Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The political entanglements and miscalculations which create the conditions for war are many faceted, nuanced and complex. But once war breaks out there are only two elements, depending which side you are on. The Good and the Bad. This is certainly the case in Ukraine right now. But if the suffering of the innocent is to be brought to an end, which surely is the priority, everybody has to come into the real world, not the distorted reality of the propaganda campaigns awash in the media.

Ukraine has for several hundred years been always a part of something bigger. It has been a sovereign country for less than three decades in total. It was a founding member at the creation of the USSR. So this current conflict is not just a fight between neighbours. It has many of the characteristics of a civil war. Putin believes that Ukraine is really part of Russia. The western half of Ukraine wants to be part of the West and its institutions. The eastern, Russian speaking Donbas looks to Moscow. Before the Russian invasion Ukraine was not a united sovereign country. While the ordinary people were and are as honest and genuine as any, Ukraine was bitterly divided and significantly corrupt in its governance. Political parties were constantly regrouping and appeared able to survive only one election cycle. A frightening far right element prospered.

Ukraine’s policy from the start of the conflict was to drag NATO into a war with Russia. which mistakenly it supposed would bring it independence. In truth millions would die and Ukraine would be erased from the map. NATO and the West have stood firm. Moral support, defensive and humanitarian aid, but no military engagement. No membership of NATO. So Ukraine, having fought Russia to something of a standstill in a conflict much tougher than the invader expected, now needs to strike a deal. Unrealistic demands, like full Russian withdrawal even from the east, or silly conditions like a referendum, will only lead to breakdown and breakdown will be bad. Very bad for the ordinary citizens of Ukraine.

What is there as a realistic objective, is a smaller, neutral, demilitarised Ukraine, recognised as an independent country, to which the millions of refugees  can return in peace to rebuild their lives and their homes. The world will be generous in its aid and support. Russia will celebrate its de facto acceptance as a power at the table, not  to be excluded with its interests ignored. It will also have leaned that a war of attrition on civilians in Europe is no longer acceptable to public opinion in the wider world. The FSB vision of Russia’s interests is not reliable outside Russia.

A lot of learning for everybody and victory for nobody.  But a compromise for the benefit of all. Because the point has been reached when the killing on both sides has to stop. From now on it is not war but murder. Time to get real. And NATO must broaden its doctrine of measured response to tension to include analysis of its cause.

It does not matter how many blue and yellow flags you hang, how much you demonstrate support for a brave and resilient people, how much you deplore the suffering of innocent civilians, how much you sing Zelensky’s  praises, how much you demonise Putin as a tyrant, butcher and war criminal. There is a fundamental truth at the source of this human catastrophe. It is a direct consequence of a string of political failures. Failures by NATO, Russia, Ukraine, the US, the EU, the UK. In other words all of us.

War itself is a crime. A crime which is almost always, in modern terms, originating in a failure to respond at a political level to the tensions building beneath the surface.  Whatever that problem is, it is never, never, the case that one side is all right and the other all wrong.

This war needs to end. There will be no true winners. There will have to be compromise. Almost everywhere the options open will be the least worst, rather than the best. Ukraine must survive  as a neutral sovereign state. But it will need to reach an accommodation with its neighbour, of which it was for generations a part, and with whom it has so much in the way of ties of culture, kith and kin. This will involve some re-drawing of borders.  Russia has to realise that this invasion was not a good idea and has politically backfired big. But it must not be humiliated. Russia is an integral part of Europe. It will not cease to be a threat by exclusion. We must surely have seen that is not a productive policy and it is a lesson that the West needs to re-learn.

Meanwhile the ultimate price is  paid in  the loss of human life, civilian and military. Grief is universal. It will be felt in Russian homes too. It springs from violence and destruction, the ruin of infrastructure, lives and livelihoods. There will have to be a great rebuilding, physical and emotional. The sooner that starts the better.

Above all there will have to be many wise counsels prevailing. Since the end of the Cold War they have, sadly, been few and far between. That is why we chalked up a string of nation building failures and why this awful suffering is unfolding now.

What is now happening to innocent civilians, women and children who are neither politicians nor in the military, is both heart rending and unforgiveable. The brightest part of this whole Ukraine disaster is the astonishing numbers of ordinary people across Europe and beyond, extending welcome, warmth, food and shelter to what amounts to millions in a desperate flight west. This is a stunning connection between human beings, caught in turmoil not of their making, to confront need with compassion and support, free of politics, red lines and dogma. The whole free world is now bathed in blue and yellow.

But we must also ask, who has  the responsibility for this catastrophe? The answer, uncomfortably, is not just Putin. It is is all of us.

The West was wrong to exhibit an arrogant triumphalism at the fall of the Soviet Union. I argued then that Russia was a European power and should be brought into both the EU and NATO. Or NATO should have been disbanded. Instead the alliance engaged in a string a nation building wars which failed, leaving millions surviving in ungoverned space. To its credit, NATO did not invade Iraq, that was the Anglo-American blunder to neutralise non- existent ‘weapons of mass destruction’.   But critically, in my view unforgivably, NATO expanded eastward, drawing into membership most of the Warsaw Pact, but leaving Russia out. Versailles 1919 repeated.  It was only a matter of time before a restored Russia would feel excluded and resentful. We forget its history of repeated invasions from western Europe, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler. Tens of millions of Russians dead. No wonder they are nervous and do not trust NATO.

The various post 2014 governments of Ukraine could and should have resolved their problems with the  ethnic Russian regions.  The Minsk agreements offered a framework for doing this. But Kiev judged it could needle Russia and provoke the West into letting it join NATO, when in reality this was never in prospect. What was in prospect was that an authoritarian post soviet Russia,  lacking respect and engagement from the West, would lose patience. First the Donbas and Crimea, and as that did not gain attention as to why and what was Russia’s problem, the current all out invasion. This time Russia will not back down, at least not with its current government. And thoughts of coups are unlikely to happen .

So a deal must be struck to stop the killing. Ukraine will have to accept some form of neutrality. It has already given up any idea of joining NATO. It  can win battles, but it cannot defeat Russia. Certainly the Ukrainian armed forces, equipped with portable anti-tank and ant-aircraft missiles have unperformed expectations by a mile and taken everyone by surprise. Russian invading forces, equipped with mostly soviet era systems, have had a hard time. But Russia will now resort to new and frightening bombardments, launched from Russian territory involving hypersonic missiles and possibly tactical nuclear shells. If not nuclear, warheads of conventional explosive delivered at such speed can generate 2kt force, which is locally devastating. If they have to turn Ukraine into a rubble heap to get their way, the Russians will.

The West will not start World War Three to help Ukraine. Killing millions and ending modern civilisation is not the answer. Maybe Ukraine could come into the EU when it meets the criteria for membership. Russia will have to accept that the price of its special military operation is a beefed up NATO and a revitalised West. But spheres of influence could be recognised and red lines drawn, so that in the end we are back to the predictable order of a kind of Cold War Two. But the anguished people of Ukraine would be able to return to their lives in the country they love.

There comes a time in every war when continued fighting can achieve only a mounting death toll. When that point is reached, sacrificing lives to an ideal becomes not battle but murder. That time is surely now reached in Ukraine. Meanwhile the West, having made Putin into a hate figure akin to Hitler,  must row back on it demonisation of Russia and its people.  History teaches us that that no war is without root cause and that root is so often planted in ignorance by the ‘good’ side, which then begets a reaction, which becomes a threat, which leads to carnage. Nazi Germany is the modern example. The Western expansion of NATO is on the verge of becoming another. This has to stop. We need a realistic compromise of the kind politicians hate, but which gives priority to life and the living.