On Russia, Ukraine*

*Updated. I have changed my mind. No appeasement of Putin, not even "strategic appeasement." The U.S. should arm those in Ukraine who want to fight Russia with all that we have to give them. Make Russia bleed.

1/14/2022 11 a.m.

This is from the Atlantic Council, a major and very influential think tank in U.S. foreign affairs. However caveat emptor: the author, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, is the former Ukraine Defense Minister, 2019-20.

…it is vital to underline the folly of continuing to appease Putin. Ever since Russia first attacked Ukraine in spring 2014, many within the democratic world have advocated policies of appeasement. Far from deescalating the situation, this has only made matters worse.

…Meanwhile, an evidently emboldened Putin is now seeking to dismantle the entire post-Cold War European security architecture and reestablish a Russian sphere of influence over Eastern and Central Europe.

At this point, any further accommodations would be extremely dangerous. If NATO leaders bow to Russian demands and agree to withdraw from the region or limit future cooperation with Ukraine, this will not have a calming effect on the Kremlin. On the contrary, Moscow would become even more convinced that negotiations at gunpoint should continue. This would make a major war in Ukraine far more likely, while also paving the way for additional acts of Russian aggression from the Baltic to the Balkans.
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…Ukraine and the country’s partners should seek asymmetric answers to the formidable military challenges posed by Putin’s Russia.

…it is likely that the Russian military will be able to advance deep into Ukrainian territory. However, holding this territory will be a different matter entirely.
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…By combining serving military units with combat veterans, reservists, territorial defense units, and large numbers of volunteers, Ukraine can create tens of thousands of small and highly mobile groups capable of attacking Russian forces.
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…Kremlin forces would find themselves operating in a hostile environment ideal for asymmetric warfare.

…the country’s partners can also make a significant contribution to further enhancing this deterrence factor by bolstering Ukraine’s ability to wage an effective insurgency.

While there is no time to supply Ukraine with complex weapons systems, there is a shopping list of items that could significantly raise the cost of a Russian invasion. The most expensive items on Ukraine’s short-term wish-list include portable air defense systems, anti-tank missiles, anti-ship missiles, and counter-battery radars. Drones of all kinds would be most welcome. Sniper rifles and anti-sniper equipment would also be extremely useful, as would large deliveries of night vision goggles, encrypted radio communication devices, and satellite communication devices.

Mr. Zagorodnyuk strongly and repeatedly counsels the West against further "appeasement" (a sore word for the undersigned with his current reading selection) of Putin. I must say I have my doubts about the wisdom, for Ukraine, the United States, and NATO, of his counsel. The analogy used in this piece is Afghanistan. We armed the Afghan insurgents, to our eternal regret, and Russian forces bled out there over ten years. The aim of Mr. Zagorodnyuk's approach is identical, to cause Russians to bleed out again. I just don't see that happening. 

Between Afghanistan and Russia are Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan.  Ukraine and Russia share a border. .Afghans and Russians could not be more different peoples. Seventeen per cent of Ukraine's population is ethnic Russian. The Russian language is widely spoken and 29.6% speak it as their first language.

Percentage of native Russian speakers by Ukraine oblast.

Crimea, invaded and annexed by Russia in 2014, is 77%. The eastern border oblasts where the current fighting is taking place and where a new Russian invasion would begin are way more than half native Russian speakers.

Ukrainians and Russians were governed as one people for most of the Soviet Union's existence. Afghanistan is mostly mountainous and rugged, Ukraine consists mostly of fertile plains (or steppes) and plateaus. For the entirety of human history, in every corner of the globe, mountains have flummoxed government control; by contrast plains and steppes are high speed highways. To be honest, similar terrain in western Russia did allow Russian guerrillas to defeat Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941-45. 

With the common border it is going to be Ukrainians who bleed out, in my opinion. Mr. Zagorodnyuk lauds the size, capability, and fighting spirit of the Ukrainian armed forces, which is news to me, but I concede the point for the sake of argument. Mr. Zagorodnyuk is advocating that the West arm the civilian population of Ukraine as guerrillas. Are the Ukrainian people down with that? Say a ten-year insurgency to drain blood and lucre and prove once again that to grab is not to hold? What has been the resistance of Ukraine partisans or the regular military to Russia's armed annexation of Crimea since 2014? I know the answer to that: effectively none. No doubt, the West could marginally increase the human cost to Russia of invasion by arming the population. However, I believe it would come at the cost of the slaughter of many, many more Ukrainian civilians. Is the West down with that? For a non-NATO, non-EU, but wannabe, country?

On a final note, I have always been impressed by the Russian people's de facto strategy against Napoleon. Without central direction tens of thousands of Muscovites simply moved away from the capital. When Nappy entered the empty city he was sad. As he withdrew in sadness the Russian people picked his troops off. What if Ukrainians simply moved out of the east across the natural barrier of the Dnieper River? That's appeasement, for sure; it also proved a winning appeasement 200 years ago.