Eric Lee
For some time now, the consensus in the mainstream media in Britain and elsewhere has been that Ukraine has effectively lost the war with Russia. Slowly and methodically, Russian troops have taken village after village from the Ukrainians, at considerable cost in lives. The Ukrainians seem to be just falling back, never advancing. No major Ukrainian counter-offensive took place this year and there were no set-piece battles for the Ukrainian army to win, as they did when re-taking the city of Kherson in 2022.
As the Morning Star recently put it, “Russia’s military superiority has repeatedly forced Ukrainian troops to retreat to avoid being captured or killed.”
A few weeks ago, a Guardian columnist went so far as to defend Nigel Farage’s pro-Kremlin views. “The west’s urgent task must be to get Putin off his self-impaled hook, to stop the bombing and killing. Those now mooting a settlement seem to agree that this will involve the partial division of Ukraine along a ceasefire line and some redefinition of its eastern regions,” wrote Simon Jenkins. He berated some British politicians for “heaping insults on anyone who, like Farage in his other remarks, is clearly arguing for peace.”
The views expressed by Jenkins and Farage only make sense if you’re convinced that Ukraine cannot win this war. And by “win” I mean what the Ukrainians themselves have defined as a victory: recapturing all the territory seized by Russia in their criminal war of aggression.
When you think about it in that way, a Ukrainian victory seems more likely than a Russian one. Victory for Putin means the complete subjugation of Ukraine, the collapse of its government and probably the occupation of the entire country up to its western borders. This is a far more challenging task militarily than what Ukraine has set for itself to do.
And in the last week, despite the defeatist rhetoric promoted by the Kremlin and its allies in the west, Ukraine has given us some cause for hope.
First of all, a few days ago the Ukrainian military announced that its forces had sunk the Russian submarine Rostov-on-Don in the port of Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea. The Ukrainians claim to have now sunk a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet — and have done despite not having a navy of their own.
Then we had the news of the arrival in Ukraine of the first F-16 fighter-bombers with many more on their way. Giving such high-tech weapons to the Ukrainian air force will level the playing field in the skies. The Russians will no longer be able to bomb Ukrainian population centres and infrastructure with impunity.
And finally, Kursk. In the first large-scale incursion by Ukrainian ground forces into Russia, it appears that they had the element of surprise and caused panic in the Kremlin. They also managed to destroy a considerable number of Russian missiles stored in a warehouse.
None of these developments mean that Ukraine has an easy road ahead of it. But it has a road.
Now is not the time for politicians in Britain and the West to adopt the defeatist line being preached by Farage and his ilk.
Ukraine can win this war, but only if its allies — and public opinion in the West — don’t lose their nerve, and stand firm against Russian aggression.