Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine two years ago has been a disaster for both sides.
OK I was wrong. Like almost every other commentator, I forecast that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine two years ago. It just didn’t make any sense that in this day and age a European country should invade a neighbouring sovereign state. But when you try to analyse the mind of President Vladimir Putin you have to cast common sense aside. He lives in the bubble of his own version of reality. For months, the Russian military had been occupying much of its border with Ukraine, a presence that most believed was simply a method of applying pressure on Kiev not to join NATO or the European Union.
Then on 18 February 2022 reports came in that Russia had amassed up to 190,000 personnel on the border, an increase of 90,000 in less than a month. News that the Russia-supporting republics of Donetsk and Luhansk had announced a mass evacuation of the region’s residents to Russia and reports of a car bomb in Donetsk close to the separatists’ headquarters (the predicted “false flag” incident giving Moscow a pretext to invade), added to fears of an impending assault. As western diplomats gathered for a major security conference in Munich there was a growing sense of foreboding that their efforts to avoid a war in Europe were doomed and that Putin had irrevocably chosen the path of conflict.
They were right, as just days later, on 24 February 2022 (Ukraine’s 9/11), Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine from land, sea and air. I was then wrong again. After all, how could a country of just 40 million with limited military capability stand up to an assault by the mighty Russian army? It seemed impossible. Expecting a quick win for Russia, Washington tried to persuade Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his family to escape to safety.
He refused, saying “the fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this”. Few gave him any chance. As hundreds of Russian tanks descended on Kiev from Belarus in the north, and thousands of troops in armoured vehicles approached the capital from the south and east, along with most analysts I predicted that the war would be over in just a few weeks.
Putin certainly thought so, as he had already lined up someone to replace Zelenskyy as the next president of Ukraine, Victor Medvedchuk. A wealthy Ukrainian oligarch with family ties to Putin (his daughter’s godfather), Medvedchuk was involved in financing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the years leading up to the attack, the Kremlin had funnelled money through Medvedchuk with the aim of buying local leaders who would organise anti-government movements within Ukraine to make it easier for Russian forces to seize cities.
In practice these funds were simply stolen and the plans were never realised. In any case, the day that Russian forces crossed into Ukrainian territory, Medvedchuk found himself under house arrest in Kiev under suspicion of treason. He was jailed and then exchanged for the defenders of the Mariupol Avostal steelworks.
He now lives somewhere in Russia. Although the current war, sorry—“Special Military Operation”— began two years ago next Saturday, many believe it actually started eight years earlier, in late February 2014. This was when Russian forces invaded and annexed Crimea, and also went to the assistance of rebels in the civil war in the Donbas region of Ukraine, a conflict which took nearly 15,000 lives over 8 years.
The 2014 invasion happened shortly after Putin’s friend, scandal-ridden Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, scarpered to Moscow with billions of dollars in fear for his life, leaving billions more behind. Yanukovych had been democratically elected as president in January 2011 on the promise of developing strong ties with the West. But when he instead cozied up to Putin the people naturally objected and the result was the Revolution of Dignity, which conspiracy theorists encouraged by the Kremlin still call a “coup”.
This marked the end of Putin’s attempt over the years to control Ukraine by a puppet president and the moment he decided that the only way to achieve his objective was to invade his neighbour. Looking back, many suspect that Vladimir Putin regrets not taking the whole of Ukraine in 2014, as he most probably would have quickly succeeded. But Vlad is well known for being cautious and he probably concluded that Russia’s armed forces, which had been depleted in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, were insufficient for the task at the time.
So what’s the current state of the war? Thanks to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, a mix of trained Russian mercenary troops and “cannon fodder” prisoners, Ukraine’s advance was halted in the summer of 2022. This gave time for the notorious General Sergei Surovikin (known as the butcher of Aleppo) to create the almost impenetrable “Surovikin Lines”, which provided a strong defensive position for Russia’s embattled troops.
Much to the relief of the Kremlin, this combination thwarted Ukraine’s rapid advance to recover its lands. Neither Prigozhin nor Surovikin received any thanks for their labours from Putin. In fact, having embarrassed Russia’s supreme leader by his march on Moscow last year, Prigozhin was blown up inflight north of Moscow the following August.
Surovikin, who was awarded numerous top-level medals and was a friend of Prigozhin, has simply disappeared. His biography was removed from the official ministry of defence website on 6 September 2023. Some reward for saving Russia from almost certain defeat! The current stalemate, with Russian troops secure behind the Surovikin Lines, falls far short of Ukrainian hopes of breaking through the Russian land-bridge to Crimea, which Kyiv hoped might have persuaded Vladimir Putin to end the war.
Although the summer brought some Ukrainian successes, especially against Russian warships in the Black Sea (yet another was destroyed last week), there was no breakthrough on land. Limited advances continue at great cost to both sides and the implications for Ukraine are grim. The implications for Russia are not much better. Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine two years ago has been a disaster for both sides.
More than 10 million civilians have been evacuated from their homes and there has been a huge loss of life. Exact figures on military casualties are unclear, as both Kyiv and Moscow give little away, but back in August the New York Times estimated that approximately 70,000 Ukrainian and 120,000 Russian soldiers had died in the conflict.
To keep the war away from day to day life in Russia, in October 2022 the Kremlin mobilised 300,000 reserves to replace many of its dead and exhausted troops in Ukraine. Nine months later, in July last year the maximum age limit for reservists to be called up was raised to 55 in another push to bolster numbers. UK military intelligence reported this month that Vladimir Putin was working to raise the age limit for army officers to 70, the latest push to grow his forces as Russia’s armies continue to take heavy losses in Ukraine.
As the life expectancy for Russian males in 2021 was 64.2 years, according to the World Data Site, this would in effect be a life-time contract for these service personnel. Ukraine is also using agelimit scrapping to increase military mobilisation. A current bill in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) will lower the minimum age civilians can be mobilised from 27 to 25, making it harder for those trying to avoid being drafted.
There are also moves to raise the current limit of 60 for personnel and 65 for officers. Both Russia and Ukraine have also suffered heavy equipment losses over the course of two years. It’s estimated that Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks, its entire pre-war inventory. Moscow has now placed its economy on a war footing and moved defence factories to round-the-clock production in three shifts.
As a result, Russia’s GDP grew 3.5 percent in 2023 with a 7.4 percent growth in manufacturing. This allows ordinary life to continue in Russia despite the war and also helps to smooth out some inequality between the wealthier and poorer regions, which suffer a disproportionate number of casualties. Russia’s spending on defence is now 6 percent, a figure economists consider unsustainable without huge cuts in other public expenditure, which over the years will lower the quality of life for Russians.
Ukraine has also suffered heavy losses, but Western military replenishments have allowed it to maintain inventories while upgrading quality. But given the losses sustained by both sides and the attritional character of the trench warfare, the current stalemate is likely to persist. The bottom line is that neither side can carry out a large-scale attack without incurring very heavy casualties, and that’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
As the war enters its third year, with Kyiv facing daily missile attacks and a grinding stalemate in the east, all eyes are on the US Congress. Ukrainians are adamant that they will fight to the last person to defend their country against Russian aggression, but they cannot do so without the supply of western weapons.
Currently a $60bn package of aid to Ukraine is stalled in Congress by right-wing Republicans at the behest of Donald Trump. Two weeks ago, the EU greenlighted the Commission’s proposal to provide Ukraine with “regular and predictable support” through the socalled “Ukraine Facility”. It will make available up to 50 billion euros in grants and loans until 2027.
Why are the US and Europe so prepared to help Ukraine? One answer lies in a rare interview Vladimir Putin had with the media figure Tucker Carlson. In it, Putin argued that Poland was an “artificial state” created by Lenin and Stalin and was, in fact part of historic Russia. This echoes his earlier insistence that Ukraine was also artificial and part of Russia, and has created real fear in Europe that if Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine, next in line will be Poland and WWIII.
The White House also believes that China is monitoring the West’s longterm response to Russia’s savagery, and that what happens in Ukraine today can happen in Taiwan tomorrow. Few doubt that Ukraine is the Petri-dish for peace or war in the near future.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.