I live in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Despite dozens of bombs falling on the city each week, severe disruptions to power and the local economy, the city continues to function almost as if there were no war at all.
This is what Ukrainian victory looks like.
Every day that Ukrainian children learn without censorship, that artists and musicians express themselves without fear, that people walk safely in the streets, that people fall in love and start families, that cafes and restaurants and cultural sites remain open, that people continue to work hard to maintain Ukrainian cities and industry, is a victory against Russia.
Every moment of Ukrainian happiness and fulfillment is a defeat for Putin, because it’s Russia’s jealousy of the prosperity of Ukraine that has brought on this war, which is why Putin continues to relentlessly target civilians in his quest to return Ukraine to Russian misery, as he did this week with his attack on the Epicentr market, or last week with his attacks on a village lakeside recreation area with no significant military value.
These attacks will continue because Russia cannot afford a free and prosperous Ukraine on its doorstep, a fact that has been cited by multiple analysts within both Russia and Ukraine.
This is not a war of territorial acquisition, but an existential battle for the survival of Ukraine and its people, against the corrupt and corrosive influence of Russia and its oligarchic “feudal lords.” Therefore, victory will not happen on the battlefield, but on the farms and in the factories, in the cities and on the streets. Ukraine needs every able hand working the wheels of progress to generate every technological and strategic innovation it can muster. Ukraine needs a full mobilization of its society, especially its women, not for the purpose of putting bodies on the battlefield, but for completely revolutionizing its military-industrial complex and infrastructure to compete with the vastness of Russia. To do this, it also needs to liberalize its immigration laws and bring the brightest minds and strongest hands from around the world into the cause of Ukrainian innovation and production.
Both Russia and Ukraine face the challenge of leaving the 20th century behind them, and entering the era of modern warfare. Russia must be out-produced and outmaneuvered, by the entire Western world and Ukraine, over a period of time that could potentially span decades.
The Russian people and their leaders do not forgive or forget easily. Even if Ukraine were to liberate all its territories up to its 1991 borders, including Crimea, Russia would still be a threat to the peaceful existence of Ukraine and its people. The only way to stop Russia is to defeat them politically and economically. They will only stop when they have achieved their maximalist aims (which will take years), or when the costs of war become too burdensome (which will take years).
From living in Ukraine, I’ve learned that Russians and Ukrainians aren’t so different. Both will fight to the last man if it means protecting their territory. Both are able to endure immense suffering on a scale simply unimaginable to Western minds. Both still struggle with corruption, and stubbornly cling to the “drunk” Soviet strategies of mass war and power projection, that are more about pride and masculine ethos than rational thinking and cohesive logistics.
The only advantage Ukraine has is that it is smarter and more adaptable than Russia, but even a blind drunk monkey can climb a tree once and a while, and the Russians too can learn from their mistakes (at a rate of about 1 significant lesson per 1,000 war dead). Russia can afford to be stupid. Ukraine cannot. Ukraine must use every soldier and shell in its arsenal with inhuman accuracy and precision. It needs to leave the 20th century territorial mindset of war behind, and enter the modern era of cost-benefit analysis.
Militarily, Ukraine needs to be attacking the enemy where they are not, disrupting Russian supply lines, significantly increasing the rate of defensive infrastructure construction and mine deployment, with the goal of making war so socially, economically, and mentally costly for Russian forces that it becomes unsustainable after a few years.
The West needs to wake up and realize that it needs to remove all barriers to the use of NATO weapons and munitions against Russian targets, significantly improve industrial logistics, use all the tools in its tool belt to improve Ukrainian air-defenses, and possibly even establish a no-fly-zone west of the Dnipro River. But again, amateurs talk strategy, and professionals talk logistics. It’s not enough to debate bills and funding. NATO countries need to do the hard work of building new factories while reducing red-tape and regulations that prevent aid from reaching Ukraine in a strategically coherent timeline.
NATO and Ukraine also have to seriously decide what the next 10 years are going to look like, and work to create favorable conditions that speed up that timeline, instead of just being governed by the winds of fate, reacting to the entirely predictable sequence of events until it is too late.
I am not in favor of war. I believe the global military-industrial-complex is going to kill us all, but unfortunately, this war of aggression has forced us into a paradigm of decision-making that must fall into the military mindset. Until Russia is convinced or forced to stop being a bully and participate in the world-system in good faith, there can be no action on any global crisis, from climate change to the dangers of rampant, unregulated AI. As long as Russian boots continue their death march, entropy in the world-system will continue, and more and more countries will look to their historic areas of influence with hungry eyes and big egos.
Russia has already declared a proxy war with NATO, and just as Russians will neither forgive nor forget Ukrainian resistance, Russia will not forgive those who supply Ukraine weapons that kill Russian soldiers. All NATO member-states are already targets of significant Russian operations and disruptions. Russia has been activating sleeper-cells all over the world, in a show of force, to demonstrate to NATO and its allies what they can look forward to in a future open-conflict with Russia. Countries like Germany are just now waking up to the “radical” idea that by supplying weapons to fight against Russia, they have become a target of Russia. No amount of hand-wringing or moderation of their aid to Ukraine will remove the Russian target on their back.
This war will not end if Ukraine is defeated, only if Russia is.
The days spent worrying about retaking territory are a waste of time. The rationale must change. The goal must be inflicting maximum damage to the Russian state, while reducing damage as much as possible to the Ukrainian state and its allies. Let Russia throw thousands of lives away for dozens of kilometers. Ukraine cannot afford to do so.
The liberation of Ukrainian territory should absolutely continue to be a war goal of the military and its Western allies, but victory will only come from stopping Russian aggression. No matter how many meters Ukraine is able to retake from Russia, the war will only end when Russia no longer has the will to fight. In the same vein, the idea that giving away Ukrainian territory will satisfy Russia is fantastical thinking.
As the Institute for the Study of War has clearly stated, the populations and leadership of both Russia and Ukraine still strongly believe that they have more to gain on the battlefield than at the negotiating table. Russia is in a period of aggressive expansion, and history shows that countries who engage in these behaviors only stop when the nations of the world force them to do so.
Every day that the people of Ukraine are able to freely function without the repressive Russian regime is a victory, and a total rejection of Putin. President Zelenskyy and NATO leaders do themselves and the Ukrainian cause a significant disservice when they set the standard of victory at territorial acquisition, instead of the strategic defeat of the Russian state.
To do anything else is to give Putin a rhetorical victory every time he takes a village. Putin’s espoused goals remain the entire conquest and demilitarization of Ukraine, a task at which Russia still ultimately fails to achieve. Even a conquest of Ukraine to the Dnipro River would be a significant underperformance by the Russian military given its lofty war goals and its significant advantages over the much smaller nation of Ukraine.
Every day that even a single Ukrainian citizen is able to breathe free in the nation of Ukraine is a defeat for Russia.
The true victory for the Ukrainian people comes from living life every day DESPITE Russian aggression. This is the message Ukraine should be giving to its soldiers and war-widows: your friends and loved ones have not died for some village or kilometer of territory somewhere in the east, but for the continued prosperity and freedom of the people of Ukraine, for those little moments of joy in daily life that people can experience without the sound of Russian tanks rolling through their streets, without the trauma of Russian rape on their bodies, without dystopian Russian voices shouting orders through a megaphone, without the sounds and scenes of shattered cities and Russian “progress.”
Every moment of Ukrainian joy is a victory against Putin and his toxic regime that can only be achieved by the united efforts of all Ukrainians, people working together to support their society and live well in spite of the bombs.
These moments of life that people can experience without Russian evil, no matter how many bombs may fall around them, are like sunflowers blooming from the fields of death and decay, that have been nurtured by the blood of Ukrainian heroes.
Comments