Last of two parts

IT has been a month since Ukraine invaded Russia, ostensibly underscoring Putin's inutility and continued humiliation with his allies and, more importantly, his credibility with the Russian people who have been led to believe that the original Russian invasion 30 months ago in February 2022, was a short punitive sortie that Putin promised would end in a few days upon the fall of Kyiv bringing Ukraine to its knees and back in the Russian fold.

Putin's adventure is now in its third year. And the end is not in sight. But Russia now occupies a large swath of land in the Donbas region and those adjoining the Crimea. Russian forces are now entrenched in the eastern part of Ukraine bordering Russia.

Putin sold the fiction to the Russian people that this incursion into Ukraine was upon the demand of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas, where the local Russian population was allegedly facing persecution and needed protection from the Ukrainian government — dubbing this act as "denazification" of Ukraine.

Antecedents of Russo-Ukraine war

To put things in perspective, although Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, this conflict had been germinating years earlier. This year, 2024, is the 10th anniversary of the Ukraine-Russo conflict. I quote excerpts from my column ("Ukraine war revisited — America speaks with forked tongue," The Manila Times, June 14, 2023).

"Ukraine's invasion by Russia was the sum total of NATO's relentless encroachment over the years that included the CIA-sponsored Euromaidan revolution in 2013 resulting in a regime change in Ukraine, which in turn gave Putin the alibi to annex Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and recognize the Russian-sponsored separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk in the southeast, collectively known as the Donbas region."

Further, the seeds of this conflict were planted during the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the intervening years of 1989-1992 ("Ukraine: Putin's war — a briefer," TMT, March 9, 2022; and "Ukraine war — heading toward Armageddon," TMT, Aug. 28, 2024).

What was untenable was that upon the dissolution of the USSR, then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev extracted a promise from America and Germany that NATO would not enlarge "one inch eastward" after Gorbachev disbanded the Soviet military alliance (Warsaw Pact). But NATO's later enticement of the old Warsaw Pact countries, particularly Ukraine, into its fold was a negation of that pledge. The entire premise of NATO enlargement to Eastern Europe was a violation of this agreement.

"Just imagine NATO with its short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) at the borders of Russia. How was it different when Khrushchev in 1962 stationed missiles in Cuba just outside America's borders? Kennedy drew the line then as Putin similarly has drawn the line now. NATO's overture to Ukraine after the USSR's collapse is tantamount to Putin's red line that America and the West have long crossed. America and NATO, in essence, actually provided a casus belli for Putin's acts."

Storyline of Ukraine's Russian invasion

The Aug. 6, 2024, Ukraine invasion of Kursk Oblast brought the war to Russian soil — the first time since WW 2. Although Putin's control of state media on putting the lid on Ukraine's invasion has been almost total, morsels of news trickled down through the heavy censorship. For one, people from hundreds of displaced communities in Kursk and Belgorod were evacuated, and these frightened citizens disseminated their fear to relatives, friends and other citizens in adjoining oblasts. The images of hordes of evacuees on the roads reminiscent of the aftermath of the 1943 Nazi blitzkrieg have gone viral. Suddenly, hostilities could be at every Russian's doorstep, and the realities of bloodshed could become part of their daily lives.

In the summer of 2023, Ukraine conducted a much-awaited counter-offensive to reoccupy Donbas. That failed. It suffered 200,000 casualties, while Russia lost more than three times that much. But "mano-a-mano" with Russia in a war of attrition was a one-sided affair. Comparatively, Russia is the larger combatant with more resources and greater wealth available, a bigger defense industrial base and more warm bodies. Ukraine solely dependent on NATO and the US for its military resources is a no-match. Ukraine was forced to shift back to its current defensive mode.

Russia's subsequent mobilization was a disaster where more than a million of its young men fled the country to avoid conscription. National conscriptions were unpopular with Russian mothers whose sons came back maimed or in caskets, inducing political dissent among the populace, anathema to a closed communist society. Similarly, finding volunteers for Ukraine was challenging where draft dodgers of fighting age fled abroad through Poland and Slovakia — according to the BBC.

The Western press further revealed that Russia outgunned Ukraine on artillery by 20 to one until the US Congress finally approved $60 billion in military aid in April 2024. The best estimates are that it is still outgunned in artillery shells eight to one. But Ukraine has the advantage of advanced NATO weapons technology and better trained and motivated manpower.

Even with these conditions, Russia managed slow, steady, methodical gains across the eastern front with its quantity of firepower and its young cannon fodder. Russian forces are embedded in the oblast of Luhansk with two major cities of Severodonetsk and Lyshansk; Donetsk with the city of Mariupol; Zaporizhzhia and its nuclear power plant and the city of Melitopol. The bloody battle and recent occupation of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, major Ukraine cities, was disastrous for Ukraine. Since the war began, roughly one-third of Ukraine's territory has been in Russian hands.

With war weariness descending on both countries, but with the momentum on the Russian side, Putin, last June 2024, set his own terms for peace, demanding that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four provinces of Donbas and even those still unoccupied by Russia. Furthermore, it demanded that Crimea, occupied since 2014, be recognized as Russian. And more importantly, it abandoned its desire for membership in NATO and assumed a status of permanent neutrality. Zelenskyy rejected these supercilious conditions.

Hemorrhaging soldiers and weaponry and losing ground since 2023, Zelenskyy and his military leadership decided they needed to wrest the initiative from Putin. Thus, this gamble on a bold attack on the sparsely defended Kursk Oblast. It was a desperate gesture of bravado that could work — if the strategy were to use this occupation of Russian territory as a bargaining chip for an eventual ceasefire and peace treaty. But more importantly Zelenskyy has brought the war's realities to Russian citizens who for long have been deceived by Putin. This has now become a contest between Russian mothers versus Putin. How long will Putin hold on to power amid the babushkas' and Rossiyani's wrath?

Ukraine's lifeblood depends on America and NATO's sustenance. But Putin holds one card he hopes will be dealt with this November. His friend, Trump, is running for the US presidency. Trump has already declared that he will solve the war on day one of his presidency. He will suspend the shipment of war materiel to Zelenskyy.

Little does he know that his friend will lose the presidency. Meanwhile, Armageddon is postponed!