For six months, a great war has been sowing horror in Europe. It is a war fought in the trenches and with artillery, but largely influenced by the political mood of Americans and Europeans, whose willingness to endure inflation and the energy crisis could determine the next phase of the conflict. Nobody knows how it will turn out. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia “hasn’t started getting serious yet.” His Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Zelenskii said the chances of an agreement were minimal and urged citizens not to give in.
Will Western support for Ukraine resist the prospect of a winter without Russian oil and gas? Is it possible that Putin, after the Ukrainian attacks in Crimea and the killing of a nationalist columnist, will escalate hostilities? Will Zelenzkyj be able to maintain his country’s resolve in the face of an enemy who possesses nuclear weapons? Russia now controls 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, but the goal of bringing Kiev back into its sphere of influence seems further away than ever. At the moment, however, nothing suggests that Putin is willing to give up. Six months after the day Russian forces crossed the Ukrainian border, this is how the conflict presents itself to the warring parties and to an entire continent plunged into chaos.
On August 24, Ukrainian Independence Day coincided with another anniversary: exactly six months earlier, Russia invaded the country, sparking a war that forced many Ukrainians to leave their homes, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers and turned the economy upside down. In the inhabited centers along the front, in the areas occupied by the Russians and in the areas hit by long-range missiles, the effects of the most intense conflict that has erupted in Europe since the Second World War are evident. However, the Ukrainians, now accustomed to the danger, are regaining a sense of normality after the shock of the invasion. Families prepare for the reopening of schools and customers crowd the tables in the bars. The regions where the majority of Ukrainians live are relatively safe. The government is stable, and the army, equipped with increasingly powerful Western weapons, is still standing. “At the beginning, the risk was that the Russian army, the second largest in the world, would establish air superiority and total domination,” explains Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister. “We figured out how to stop it.”
But the economy in free fall, the air strikes and the weight of a war of attrition could undermine the resistance of Ukraine, specified Zagorodnyuk, stressing that after six months, survival is not the same as a victory: “We cannot allow that the war turns into a low-intensity conflict. We have to find a way to expel the Russians ”.
If nothing else, the situation is very different from what Moscow had imagined. In recent days, the Ukrainians have organized a “parade” of captured Russian tanks and military vehicles in the streets of Kiev. Children climbed into armored vehicles while passersby took selfies. “In February, the Russians were thinking of a triumphal parade,” the Ukrainian defense ministry wrote on Twitter. “Six months after this embarrassing exhibition of debris serves as a reminder to all dictators that their plans can be blown away from a free to a brave nation.”
But this fragile semblance of normality hides the heavy consequences of the war. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that 5,587 civilians were killed and 7,890 were injured, pointing out that the real numbers are likely to be much higher. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, admitted that nine thousand Ukrainian soldiers were killed.
In February, few Russians expected an invasion of Ukraine. Even the commentators closest to the Kremlin thought it would be too risky and expensive. Putin had only revealed his plans to his closest associates and expected that it would all be over in a matter of days.
Then there were the military errors, sanctions, the flight of anti-war Russians, a humiliating retreat from the Ukrainian capital, images of atrocities and increasingly clear evidence of massive losses among Russian soldiers. Instead of being hailed as a liberator, Putin became responsible for the biggest war in Europe since 1945.
But six months after the start of hostilities, Putin is still fighting. And it is not alone. “A country, a president, a victory”, marked the nationalist deputy Leonid Slutsky at the funeral of Daria Dugina, daughter of the far-right theorist Aleksandr Dugin, killed in an attack in Moscow on 20 August.
After half a year of conflict, Russia looks very different and at the same time surprisingly unchanged. What remained of the media, culture and independent politics has disappeared, replaced by the militant ultranationalism touted by state television. The anti-war demonstrations organized in the first weeks have vanished, also because according to a law introduced in March, a post on social networks is enough to risk a sentence of fifteen years in prison.
Yet Putin has resisted pressure for full mobilization. The government has managed to soften the impact of economic sanctions on daily life and dispense with mass conscription. Also for this reason, according to a poll by the Levada center, 43 percent of Russians are not interested in what is happening in Ukraine.
With his troops blocked at the front, Putin appears to be content with waging a war of attrition without specifying what his conditions for a ceasefire might be. He accuses the West of wanting to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian”, implying that he can resist longer than the enemy.
Winter is upon us and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas pushes it to continue until the first divisions in the Western camp emerge or the Ukrainian army and government succumb to exhaustion. But war advocates in Russia are questioning this strategy, pointing out that the Ukrainian attacks in occupied Crimea and the killing of Dugina in an affluent Moscow suburb show how much the Kremlin has underestimated the adversary.
At his daughter’s funeral, Dugin explained what his will would be: “Don’t glorify me. Fight for our great country ”. Despite Kiev’s denials, Russia has accused Ukraine of the murder, and the affair seems to have strengthened the position of the hawks who believe that Putin should intensify hostilities. For them, war not only serves to regain a lost empire, but also to eradicate any residue of liberalism from Russian society. “According to them, the more the country sinks into this catastrophe, the less chance there is that things will change at some point,” emphasizes Russian policy expert Marat Guelman.
After six months of war and with no end in sight, Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine resists the effects of economic sanctions. Even the leaders of the big countries far from the front – France, Germany, Spain, on the brink of a recession and hit hard by inflation – have avoided criticizing the EU line, while wondering how and when the war will end. Europe and the United States have worked together to keep pressure on Moscow high by coordinating sanctions and military aid. The link between the two sides of the Atlantic is stronger than it has ever been since the end of the Cold War. Faced with the resistance of the Ukrainians and the atrocities committed by the Russians, the Europeans are no longer asking for a ceasefire and are no longer thinking of involving Russia in a security structure as French President Emmanuel Macron had proposed at the beginning of the conflict.
“Europe is more united than most of us expected six months ago,” explains Bruno Tertrais of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. “The will to maintain sanctions despite differences and sporadic tensions is concrete”. According to Fabian Zuleeg of the European policy center, the war has already brought profound changes in the Union, with unprecedented action on sanctions, military aid and enlargement (Ukraine and Georgia have obtained the status of candidates for membership). Relations between the United States and NATO have improved and European countries have welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms.
For Guntram Wolff, director of the German Council for Foreign Relations, “European unity is holding up”. Even on the most delicate issues “there are no major differences. But there are no new initiatives either ”. Countries like Germany and France are reluctant to increase military aid, fearing that too obvious a success by Ukraine could push Russia to widen the conflict and involve NATO.
From the earliest rumors of an invasion, the United States has worked closely with the European Union and NATO to create a coalition of countries ready to react. Over time, the war was increasingly perceived as a confrontation between Russia and a US-led front. Much of the rest of the world has remained indifferent or sided with Moscow. Half of the planet has refused to impose sanctions on Russia, including China and India. The two countries see themselves as rising powers, penalized by a global order dominated by the West and convinced that the United States and Europe are in decline.
The European states closest to the conflict, such as Poland and the Baltic countries, have tried to keep attention on the danger of Russian aggression. But now even in Poland there is a certain amount of fatigue in the face of the huge number of Ukrainian refugees, and divisions are emerging over energy sanctions. Hungary and Serbia maintain a close link with Russia and have rejected the measures proposed by Brussels.
“Winter will be the moment of truth,” explains Tertrais. “We will have to face the economic difficulties, the social impact of the crisis and the reaction of the populist forces who will try to blame the sanctions for internal problems, just as the Kremlin wants”. ◆ as