There is more than a little irony in the fact that Ukrainians are bleeding and dying for Western democracy and the European Union at a time when so many are losing faith in both. But they are – and they have shown that they can win.
Opinion piece by Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and minister of finance of Canada.
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Yes, we’ve said that we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. And yet we have consistently failed to give Ukraine the support it needs to win.
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It is time to change that half-hearted paradigm. We need to recognize that Ukraine can win and that a Ukrainian victory is in the interests of the geopolitical West ... And then we need to devise a plan for a Ukrainian victory.
Our defeatism started with the 2014 invasion of Crimea, when the West told Ukrainians to stand down and tacitly accepted Russian control of the peninsula. On the eve of the 2022 full-scale invasion, we prepared to support a long Ukrainian guerilla war against Russian occupation and were cautious about giving the Ukrainian government weapons that we assumed would only fall into Russian hands.
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Even after the Ukrainian people showed that they had the will and the strength not to be conquered, we have been collectively hesitant about giving them the tools that they need to win. Worse, we have even cautioned them against using their own weapons to maximum effect.
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It is time to stop equivocating. It is time to stop settling for stalemate and planning for Finlandization. Ukraine can defeat Russia, and NATO allies and our Asian partners will be stronger if it does. So, it is past time to plan for success.
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It starts with Ukraine’s capacity for victory. Since the war began, Ukraine has consistently outperformed Western expectations. Kyiv did not fall. Ukraine, with no navy of its own, has destroyed much of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and broken through its maritime blockade. Ukraine has deprived Russia of control of the sky. And Ukraine has held Russia to an effective stalemate on the ground: in fact, Ukraine today controls more of its own territory than it did immediately after Russia’s full-scale incursion.
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In practice, this means that the future of war is being invented on Ukraine’s frontline and by technologists working in its remarkably vibrant cities. Ukraine has turned itself into the world’s leading inventor, producer, and user of drones, and is constantly developing new ones and new techniques. Recognizing that the path to victory must include missile strikes that bring the war home to the Russian people – for example, by destroying oil refineries – and that hit Russia’s military arsenal and defense industries, Ukraine is developing and building its own missiles.
Ukraine can do so because this is a people’s war. Civilian donations are an important source of support for the military, and self-organized brigades, which compete to attract soldiers and financial support, are responsible for their own procurement and often manufacture their own weapons.
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The West has consistently failed to see Ukraine’s strength because we are still largely in thrall to a sort of Cold War Orientalism. Our intellectual guides to the war are overwhelmingly scholars of Russia and the Kremlin, not of Ukraine ... Even more than 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is hard for us to fully internalize the reality on the ground: that what we thought was the second-strongest army in the world is now the second-strongest army in Ukraine.
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The one exception to this blinkered vision comes from countries that were part of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. They understand Russian power – and Russian weakness – deeply and intimately, having learned their lessons the hard way, from the inside and on the periphery. They understand that Ukraine can win, and that Ukraine’s victory is in our interest. We should be listening to them with greater attention and greater humility.
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The real question is not whether Ukraine has the capacity to win, but whether that is what we want. We should. Ukraine’s victory is unequivocally in Europe’s interest. A victorious Ukraine would be Europe’s shield and its arsenal. Ukraine’s innovative defense industries and military doctrines are key to rearming Europe. A strong Ukraine guarding Europe’s eastern flank is the best guarantee that Europe will never need to use the weapons it is now building in a war of self-defense.
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For another, Ukraine’s success is the best way to constrain China. A bipartisan consensus in the United States holds that China is the country’s main geopolitical rival. The surest way to check Chinese territorial expansionism is through the demonstration effect of Russia’s failure in Ukraine. The surest provocation for Chinese expansionism is for Russia’s invasion to succeed.
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If we do want Ukraine to win – and we should – a plan for Ukrainian success starts with weapons. Ukraine has held out for so long because of its own military innovation and arms from the West. To end the war, it needs missiles to take the war to Russia; drones, robots, and AI to keep fighting at sea, on land, and in the air; and missile defense to protect Ukraine’s cities and energy grid from Russian attack.
Ukraine has never asked for foreign boots on the ground – unlike Russia, which has brought in the helot soldiers of its North Korean ally. But we could help Ukraine end the war by supplying the weapons it needs now to push Russia back: US Tomahawks or German Taurus missiles, and the intelligence support to target them.
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Using Russian assets to back Ukraine [financially] would enforce a powerful and important principle: the aggressor pays. That approach makes sense to Western tax-payers, and embracing it would help to deter future would-be invaders.
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Ukrainians are fighting for a future as a sovereign, secure democracy, with a path to joining the European Union, and the prosperity that EU accession promises ... This future is what Ukrainians voted for in their 1991 referendum on independence. It is why they overturned a rigged election with the Orange Revolution in 2004. It is why they came out and protested again on the Maidan in 2014, when their path to Europe was blocked. And it is why they are resisting Putin today.
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Ukrainians also recognize that the fight against corruption at home is as essential to that future as the fight on the frontline against Russia. That is why they went back to the streets this summer to insist on independent and transparent anti-corruption investigators. They were right to do so.
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Ukrainians know their own history. That is why they know that this war can end only when they have the borders, army, and alliances they need to deter further Russian aggression and give their children a path to the prosperity they have watched their neighbors in Poland and the Baltic states build.
There is more than a little irony in the fact that Ukrainians are bleeding and dying for Western democracy and the EU at a time when so many are losing faith in both. But they are. And they have shown that they can win. Helping them do so will make us stronger, too.