Lament of the Ukrainians won’t stop soon

We all needed that. But the reality is grim. Over 2 million Ukrainians are now refugees. Many more are internally displaced. Russia has expanded and intensified its attacks in western Ukraine. They are also pounding Kharkiv in the northeast and Mariupol in the south, having already captured Kherson. Only a determined stand at Mykolaiv is preventing an assault on Odesa. The Russians all but surround Kyiv:

Courage v criminality

The Ukrainians have proven courageous, agile, and stalwart. The Russian army has demonstrated clumsy logistical incompetence. It has also targeted civilian areas, proving its criminal intent. But no one should be fooled. If this goes on much longer, Russia will occupy a destroyed country whose population will mount a ferocious resistance against brutality.

NATO defanged

NATO is standing by, reluctant to intervene because doing so might trigger a wider war as well as escalation between the US and Russia. Alliance members have been sending massive war supplies to Ukraine, which is why the Russians are attacking military bases and airfields in the west. They are the reception areas for foreign assistance. Attacks there make a lot more strategic sense from the Russian perspective than pulverizing Ukraine’s cities.

I imagine there are circumstances in which NATO might intervene. Russian use of chemical weapons could trigger a cruise missile attack on whoever launches them. But such interventioins would be carefully limited and calculated not to generate escalation.

The future Russian occupation

Russia’s war against Ukraine looks a lot like its second war againsts Chechnya, when Putin gained credits for obliterating Grozny. But the post-war occupation isn’t going to be as generous. In Chechnya, Moscow rebuilt and installed a puppet government that rules with an iron fist. In Ukraine, Moscow will need to skip the rebuilding. Western sanctions will guarantee that it doesn’t have the money. The insurgency will require the puppet government to crack down even harder than in Chechnya. So even if the war ends soon, Ukrainians will not be able to return home. It will be unsafe for years, if not decades, to come.

Moscow has biten off more than it can chew

Russia is itself in bad shape and deteriorating. It has biten off more than it can chew. But there is no telling when Russians will decide they’ve had enough of Vladimir Putin and his delusional gang. Certainly the courageous protests so far don’t reach the rule of thumb for successful popular mobilizations: 3.5% of the population. But there are definitely courageous Russians speaking truth to power:

None of the oligarchs or the inner circle of former KGBers appears ready and willing to do what many of them must know would benefit most Russians. But we may not know they were willing until they do it.

Even then, the challenges for Ukraine will be gigantic. Russia should pay hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for a war of aggression. It won’t be willing or able. The West will do its part, but the scale of reconstruction requirements will be daunting, even if Russia were to withdraw today. The lament of the Ukrainians won’t stop soon. They may not even be permitted to sing Verdi’s version for Hebrews for much longer: