Costly for Russia, and hopefully Putin

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

After weeks of denying there would be war, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine just before dawn yesterday with a volley of missiles against military bases, airports and air defence radars, as warplanes and helicopters crossed the border along with Russian ground forces.

This is not something the Russian people want, to be fighting their Slavic brothers and sisters. It is Putin and his inner circle who wish to start undoing the disintegration of the Soviet Union by retaking the original centre of historic Russia, or bringing it back into their sphere of influence.

This will come at vast cost to Russia and its people via concerted sanctions by countries that represent half the global economy, and urgent moves to end Europe's reliance on Russian gas — highlighted by its stockmarket falling 45 percent yesterday and the rouble slumping to a record low.

The Kremlin's propaganda and repression machines will only go so far in protecting Putin from public anger at home if this war goes on for long, at the cost of many Russian as well as Ukrainian lives, and immense economic hardship.

He has rolled the dice on his future and that of the kleptocracy around him. The West and the Ukrainian people — who have become progressively more Europe-oriented since their 2014 revolution and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea and backing of armed conflict in the Donbas region — will do their utmost to prove that Putin has miscalculated.

Only a fraction of the 200,000 troops massed around Ukraine's borders in recent months have entered the country so far. British defence intelligence says there have been heavy casualities on both sides. Putin's war will likely soon be the largest inter-state conflict in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, but will not draw in other nations against Russia as no one wants that escalation or the risk of nuclear reprisals.

Will Putin be satisfied with taking eastern Ukraine or parts of it? That seems possible, but only if he can also install a puppet government in Kyiv. He would need to retain an occupation force, though, and partisans from western Ukraine would flock to fight it. For this reason his aim could well be to take the whole country. That might see this become the biggest conflict in Europe since World War 2.

There is one man who is responsible for this war. Hopefully it is a limited one, and eventually Putin is brought to justice.