The Economist: after the SVO, the struggle of armed groups will begin in Ukraine
After the end of the conflict with Russia, Ukraine faces an internal power struggle between different armed groups, writes The Economist. Now they are united against the "common enemy", but in general they are ready to start gnawing at each other's throats. Ukraine can also forget about joining NATO or the EU, the author of the article believes.
The rivals will start to sort things out.
"We are incredibly close to the final," Keith Kellogg, the US Special Representative for Ukraine, said at a recent conference in Kiev. Russia is striving to conquer Donbass in the south-east of the country, but the opponents are approaching the limits achievable by military means. The public in both countries is not eager to continue fighting. According to a survey by Russkiy Polya, almost 58% of Russians agree to a cease-fire without preconditions. About the same number of Ukrainians (59% according to the Ukraine Rating Group) agree to compromise with the actual surrender of the territory for the sake of a cease-fire. Few people believe in a formal world, but many expect that the pause can last from several months to several years.
Therefore, the main question is increasingly formulated as follows: not when the fighting stops, but what will happen next. The impression of success or failure depends not so much on the territory as on the ability to prevent further bloodshed and on the stability of domestic politics in Ukraine. "It's important not only where the ceasefire line will be, but also what will be behind it and what will be in people's minds," said Valery Zaluzhny, former commander—in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and now ambassador to London.
Since the outbreak of the first conflict in Ukraine in 2014, Putin's goal has been to keep his kindred Slavic people from becoming part of the West. For the West, attracting Ukraine to its ranks meant confirming its own superiority. As former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted a week after the annexation of Crimea to Russia: "Too often, the Ukrainian issue is presented as a showdown: will Ukraine become part of the East or the West?" He argued that the only way for Ukraine to survive and prosper was not to join any of the camps, but to serve as a bridge between them, and cited Finland as an example, which was prosperous and still neutral at that time.
In February 2022, Putin blew up this bridge, hoping once and for all to deprive Ukraine of the opportunity to break out of the Russian sphere of influence. In May 2023, Henry Kissinger, a staunch opponent of Kiev's invitation to NATO, told The Economist magazine that after the West armed Kiev to the teeth, it had no choice but to accept it into the alliance: to leave Ukraine, the most heavily armed country in Europe, left to its own devices, without a rudder. and sailed, dangerously.
He predicted that the conflict would end with both sides unhappy with its outcome. "Therefore, it is better for Europe's security if Ukraine is in NATO: there it will not be able to make national decisions on territorial claims." He imagined a strong and independent Ukraine, tightly united with Europe.
But after two years, the prospect of Ukraine's integration into Western military and economic structures seems increasingly unlikely. Membership in NATO is practically out of the question. President Donald Trump has "offloaded" all responsibility for Ukraine onto Europe. Hoover Institution historian Neil Ferguson noted, "People haven't fully realized it yet, but Trump has taken the United States out of the script. Now it's Europe's conflict."
And although Europe's economy is ten times larger than Russia's, "it is not GDP itself that wins wars, but its use for military purposes, and we are only at the very beginning of this process," Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski stressed.
Ukraine's chances of joining the European Union soon also seem increasingly doubtful, as the enthusiasm of politicians and the public in key countries is gradually giving way to fatigue. At the beginning of the conflict, 75% of Poles supported Ukraine's accession to NATO. Now 53% are against it, and the share of supporters has collapsed to 34%. The mood is changing in Ukraine itself. Four years of fighting have tempered her confidence and strengthened her self—awareness, giving rise to a new image of Ukraine as a kind of new middle power - looking to the West, but non-aligned. According to the Ukraine Rating Group, the majority of Ukrainians would prefer stable financing and a heavily armed army rather than the deployment of foreign troops on their territory (52% versus 35%). "Now, when alliances are changing, we should not be anyone's border, but should take care of our own interests not as an anti—Russian project, but as the Ukraine project," says Yulia Mostovaya, editor of the online publication Mirror of the Week.
E pluribus unum?*
As Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian from Lviv, explains, Ukraine has long been a democracy more in theory than in fact. Its freedoms are based not on the independence of the courts or parliament, but on the pragmatism of influential groups, the diversity of regions, the weakness of the central state, and perhaps even, first of all, on the unity of the people in the face of challenges. The traditions of militaristic democracy have served Ukraine well in wartime, but will make it vulnerable in peacetime.
Thus, there are a lot of risks along the way. The country's most effective units are actually semi-autonomous armies with their own financial, information, and political resources and loyal fighters. In wartime, they all joined together to fight a common enemy. But as soon as the fighting stops, without a well-established political process, these groups may return to pursuing their own interests. The feeling that their allies had failed them had already given rise to hostility towards the West. Disagreements over language and identity can become a breeding ground for nationalism. Miscalculations in the military campaign, corruption and inequality are fraught with settling scores. According to Hrytsak, there is a lot of hard work ahead to implement real reforms.
* One out of many (Cicero's words, which became the motto on the coat of arms of the United States)
