By Victor Davis Hanson, AMERICAN GREATNESS 7 Mar 2024
Ukraine has ossified into something like the modern version of the horrific Battle of Verdun, fought 108 years ago on the 1916 Western Front of World War I. That meat grinder cost France and Germany some 700,000 dead and wounded.
The nightmare ended ten months later, after the heroic French defense stopped the final German push. But the respective armies ended up in the same position as when the battle started.
After the failed preemptive Russia attack on Kyiv in February 2022 and the subsequent collapsed Ukrainian 6-month-long “spring” counter-offensive of spring 2023, the Ukrainian war has now similarly deadlocked.
Russia has failed to annex Ukraine. It has not expanded much beyond occupied Crimea and Donbass.
Yet Ukraine seems unable to push back the Russians to where they started in February 2022, much less recover lost areas grabbed earlier in 2014.
Although neither side has published reliable and comprehensive dead and wounded statistics, the war has now likely reached a horrific Verdun-like total of 600-700,000 combined casualties.
Perhaps 10 million of Ukraine’s prewar population have fled the country. Due to the massive refugee exodus, the country may have shrunk below 35 million.
In other words, Russia now has a population seven times larger, a gross national product ten times greater, and an area over 30 times the size of current Ukraine.
Still, if NATO and the United States can continue to arm Ukraine, it is as unlikely that Russia can annex Ukraine, even as it is doubtful that Ukraine can ever regain territory lost prior to 2014.
As human costs grow and the stalemate continues, talk of peace agreements arises each month.
For Ukraine and its allies, there is a growing, but private, realization that Kyiv will not recover majority Russian-speaking Donbass and Crimea that were lost a decade ago during the inert Obama administration.
Indeed, during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, there was no effort either in Ukraine or among its allies to take back by force what Russia had de facto absorbed in 2014.
So what could possibly be the outlines of the armistice agreements that are increasingly being floated in the media?
Perhaps something near what Ukraine and Russia reportedly discussed a few weeks after the failed 2022 Russian invasion.
That plan would result in the institutionalization of the decade-long Russian control of the Donbass and Crimea, coupled with guarantees of Ukrainian sovereignty along the pre-February 2022 lines.
Some have further suggested that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO but would be armed to the teeth to deter or destroy likely future Russian aggressors.
If such plans were previously floated and are reportedly now revisited, what would be the advantages and downsides for both Russia and Ukraine?
Putin would have to explain—as much as any dictator does—to his people why he started a war that cost some 500,000 Russians dead and wounded, shattered his military, and resulted in no additional territory but a vastly diminished Russian reputation.
His supposed upside would be that he alone finalized the absorption of the resource-rich Donbass and Crimea and stopped Ukraine from joining NATO.
Ukraine could counter that its bravery and allied aid inflicted the most grievous damage to the Russian military since World War II. Furthermore, guarantees to rebuild and rearm the now-veteran Ukrainian military could deter the 71-year-old Vladimir Putin from a repeat invasion.
Ukraine would lose its valid claims to the Donbas and Crimea. But again, apparently neither the Obama, Trump, prewar Biden administration, NATO members, nor Ukraine itself ever had any agenda or ability to forcefully wrest back what Putin had stolen.
But what if there is no deal?
By the end of 2024, the current status quo may well result in a combined million dead and wounded.
European nations will still talk aggressively. But increasingly, they will taper off their aid and quietly consider Ukraine out of sight, out of mind.
The emerging toxic anti-Western alliance of China, Iran, and Russia will likely strengthen. Third-party opportunists like Turkey, Vietnam, the Middle East, and southern hemisphere nations will increasingly be drawn closer into this new Axis orbit.
Measures to break the years-long deadlock will mount, with Ukrainian calls for far more and deadlier Western weapons, even as their manpower declines.
Demands will increase for strategically logical, but otherwise dangerous, escalatory attacks on Russian bases and supply depots inside Mother Russia and against the Black Sea Fleet.
Russia, in turn, will up its now-serial nuclear threats and keep targeting civilians. Deadlocked wars have a way of turning the once frightening and unimaginable into the normal and likely.
There is already crazy talk about the insertion of NATO ground troops into the war, while Russia threatens to attack other Western nations.
The only thing worse than an armistice with no clear winner or loser is an endless war with more than a million casualties.
Raphael
You write
,”So who is right? I don’t know. I have my own ideas, just like everyone else, but we’re no,t going to know until it’s all over”
If you have got ideas why not tell. Or what’s the point of Israpundit if you don’t open up on your ideas?
I’m waiting on Michael clear straight answer to Seb
This is a crazy war. Crazy from the standpoint that no body seems to really know what is going on . Hanson’s version is not quite as rosey as that of the mainstream media (MSM), but it is still pretty optimistic sounding. Has Ukraine really fought Russia to a standstill? I hear quite a different story from other western bloggers, who are more pro-Russian. So, who is right? I don’t know. I have my own ideas, just like everyone else, but we’re not going to know until it’s all over, and even then we may never get the whole truth. I am a little disappointed with Hanson in that I think he has bought into the western narrative. Listening to the wrong sources will result in wrong conclusions. It would be too bad if that happened to Hanson. We’ll see who’s right.
@Michael Do you support a U.S. invasion of Russia?
Michael
You write you crazy bastard the following:
“There is already crazy talk about the insertion of NATO ground troops into the war, while Russia threatens to attack other Western nations.
After Verdun, US troops entered the war. We won.”
You have missed something. Nobody this time can or will win. This is 2024.
Nothing survives a world nuclear war.
Please someone understand what this pious Christian fucker is proposing here…Possible end of life on earth
WAKE UP!
Yes Russia has beaten a very big NATO operation into the ground as Peloni and Seb know. Peloni states facts which are unanswerable because simply factual. But how can Jews survive if these scoundrel types here do everything possible to hide facts?
These utter scoundrels all Jews except one who is an idiot are such liars about Ukraine, that I ask again how can Jews survive and so many silent too. Must have not open lying about Ukraine any more.
Putin thought he could appeal to reason. He was naive.
Learn the following lesson Peloni…
No deal with Imperialism in mortal crisis IS POSSIBLE.
German army top dogs in phone call intercepted discuss destruction of russian bridge…essence of this is Russia surrenders or War goes Nuclear.
Britain anticipating America has just proposed ESSENTIALLY nuclear war (will send Zelensky key missiles or will have Germany do so)
I tell you I do hate this Michael and his allies.
He name-drops tradesmen are coming in and out of his house…who needs to know
AND
He proposes essentially world nuclear war.
I am strongly considering what is the reason for this site continuing its existence.
President Zelensky of Ukraine has appointed General Zaluzhni. whom he fired as general in chief of the Ukrainian army a few weeks ago, as the Ukraine’s Ambassador to Britain. To explain this appointment, Zelensky said that Zaluzhny’s extensive military experience would be a help to his new job as a diplomat, because he would be able to advise the British military leaders about what militarya assistance the Ukrainians needed most urgently.
Inmyopinion, this means that the claims made in the Ukrainian press that Zelensky relieved Zalushny of his command because he feared him asas an opponant in the next Ukrainian presidential election is probably untrue. The most likely explanation is that there was a disagreement among the top military brass as to what Ukraine’s military strategy should be over the next year, especially between the current general in chief (what’s his name? Something like Sikorsky) and Zaluzhny, and in his role as President, Zelensky had to make a choice as to whose military strategy , and conseqently which general, he should put in charge. Abraham Lincoln had to make these “personnel” decisions frequently in our own civil war.
After Verdun, US troops entered the war. We won.
There are a great many issues with what is claimed in this article. Of particular note is the idea that
In fact, Russia has succeeded in the past month to take what was arguably the most formidable fortress in Ukraine. Avdiika had been fortified, reinforced and held without any breach for ten years, first against the best efforts of the ethnic Russian Ukrainians and more recently against the best efforts of the Russian regular forces. While that structure should have been defended by a force of more than 50K, it fell while being held by a fraction of this number by overwhelming Russian forces. Furthermore, the Ukrainians did not organize a retreat, but broke and ran while abandoning several units which came to be cut off and surrendered to the Russians. Also, the infamous Azov was cited with having refused orders to enter the most furious part of that battle and instead held back to defend Langostyne which fell a few days later. With no substantive line of defense behind Avdiika, the loss of that position has led to a rolling number of successive defeats by Ukraine. Hence, the reality of this situation does not lend itself to any comparison of a stalemate, not even remotely.
What is more, it is that it is very unlikely that Russia will agree to any settlement which provides for Ukraine to remain “armed to the teeth”. In fact, such a scenario might be reasonable only under the false conclusion drawn by Hanson that the war is at a stalemate similar to Western Front in 1916, but that is clearly not the situation as it stands today.
Straw man argument and he forgot Luhansk. Russia never intended to annex Western Ukraine.