Putin has suffered his second major setback since his invasion of Ukraine on 24th February. Within weeks he had failed in his key objectives of replacing the Zelensky government, installing a pro-Russian puppet in Kyiv and fatally dismembering Ukraine. Now, six months on, after his major territorial losses around Kharkiv, he faces the possibility of comprehensive defeat.
Regime change is now more likely in Moscow than Kyiv, although a lengthy guerrilla war is a possibility, focused on Crimea, the Black Sea coast and the two Russian-backed separatist provinces in the east of Ukraine.
Putin faces not just a military and territorial defeat but also an ideological rout. The magnetism of Europe—with its democratic institutions of the European Union and the protective umbrella of Nato—is in my view stronger than ever. Europe is highly likely to embrace post-invasion Ukraine and other contested eastern and southern European borderlands.
On Saturday, as his forces were retreating in the Kharkiv region, Putin opened a ferris wheel in Moscow to celebrate the 875th anniversary of the founding of the city. The wheel apparently broke down shortly afterwards. The symbolism was fitting.
Sweden and Finland are already on the cusp of formally joining Nato. Next month in Prague there is the formative meeting of Emmanuel Macron’s new brainchild, the “European Political Community,” which is likely to embrace most European states inside and outside the EU, including Ukraine. Progress towards EU membership in the west Balkans is gathering pace, with North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Serbia all on a path towards accession, following Croatia.
Much of this is still contested. The Balkan situation remains highly unstable. Nationalist tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have flared up badly, while Bulgaria’s threats to veto North Macedonia’s accession—again in the context of nationalist tensions—have imposed a dangerous delay in that country’s progress towards membership (the two sides have taken some steps towards agreement in recent months).
“Ukraine has been a wake-up call,” Miroslav Laják, the EU special representative for the west Balkans, told the Council of Europe this week. “The stakes are very high: it is now 27 years after the Yugoslav War. If we are not welcoming of enlargement, these countries could gravitate against the EU and towards authoritarian political models.” But renewed momentum is towards the EU, driven by security and economic and historical imperatives.
Both the Covid crisis and the more recent energy emergency have had the effect of strengthening EU and pan-European co-operation. The EU’s single vaccine rollout and recovery programmes are now being followed by unprecedented levels of collaboration—and EU institutional engagement—in the continent’s energy planning.
As ever since 2016, the UK is awol from the political and economic construction of this integrated Europe. Liz Truss hasn’t decided whether to accept the invitation to Prague. If Britain ends up outside and Ukraine inside the European Political Union, we really will have substituted fantasy for common sense in the Brexit wonderland. But since Brexit never extended to leaving Nato, and Truss committed to a huge increase in defence spending as part of her Tory leadership manifesto, the language of disengagement is belied by the reality of Britain’s strong commitment to European security and the containment of Russia.
Zelensky constantly sets his nation’s struggle against Russia in stark fundamentalist terms. “Do you still think that you can scare us, break us or force us to make concessions?” he asked Putin this week. “Read my lips. Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you.
“Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst—for us it is not so terrible and deadly as your friendship and brotherhood. But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, electricity, water and food... and without you!” Zelensky continued in Churchillian tones.
Thanks to Putin, Europe is engaged in its biggest advance since the collapse of the Berlin Wall—without Russia.
