The Ukrainians, who have lost so much already, are unlikely to accept such an unjust truce, even if the Russians had any interest in offering one. What does “victory” mean? Obviously, the survival of an independent Ukraine is the immediate goal, but a lasting peace has to mean more than living through successive Russian conquests and partitions. Good news, to be sure, but without a powerful counteroffensive and eventual victory, there can be no peace in Ukraine, and no stability in Europe or the world. A coffee shop in the station was serving oat-milk lattes.” Even Bucha, where the Russians conducted a ghastly campaign of civilian executions, is rebuilding. When they returned last month, they found that “the lights were on, the restaurants were open, and the trains ran on predictable schedules. When they went to speak with Zelensky in the spring of 2022, Kyiv was a city in darkness, its leadership in bunkers, its businesses mostly closed. (Ukrainian citizens, as our writers saw, routinely use expressions when parting such as “See you after the victory.”) Anne and Jeff also note how much has changed since those first chaotic months of the war. Ukrainians are resolute that there is no alternative to victory. Indeed, Ukraine at war has forged an even stronger identity as a civic and democratic nation. He will rule over whatever is left-and then continue his attempted march westward.Īlthough our cover story bears witness to these crushing tragedies on the ground in Ukraine, it is not a report of relentless pessimism. The Russian campaign, as Anne and Jeff write, was “to annihilate both Ukraine and the idea of Ukraine,” but now, with tens of thousands of Russian casualties and the Russian nation in shock at constant defeats, Putin has apparently decided that he must destroy what he once hoped to possess whole. Lost in a fantasy, he expected not only that Kyiv would fall but also that Russian soldiers would be greeted as liberators. As we now know, however, the Russian military had for years managed to hide its shocking incompetence and poor logistics from the world-and especially from Putin, whose small circle of sycophants was too terrified to tell him the truth. I made the same miscalculation in my early analyses of the conflict. and NATO, who expected a war between “a big Soviet army fighting a small Soviet army” and thought that the “big” Soviet army would win. As the Ukrainian defense minister told Anne and Jeff, so did the U.S. He expected Ukraine to collapse within hours of his first attacks more than a year ago. Russian President Vladimir Putin, of course, is trapped in a vortex of his own grandiose miscalculations and strategic ineptitude. The Russian missile, Jeff writes, “was meant to murder and terrorize mission accomplished.”Īnd this is what the Russian war on Ukraine has become: a campaign of revenge by an infuriated despot who is determined to show that democracy will bow to dictatorship, even if he has to bomb every home and kill every Ukrainian. If Ukraine is lost, Europe and the West face an existential threat not only to our physical security but also to our democratic civilization.Īs Jeffrey Goldberg notes in his editor’s introduction to the June issue, The Atlantic went to Ukraine because the war there “is about much more than Ukraine it is about the very subjects that animate this magazine: democracy, freedom, justice, humanism.” In Kherson, he and Anne were interviewing Ukrainian soldiers when the Russians bombed a nearby supermarket parking lot, the kind of indiscriminate attack that reinforces the stakes for Ukraine and the world. If America stumbles even deeper into authoritarian darkness than it already has, Ukraine is lost. These two battles are inextricably linked. We will also know whether the free world (and yes, it’s long past time to start using that expression again) has the will to resist the onslaught of Russian butchery in Europe. In the next 12 to 18 months, we will know whether Americans have the collective will to resist yet another attempt to hand power to a would-be autocrat as astonishing as it seems, one of the likely presidential candidates in the 2024 election is a man who incited a violent attack against the government and the Constitution of the United States. The democracies face a coming year of decision. Hotel booking is a post-truth nightmare.A lesson about living from a survivor of suicide.What home cooking does that restaurants can’t.When private equity firms bankrupt their own companies.
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