Ukraine: Nothing Short of Victory

The death of Russian mercenary and mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin should make one thing clear to the world, if it wasn’t before: A negotiated settlement and security guarantees from Vladimir Putin aren’t worth jack.

Prigozhin is the one who, on June 23, led his Wagner Group mercenaries — who had been fighting for Russia in Ukraine — to invade Russia, take control of the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District, and advance on Moscow. Putin called the rebellion treason and vowed to quash it. The next day, however, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal where the Wagner fighters would return to base in exchange for a guarantee of their safety; Prigozhin would go to Belarus and the charges against him would be dropped.

Now Prigozhin has died in a plane crash, apparently caused by an explosion on board. Nobody has any illusions as to who brought this about.

We should keep this in mind when confronted with those politicians, commentators, and officials who call for Ukraine to make concessions to Russia in exchange for an end to hostilities. The Ukrainians know just how little any such agreement would be worth: Russia, after all, is a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, committing it to respect Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty.

The war in Ukraine won’t end with a negotiated settlement. As long as Putinism or anything like it runs Russia, the conflict will “end” in a military stalemate, as in Korea, with Ukrainian troops on one side and Russian troops on the other, still at war, ready to fight on the least provocation.

The only real question is where the line will be.

What difference does it make? If the line lies along Ukraine’s legitimate border, the Ukrainians will not be seeking to advance further; if it lies within Ukraine, both sides will be seeking to advance. If the line lies along Ukraine’s border, Ukraine will be eligible for NATO membership; otherwise it won’t be. If it lies along the border, Putin will have gained nothing from invading his neighbors; if not, he will have done so. If it lies along the border, the West will not have caved before a Russian attack; if not, we will have done so, and invited more of the same.

The Ukrainians, when asked why they fight, have answered: “Because we know what the Russians will do to us if we don’t.”

We have been woefully late and parsimonious in supplying Ukraine with the weapons and materiel it needs to push the Russians out of its territory. There was stonewalling about antitank weapons; there was stonewalling about tanks; there was stonewalling about long-range missiles; there was stonewalling about Patriot air-defense missiles. It was 543 days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the US finally let Denmark and the Netherlands send F-16s to Ukraine.

This dithering is wrong and against our own interests. Russia has weapons and subversives directed at us too; our interests align with the Ukrainians’. As Gary Kasparov puts it: “Dictators only stop when they are stopped, and the price keeps going up… Deterrence at lower cost and risk were available a decade ago… Ukrainian victory in this war is the only way we aren’t doing this again and again, at greater risk and cost.”