Russia May Lose The Ukraine War. Why Does It Have to Come to This End? The Arguments of an American Historian: “For the Good of the World and for Her Own Good”

Throughout the Russian military aggression in Ukraine, too many imagined that Russia could not lose. When the full-scale invasion was launched on February 24, 2022, most believed in a collapse of Ukraine within days.

Even today, after Ukraine has successfully resisted for more than two years, the prevailing view among the “friends of Russia” in the US Congress is that Russia will win in the end.

Moscow’s success is not on the battlefield, but in our minds. Russia can lose. And they must lose, for the good of the world and for its good, points out Timothy Snyder, professor at Yale and author of several books on history and international relations, including “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.”

Invincibility, just propaganda

The idea of ​​an invincible red army is just propaganda. However, the Red Army was formidable, but not invincible. Of the three important wars he fought, he lost two.

The Red Army was defeated by Poland in 1920. Indeed, the Soviet Union emerged victorious against Nazi Germany in 1945 after nearly collapsing in 1941, but its victory in this case was due to a large international coalition and the aid decisive economic support received from the US. In the third war, Soviet forces ran into trouble immediately after invading Afghanistan in 1979 and were forced to withdraw ten years later.

Incidentally, the Russian army today is not the Red Army. And Russia is not the Soviet Union either. For the Soviet Union, Ukraine was a source of resources and soldiers. In the 1945 victory, Ukrainian Red Army soldiers suffered huge losses – greater than American, British and French losses combined. A huge number of Ukrainians (and other peoples occupied by the Soviets – no) arrived in Berlin in the uniform of the Red Army.

Today, Russia is not fighting side by side with Ukraine, but against it. It is waging a war of aggression on the territory of another state. And it lacks the American economic support that the Red Army needed to defeat Nazi Germany. In this constellation, there is no reason to expect Russia to win in Ukraine. Instead, we can expect Russia to stand a chance only if it prevents the West from helping Ukraine by convincing us that its victory is inevitable, so that we no longer exert our decisive economic power.

The events of the past six months bear this out: Russia’s minor successes on the battlefield occurred at a time when the US was delaying aid to Ukraine.

Today’s Russia is a different state, one that emerged in 1991. Like Brezhnev, Vladimir Putin rules by nostalgia. He references the Soviet past as well as the Russian imperial past. But the Russian Empire also lost wars. It lost the Crimean War in 1856. It lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. It lost World War I in 1917. In none of these three cases was Russia able to maintain its forces on the battlefield for more than three years.

The risk of letting Russia win

There is great nervousness in the US about a potential Russian defeat. If something seems impossible, we can’t imagine what could happen next. And so there is a tendency, even among Ukrainian supporters, to believe that the best solution is a draw. Such a way of thinking is unrealistic.

No one can think of a war in this way. Both Russia and Ukraine are fighting for victory. The questions are: who will win and with what consequences?

If Russia emerged victorious, the consequences would be dire: the risk of a larger war in Europe; a greater likelihood for increased Chinese appetite in the Pacific; the weakening of the international legal order in general; possibly, the spread of nuclear weapons and the loss of confidence in democracy.

Now, it is absolutely natural for Russia to lose wars. And the defeats generally caused the Russians to reflect and adopt reforms. The defeat in Crimea forced the autocracy of that time to abolish serfdom. Defeat to Japan led to the first election. The failure in Afghanistan led to Gorbachev’s reforms and thus the end of the Cold War.

Defeat, a chance for the good of Russia

Beyond Russian particularities, history offers a reassuring lesson about the demise of empires. Russia is waging an imperialist war today. It denies the existence of the Ukrainian state and nation and commits atrocities reminiscent of the darkest period of Europe’s imperial past.

Today’s peaceful Europe consists of powers that lost the last imperial wars and then chose democracy. Not only is it possible to lose your last imperial war, but it’s also good, both for the world and for you.

Russia can and must lose this war, even for the sake of the Russians themselves. A defeated Russia means not only the end of the senseless loss of life in Ukraine. It is also Russia’s only chance to become a post-imperial country, one where reform is possible, one where Russians themselves could be protected by the law and have the opportunity to participate in elections where their vote counts.

Defeat in Ukraine is Russia’s historic chance at normalcy – as Russians who want democracy and the rule of law would say.

Like the US and Europe, Ukraine celebrates the 1945 victory on May 8, not May 9. Ukrainians have every right to commemorate that victory, because they suffered more than the Russians because of the German occupation and died massively on the battlefield.

And Ukrainians have the right to believe that Russia today, like Nazi Germany in 1945, is a fascist imperialist regime that can and must be defeated. Fascism was defeated because a coalition stood firm and applied its superior economic power. The same is true now, concludes the American historian.

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