What would winning look like for Ukraine?

Russian convoy near Kupiansk, Ukraine, today.

With the Russian military beginning a new offensive in eastern Ukraine, the question on everyone’s lips all day has been, who’s winning?

“This war has morphed into something new.  This is a fight to the death for the Ukrainians,” said retired General Barry McCaffrey on Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC this afternoon. “The atrocities, the civilian massacres, Putin’s humiliation.  The outcome of this war is in serious doubt.”

My friend Bill Taylor, the former ambassador to Ukraine, was on the same show, and when asked about the terrible situation in Mariupol, where a brigade of Ukrainian marines is holed up in a steel manufacturing plant near the waterfront putting up what is thought to be a final fight against Russian invaders, Bill said, “No matter how it ends up, that’s a hero city.  Ukrainians are going to say, ‘Remember Mariupol!’ And they’re going to fight to the end.  Mariupol is going to be a symbol of Ukrainian determination and heroism, and the rest of the country will benefit from their heroism and be even more motivated.” 

“But the end could be that Russia can hold out longer,” said Mitchell.  “Can’t he win in the end that way?”  “Putin is not winning,” Bill answered.  “He has faced some serious humiliations and defeats on the battlefield.  I mean, he tried to go into Kyiv, and the Ukrainian army beat him back.  He had his flagship naval vessel destroyed on the Black Sea last week.  He has lost six, seven, eight generals killed on the front lines, and another one this weekend.”

Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s Secretary of National Security, told reporters in Kyiv today that Russian forces had attempted to penetrate Ukrainian front lines in eastern Ukraine. "Today, almost along the entire front line of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv regions, the occupiers tried to break through our defenses," he said. "Fortunately, our military is holding on, and only in two cities they [the Russians] have passed…but the fighting continues, we are not surrendering our territories and the attempt to start an active phase has begun this morning.”

A Russian convoy of rocket launchers and supply vehicles was spotted moving through the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, not far from the Russian border, headed for Izium, further south, where Russian forces are said to be massing for an attack on the Luhansk region.  But if you look at the photo accompanying this column, you’ll see that they haven’t learned much since the early days of the war, when the infamous 40-mile convoy headed for Kyiv from Belarus was photographed by commercial satellites.  That convoy and the one depicted here are bunched-up, bumper-to-bumper on paved roads, unable to travel cross-country because spring rains have turned the surrounding fields into gigantic seas of mud.  Like the earlier convoy, this one is an easy target for attacks by Ukrainian ground troops using RPG-7’s and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

General McCaffrey told Andrea Mitchell we can expect more of the same from Russia’s armed forces as they open their new front in the east.  “They’re putting the whole country at risk, trying to create terror and instability among the civilian population.”  That means more so-called indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian cities, targeting civilian neighborhoods and their civilian residents.  There are estimates that Russian shelling has killed 21,000 civilians in Mariupol, and now there are more reports that Russia has been forcibly deporting Ukrainians to concentration camps inside Russia. 

It’s the only thing that Russia has been good at:  killing civilians.  “The atrocities are overwhelming,” former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said today.  “I think it’s time we stop using the word ‘war’ to describe what’s happening in Ukraine.  It’s grotesque.  It’s a deliberate strategy of terrorism.  When they engage the Ukrainian military, they lose.  This will end in one of two ways.  One side wins, or there is a stalemate on the battlefield.”

Which brings up the obvious question:  what would winning amount to for Ukraine?  For the answer to this question, we need to look back at the last war fought on the same ground, World War II, when the Nazi army swept through the same parts of Ukraine the Russians are attacking right now.  The Nazis committed horrific atrocities in Ukraine as they launched their attack on Moscow in the winter of 1941-42, shelling Ukrainian and Russian cities “indiscriminately,” as it’s now said. 

The Russian army suffered more than 670,000 casualties in the three months between October 1941 and January 1942.  The number of civilians killed during this bloody period is not known.  What is known is that Russia suffered 27 million deaths during the war, and of that number, 9 million were military, meaning there were twice as many civilians killed as soldiers. Included were untold numbers of Soviet citizens living in what is now the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

The Europe we know today was rebuilt from the destruction of Nazi bombing and occupation.  Among the cities brought back from the dead were Kyiv and Lviv and Kharkiv and Luhansk and Donetsk, Ukrainian cities under Russian bombardment today.  The destruction of Ukraine is almost unimaginable, but it was unimaginable before. 

Winning, for Ukraine, will look like it did in the past.  The invader will be driven out.  There will be a modern-day Marshall Plan.  Ukrainians will return to their homes and rebuild them.  That’s what winning will look like.