Anne Applebaum: Russia still wants to make Ukraine into a colony again

 From the Atlantic:

"The Only Way the Ukraine War Can End

Russia has to stop fighting.

By Anne Applebaum

...In recent weeks, Russian glide bombs and artillery have slowly begun to destroy the city of Pokrovsk, a logistical hub that has been part of Ukraine’s defensive line in Donetsk for a decade. Regular waves of Russian air strikes continue to hit Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure. The repeated attacks on civilians are not an accident; they are a tactic. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to deprive Ukrainians of heat and light, to demoralize the people as well as the government, and perhaps to provoke a new refugee exodus that will disrupt European politics.

 

Russia remains the larger and richer country. The Kremlin has more ammunition, more tanks, and a greater willingness to dispose of its citizens. The Russian president is willing to tolerate high human losses, as well as equipment losses, of a kind that almost no other nation could accept. And yet, the Ukrainians still believe they can win—if only their American and European allies will let them...

 

Hoping to rally more Americans to his side, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent much of last week in the United States. He visited an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania. He met with former President Donald Trump, and with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Zelensky also presented a victory plan that asked, among other things, for Ukraine to have the right to use American and European long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia. This kind of request is now familiar. In each stage of the war, the Ukrainians and their allies have waged public campaigns to get new weapons—tanks, F-16s, long-range missiles—that they need to maintain a technological edge. Each time, these requests were eventually granted, although sometimes too late to make a difference.

Each time, officials in the U.S., Germany, and other Western powers argued that this or that weapon risked crossing some kind of red line. The same argument is being made once again, and it sounds hollow. Because at this point, the red lines are entirely in our heads; every one of them has been breached. Using drones, Ukraine already hits targets deep inside Russia, including oil refineries, oil and gas export facilities, even air bases...

 

Since this war began, we haven’t been able to imagine that the Ukrainians might defeat Russia, and so we haven’t tried to help those who are trying to do exactly that... Biden is right to tout the success of the coalition of democracies created to aid Ukraine, but why not let that coalition start defending Ukraine against incoming missiles, as friends of Israel have just done in the Middle East?...

 

Worse—much worse—is that, instead of focusing on victory, Americans and Europeans continue to dream of a magic “negotiated solution” that remains far away. Many, many people, some in good faith and some in bad faith, continue to call for an exchange of “land for peace.” Last week, Trump attacked Zelensky for supposedly refusing to negotiate, and the ex-president continues to make unfounded promises to end the war “in 24 hours.” But the obstacle to negotiations is not Zelensky... Right now, the actual obstacle is Putin. Indeed, none of these advocates for “peace,” whether they come from the Quincy Institute, the Trump campaign, the Council on Foreign Relations, or even within the U.S. government, can explain how they will persuade Russia to accept such a deal. It is the Russians who have to be persuaded to stop fighting. It is the Russians who do not want to end the war.

 

Look, again, at the situation on the ground. Even now, two and a half years into a war that was supposed to be over in a few days, the Kremlin still seeks to gain more territory. Despite the ongoing Ukrainian occupation of Kursk province, the Russian army is still sending thousands of men to die in the battle for [the Ukrainian] Donetsk province... 

 

Russia has not changed its rhetoric either. On state television, pundits still call for the dismemberment and destruction of Ukraine. Putin continues to call for the “denazification of Ukraine,” by which he means the removal of Ukraine’s language, culture, and identity—as well as “demilitarization, and neutral status,” by which he means a Ukraine that has no army and cannot resist conquest. Nor do Russian economic decisions indicate a desire for peace. The Russian president now plans to spend 40 percent of the national budget on arms production... The state is still paying larger and larger bonuses to anyone willing to sign up to fight...

 

Negotiations can begin only when this rhetoric changes, when the defense machine grinds to a halt, when the attempts to conquer yet another village are abandoned. This war will end, in other words, only when the Russians run out of resources—and their resources are not infinite—or when they finally understand that Ukraine’s alliances are real, that Ukraine will not surrender, and that Russia cannot win. Just as the British decided in the early 20th century that Ireland is not British and the French decided in 1962 that Algeria is not France, so must the Russians come to accept that Ukraine is not Russia.

 

At that point, there can be a cease-fire, a discussion of new borders, negotiations about other things—such as the fate of the more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and deported by the Russians, an orchestrated act of cruelty.

 

We have not yet reached that stage. The Russians are still waiting for the U.S. to get tired, to stop defending Ukraine, and maybe to elect Trump so that they can dictate terms and make Ukraine into a colony again. They are hoping that the “Ukraine fatigue” they promote and the false arguments about Ukrainian corruption (“Zelensky’s yachts”) that they pay American influencers to repeat will eventually overwhelm America’s strategic and political self-interest. Which, of course, might be the case.

 

But if it is, we are in for a nasty surprise. Should Ukraine finally lose this war, the costs—military, economic, political—for the U.S. and its allies will not go down. On the contrary, they are likely to increase, and not only in Europe. Since 2022, the military and defense-industry links among Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China have strengthened. Iran has delivered drones and missiles to Russia. Russia, in turn, may be providing anti-ship missiles to the Houthis, Iranian proxies who could use them against American and European commercial and military ships in the Red Sea. According to a recent Reuters report, the Russians are now constructing a major drone factory in China...

The democratic world remains wealthier and more dynamic than the autocratic world. To stay that way, Ukraine and its Western allies have to persuade Russia to stop fighting. We have to win this war."