It was supposed to be a conflict as short as it was dazzling. The Russian giant attacked its Ukrainian neighbor, planning to overthrow its government and sabotage its sovereignty in a matter of days. Here we are 1000 days later. A thousand days which have shaken many certainties, but which illuminate the path ahead. By scraps of hard-earned wisdom.
Posted at 5:21 p.m.
Vladimir Putin has not lost his mind
In the first days of the invasion of Ukraine, many thought that Vladimir Putin, locked in his thick-walled Kremlin, had lost his mind and was ready to sacrifice his own country to satisfy his imperialist ideas. A thousand days later, it is time to revisit this perception.
The Russian president does not play dice, but chess.
“We saw quite early in the conflict that Vladimir Putin reacted to defeats on the battlefield. We knew this from the withdrawal from the Kyiv region, at the very beginning of the invasion. It became clear that he was prepared to back down if necessary. That he hasn't lost his mind,” Maria Popova, a professor of political science at McGill University and author of a book on the Russian-Ukrainian war published this year, told me Tuesday.
The nuclear threat works too well
Along the same lines, it has become clear that Russia's nuclear threat to the Western world is working a little too well. Ukraine's Western allies all have one foot on the brake, fearing they could trigger an atomic war by crossing any Kremlin red line.
Joe Biden took months to allow Ukraine to use long-range American missiles on Russian territory while Russia bombs Ukraine day after day.
On Tuesday, Russia's response to the launch of the first missiles on Bryansk was to review its “nuclear doctrine” and raise the tone. For the umpteenth time.
If Russia had a red line, it would have been exceeded, particularly when the Ukrainian army entered its territory and took control of the Kursk region, argues Maria Popova.
NATO is just an excuse for the Russian president
At the start of the conflict, the Russia expert community was divided over whether the West, by bringing NATO to Russia's doorstep, had not provoked the cataclysm that Ukraine faces today. A thousand days after the attempted invasion, it has become clear that NATO is nothing more than a red rag that the Russian president is waving in front of the Russians to stir up their nationalism.
Andrei Kozyrev, the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union and the first to hold the same post in independent Russia, gave an interview this week to Meduza, an independent Russian media outlet in exile.
Andrei Kozyrev maintains that Vladimir Putin pretended to want to integrate Russia into NATO at the start of his first presidential term to cry injustice when the same alliance asked him to make profound reforms in order to join its ranks. “He made a scarecrow out of it,” he said. And it still works.
The cost of traditional conflict
The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is the deadliest in Europe since the Second World War.
The cost is high for civilians, more than 10 million of whom have fled the country. The United Nations was able to confirm this week that at least 12,162 civilians have been killed since February 24, 2022, including 659 children. There are a minimum of 26,919 injured.
These figures, however, do not compare to military losses estimated at more than a hundred thousand fighters on each side of the conflict.
This decimation, which particularly affects young men, has already caused the Ukrainian birth rate to drop by a third, a phenomenon which can leave deep marks on the rising generation.
And what is the result of this killing? To date, the Russians control approximately a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea annexed in 2014. Moreover, for the Ukrainians, it is this annexation and the fight of the Russian separatist forces in the east of the country which truly marked the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. We are talking about 10 years, not 1000 days.
For their part, the Ukrainians currently control around 1000 km2 of Russian territory, in the Kursk region, i.e. 0.0005% of Russian territory.
What Ukrainians want
With the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House in January, many fear that the Ukrainians will be forced to negotiate with the Kremlin by an American president favorable to Vladimir Putin.
Aligning with Ukrainian public opinion, Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that he will not give up an inch of Ukrainian territory, but according to Maria Popova, territory is not what matters most to Ukrainians.
“If Russia is waging this war, it is not because it wants Ukrainian territory, it is because it wants its sovereignty. What the Ukrainians realize now is that they need security guarantees in order to remain sovereign and to be able to repel another invasion,” says the political scientist, who believes that this is a prerequisite for holding the peace talks.
It is therefore this sovereignty that Western governments must help preserve and strengthen, in particular by allowing Ukraine to eventually become a member of NATO or a defense Europe. Because, when the war is over, when the more or less just peace agreements have been signed, it is the survival of the young Ukrainian democracy, its culture and its language which will remain the biggest snub in the face of the authoritarian regime in Moscow.
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