among civilians, but is unlikely to break Ukrainians’ will to resist or Westerners’ readiness to help. On the contrary, it will most likely lift all Western restrictions on anything, including the deployment of volunteer Western troops in Ukraine, the introduction of a no-flight zone over the country, and the complete international isolation of Russia as an apparently rogue state. All the countries that keep Russia fighting today by financing its war machine with petrodollars or, rather, petro-rupees and petro-yuans, would be induced or even compelled to stop their complicity in appalling war crimes.
The use of strategic nuclear weapon against NATO members is even less likely as long, at least, as Putin knows about the inevitable response. It is the task of Western diplomats therefore to reinforce Putin’s belief. He is neither crazy enough to commit suicide (as his extraordinary precautions during Covid clearly indicate), nor as bold and courageous as he claims to be (we have only to mention his feckless initial reaction to various crises and challenges). And, of course, even a suicidal leader cannot trigger a global apocalypse on his own since he needs at least several executors being suicidal too. It is unlikely that his entourage includes such people.
Yet all these arguments might be of little help when the stakes are too high and a 0.01% nuclear war probability looks as scary as a 1% probability, or 10%, or higher. In situations like this most people need a 100% certainty that no nuclear war would happen, rather than 99% or 99.999%. Realistically, there are only two ways to achieve this. One way, largely pursued by the West, is to appease the bully and take care of his brazen demands. And the other way is to turn the table on the blackmailer and make him observe the red lines and fear possible escalation. So far, as Stephen Blank aptly remarks, the absence of a Western strategy in the ongoing war “allows Putin to retain escalation dominance and thus much if not all of the strategic initiative.”
There are many signs that the U.S. and Western allies will probably yield to Ukraine’s lobbying for more (advanced) weapons and for a freer hand in attacks on military objects in Russia. Experts, however, warn that the decision will probably not be made until September 24 when world leaders are expected to meet at the General Assembly of the United Nations. It seems Westerners still believe in “dialogues” with rogue, fascistoid regimes and their possible appeasement. The republican congressmen who accuse Biden’s administration of a covert desire to reset relations with Russia might be wrong. But they are thoroughly right when they remind us that “the failed Obama-Biden Russia reset in the wake of Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia made clear Vladimir Putin does not respond to appeasement and olive branches.” And that today’s conflict “will end only when tougher sanctions and Ukraine’s battlefield successes convince Vladimir Putin that he has nothing left to gain through war.”
Mykola Ryabchuk is a research director at the Institute of Political and Nationality Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. He has written extensively on civil society, nation-state building, national identity, and post-communist transition. One of his books has been translated into French: De la 'Petite-Russie' à l'Ukraine, published in Paris by L'Harmattan in 2003.
