Former US national security adviser HR McMaster believes that Ukraine can still win the war with Russia, arguing that President Vladimir Putin had already lost the conflict in a sense by sitting back and bombing from afar.
Oxana Shevel, associate professor of political science at Tufts University concurs with McMaster's sentiments, adding that the Russian army has proven not to be the mighty force that they have been made out to be.
Shevel, who specialises in the study of former Soviet states, was born and raised in Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers walk in a field during live-fire exercises in Chuguev, Kharkiv region on February 10, 2022. (Photo by Sergey BOBOK / AFP) Photo: AFP or licensors
The only leverage Russia has left, she says, is the carpet bombing of Ukrainian cities, "essentially committing war crimes".
“It is beyond doubt by now that Russia greatly underestimated both the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian army.
“The plan was to take Kyiv in two-to-three days, to have victory parade and then depart and install some sort of puppet government. The Russian forces met fierce resistance.”
All that’s left now for the Russians, she says, is bombardment or possibly more nightmarish scenarios.
“Well, I think from Russian side, anything is possible. There seems to be absolutely no … whatever we want to call it, morality, international law, for example the maternity hospital that they bombed with all this footage of wounded pregnant women, and they're claiming that it was a military base.”
There remains great hope among Ukrainians that the country will rebuild after the war, Shevel says.
“I think people are very determined, and there is great hope among the Ukrainian society that they can win, and that this conflict will end and that they can rebuild.”
That would require huge investment on a Marshall Plan scale, she says.
“Ukraine is a big country, it's 44 million people. It's a country the size of Texas, the size of France, to think that, the whole country can be destroyed?
"First of all, they're nowhere near that scenario. And second of all, again, even if it were to happen, as horrible as it is to think about it, Germany rose from the ruins with European help right after Hitler was defeated.”
Putin will lose, she says, but the longer that takes the greater the toll.
“Does he lose faster, or does it scale out longer to commit many more destructions and war crimes and civilian murder before he falls.”
Russia doesn’t have the numbers to maintain control over Ukraine even if the invasion is initially successful, Shevel says.
“You can talk to military analysts who will tell you what kind of troops to insurgency ratio, you need to effectively control the country, Russia doesn't have nearly enough forces.
“So, this sort of idea that it can somehow have a vassal state, I don't think it's realistic. They just simply do not have the forces to do this.”
The war has unleashed forces within Russia that Putin may not be able to contain, she says.
“He positioned himself as somebody who brought stability after Russia’s unstable or chaotic 1990s.
“In the 1990s under Yeltsin, there was more democracy, but there was also economic collapse, and so forth.
“And then, Putin comes to power, democratic freedoms are less, but there is greater stability. And there is sort of a social contract with the population that you don't protest, you acquiesce to less democracy. But in return, you have more stable life, you can travel, you can buy cars, and all of this is now out of the window.”
Putin remains convinced Ukraine is not a real country, she says.
“If you read again Putin’s speeches over the years, his pronouncements about Ukraine, he seems to be completely convinced that Ukraine, first of all is not a real country and Ukrainian people are not really a nation.
“The thing that was a great miscalculation was the expectation that once Russian troops win, all these Ukrainians who are oppressed by quote unquote, Nazi government … would basically welcome Russian liberators because ultimately Ukrainians are Russians, right, so that was one great miscalculation right there.”
She rejects the notion that NATO expansionism has provoked Russia.
“There was no consensus within NATO to accept Ukraine, including among powers such as France and Germany, there was Orban who of course, was going to veto any kind of move towards Ukraine.
“There was no support for NATO [membership] within Ukraine until 2014 when Putin first started aggression against Ukraine. So, this whole thing I think it's a total red herring.”
