Page 62 - bne magazine September 2023

62 Opinion
bne September 2023
Is Ukraine worth the trouble? The West’s resolve may be fraying
Alexander Kabanovsky in Berlin
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Eleanor Roosevelt
In my recent articles, I focused on Russia in an attempt
to provide an alternative perspective on the realities of
a country ruled by an incompetent autocrat for the past 23 years and the reasons why I believe the current regime is doomed. I would like to shift my attention to Ukraine for this article to share my perspective on why its fight against Putin is worthy of continued support. I recognise that my views
on the speed of the regime’s collapse are optimistic, but my certainty of its inevitability remains unshaken. It is based on my personal experience of working in Moscow, dealing with some of the largest companies, and traveling extensively to every corner of the country. I have a deep appreciation for the nihilistic view of life and the dim view of the future held by a vast segment of the Russian public.
Whether the conflict will end more quickly or drag on for another year depends solely on how much punishment the Russian people are willing to endure. Yes, Moscow and St. Petersburg and one or two other cities may be bathing in the largesse of the current spending spree lavished on the war, but this is not the entirety of the country nor of the population. Inflation, devaluation, stagnating economy, increasing poverty and declining birthrates are not issues easily addressed, nor can they be overlooked as cursory factors, especially in a time of war.
The Russian people’s capacity and willingness to suffer is legendary, allowing the ruling class to hang on to power longer than their cynicism or incompetence warrants. Putin is prepared to sacrifice the entire populace for the sake of power. Whether the people will be willing to send their men and children to the charnel house of war indefinitely is the great joker in the deck. The fact is that Russia is fighting this war not on quality but on quantity, the quantity of money and lives. The Russian leadership is intellectually and morally bankrupt, its economy one-dimensional, and its military outdated. The only resource the war effort relies upon is the common man’s willingness to die for no higher cause than Putin’s folly.
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Ukraine's hapless counteroffensive is failing to produce the successes many had hoped for. Signs of Western "Ukraine fatigue" are growing stronger. Is it worth continuing support for Ukraine in its war with Russia? / bne IntelliNews
The Russian people have not been reared in aspiration but, rather, in desperation, the celebration of the virtue of a life of suffering ingrained in them from birth. Classical Russian literature revels in the virtue of suffering for a greater cause and deeper enlightenment.
“Suffering is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to define us. We can choose to rise above our suffering and find meaning in it.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The problem is that Russia is great at meting out suffering, not so much at providing meaning for it, and that is the crux of this conflict. Russian propaganda is working overtime
to manufacture meaning for this war and, in the process, unabashedly conjuring false threats and enemies envious
of Russia’s wealth. The narrative and justification shift time and again to accommodate the recurring setbacks both at the frontlines and in civilian life. No fig leaf is left unplucked in the effort to cover up the ruinous policies of the regime. No lie is left unspun in an effort to build up the fighting spirit of the nation for a war without meaning. Calls for nuclear strikes on London, Berlin and Washington are uttered so often as to have become banal.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive is progressing more slowly than everyone hoped, but it is progressing and yielding results. Nevertheless, the mood in the West on the war is shifting. In an August 4 CNN poll of Americans, 55% now oppose additional support for Ukraine. People like Donald Trump, David Sacks, Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr., among others, are shilling the Russian propaganda narrative. They are peddling false facts to a population with only a cursory grasp of the complexity of this war and the relationship between the two countries. The anti-Ukraine advocates may have perfectly legitimate reasons for opposing continued support based on their preference to focus on domestic issues, of which the US has plenty, rather than international conflicts, but their line of argument serves the destructive purpose of giving legitimacy to Putin’s imperial and dictatorial aspirations.
In pushing their agenda, they deal in false facts taken right out of the Kremlin disinformation narrative. Their argumentation