CNN
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If you can clearly recall Europe from a dizzying year ago, perhaps the biggest surprise about where we are now is how much the West has been reminded of its values and purposes. I guess.
Russia’s unilateral invasion of Ukraine served as an unwitting antidote to six years of clumsy populism and the economic and psychological shock of the pandemic. It also helped counter the feeling that the virtues of morality and values were becoming obsolete in the face of the many challenges posed by the world crisis.
It didn’t take the death of thousands of innocent Ukrainians, the threat of nuclear attack, and the leveling of much of the country to make this point. The loathing of the scourge may have helped Europe and the rest of the West rediscover their collective sense of purpose.
The eyes of three old men stuck in our van in Posad Pokhlovka still haunt me as they were desperate to escape the shelling that tore their world apart in the early days of the war. They never thought they would live longer than they did in the 1940s.
War heightens scrutiny of the actions of both sides, and each can be accused of wrongdoing to some degree. Therefore, it is important to stop here and consider the ugliness of the way Russia waged this war.
First, Moscow refuses to even admit that it is at war.
Second, Moscow burns down its professional armed forces too quickly, pushing students to the front and resorting to unleashing human waves of Russian prisoners of war in Ukrainian trenches. Some return to their coffins, while the wounded are sent back to fight.
Third, they are marked by lack of sophistication or basic self-awareness. The Russian high command seems reluctant to mention how bad it is. Amidst the heart-pounding signals from the weakened Kremlin, it seems to have almost the opposite effect, spurring the West into concerted action. The face of the equivalent of nuclear blackmail.
The Ukrainian response further fostered Western unity. Ingenuity strengthened the defense of the Ukrainians. Territorial defense fighters known as “Graf” spent hours talking about the complexities of synchronizing drones with artillery in Kramatorsk, then switching to the role of Western private contractors in the war, and becoming an alcoholic. It can end with a heavy criticism of the role. And corruption will be in the bones of Russia’s nuclear program.
Ukraine has put its best brains into battle and is adapting to war with unimaginable speed. Meanwhile, Russia is plunging inmates straight into a hail of bullets from Kiev’s machine guns.
Last year, the fear of Moscow began to fade. The Cold War foe that could vaporize our world – whose warhead was the menace behind so many childhood animations and movies in the 80s – has not recovered and is on the verge of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has lost the inner blindness and coarseness that connected it. increase.
The Russian dead I witnessed lay by the roadside as Ukraine advanced on Kherson this summer.
There is something tragic about how quickly Russia collapsed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite the massacres in Chechnya and the slow strangulation of dissent, the first Putin era contained the core of economic reforms and progress for ordinary Russians. remember that Putin was creating a middle class that would eventually risk his downfall.
Now it’s all gone and population decline will skim the edges of Europe for years to come. It will be another problem that will have to be endured.
The most surprising thing about the choice Russia has imposed on the West – seeking strategic defeat in Ukraine rather than limited appeasement – is that Europe was heading in the opposite direction a year ago. is.
The defense budget had been increased in acknowledgment of Russia’s malice, but the widely held expectation was that Putin would be a benign, grumpy neighbor and argue over border fences, a concept so decrepit He was not a barbaric marauder trying to restore a dead empire. have seen it in full.
The West has engaged in an act of full support for Ukraine that, a year ago, most officials would have considered too provocative. Send tanks, think F16s, train troops… It’s hard to argue that this is a proxy war, not a NATO war.
is that a bad thing? For Ukraine, yes, that sacrifice should never have happened. So many losses are hidden. I remember being inside the administration building in Mykolaiv and shivering outside when the war started. I can now think of how many must have been inside when it was torn in two by a missile in March.
But this is a more limited scenario of Russian defeat than NATO war planners thought. The great powers were never meant to be so blatantly upset. Nor was it intended to inappropriately incite the unity of an enemy who worked so hard to divide.
The pattern of miscalculations and missteps by Moscow is not entirely comforting. It still leaves the use of nuclear weapons as something of a wild card. We know the impact of the use of nuclear weapons on victims and ordinary Russians. But that hasn’t stopped Putin even now.
Russia’s nastiest toy can also fail in its most destructive use. In other words, when you press the nuclear button, it just creates smoke and makes noise. This may be the reason why President Putin is holding back.
Perhaps it is the inherent selfishness and shortsightedness of the Russian system that mitigated this threat and made such a beefy Western response possible. The coming year is likely to see Western support slowly dwindling, with elections tumultuous and budgets tight, non-traditional threats from a hopeless Russia growing.
But broader victories have already been achieved in the past year, in that where Moscow sought to seek selfishness and division, the content of unity of purpose and support prevailed. The freshness of that moment cannot be erased no matter how much time passes.
