(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Obviously I can’t go and check, but memory tells me that the reception of Addenbrooke’s hospital bears the Persian adage “This too shall pass”. The human condition is temporary, and therefore so too is the terror and experience of mortal pain — that’s (I presume) the intended message.
But will it — Covid-19 — pass? Since the “-19” refers to the form of the illness first induced by the SARS-COV2 virus in 2019, then yes, Covid-19 will pass. But Covid-20, Covid-21? I suspect that those people who hope that the virus (and the deformation of ‘normal life’ with which we’re currently wrestling) will fade away are going to be disappointed. We won’t live in social isolation for ever, but neither will we be returning to ‘normal’ anytime soon.
In any case, historically speaking, it was the relatively un-pandemicked century between Spanish flu and Covid-19 that was the statistical oddity, not living with the risks presented by a fatal infectious disease. Human beings are great hosts for fragments of RNA that just want to live, baby! We need a new-normal, not a return to the prelapsarian days of February, 2020. How long ago February seems.
So much of pre-Covid-19 world was oriented for the gregarious and extrovert, and was tolerated by the rest of us (people who need solitude to maintain equilibrium) because the dominance of the herd seemed impossible to overcome. Take the world with which I’m most familiar: the office. Here, the following norms were unquestioningly accepted:
- Open-plan hot-desking (every morning, hoik a box containing your laptop cables to any flat table in the office, and set yourself up for the day) leads naturally to synergistic interactions (“Hey! Let me, like, totally interrupt what you’re doing and tell you all about my ideas right now!”) These add value to the business.
- Global teams are better, because they increase diversity, and diversity always adds value to the business.
- Anyone leading a global team needs to travel incessantly, because physical presence among team-mates increases team cohesion (which is as important as diversity), and adds value to the business.
- Serious decisions must be made face-to-face, even if half the face-to-face meeting is in one video-conference suite in Philadelphia, with the other half in another room in London.
What have five weeks (I started early) of social isolation taught me? First, that hot-desking is dead, thank God. The idea that you should be forced to spend today at the desk where yesterday Eunice from Chemistry was hacking up her lungs (“Some sort of 24 hour thing”) will be illegal by the end of next year. Everyone who was part of the “abolish private office space” movement should be forced to march through the streets — at two metres separation — with a placard round their necks saying “Sorry for our unwarranted attack on human dignity”.
Do we need offices, at all? I’ve found it easier, not harder, to keep leading my own global team. From 1-on-1 catch-ups, to management team meetings, to seminars and town halls and performance reviews: every aspect of managing a group of globally-distributed workers has been easier to conduct from the study at home than from a hastily-booked “meeting space” cubicle at the fringes of the open-plan hell. In my (pharmaceutical) industry, the only people who actually need to be on site are the lab scientists. The rest of us can work remotely. The company works fine.
It works better than fine, in fact; better than the old-normal. Once the curve has been flattened, and isolation officially terminated, the question will loom: why leave the house at 6am to travel to Stevenage on the train every day, when the same work can be done, more comfortably, from home? Why rush back to the old-normal, the Benthamite Panopticon hell, at all?
How will HR react, I wonder, post-Covid-19, if I tell them “I’m not flying to Philadelphia for work, anymore. It’s not necessary — this we proved, in Spring and Summer 2020 — and it therefore unnecessarily raises both my susceptibility risk for infection, and that of the people with whom such travel brings me into contact?” We’ll see.
That’s fine for you, Archer, middle-class manager in your Barnet semi with its nice wee garden and the impossibly patient Mr Keith as companion. What about people who live in inner city flats. With children.
I’m not proposing that social isolation should be enforced forever, merely that we stop insisting on social mixing for the sake of it. More people are like me than you suspect, if you’ve read my enjoyment of isolation with horror. Many more. And if you give us freedom to be just that little bit more physically distant from now on, well, that just leaves more space for everyone else. (Robbie Gibb tweeted a survey that shows around a fifth to a quarter of us plan to reduce social mixing in the future.)
But what about those millions on whom you depend: the health-care workers and delivery drivers and postmen and policemen and soldiers and … the backbone of the country. People who can’t work from home. What changes for them in the new-normal?
As the cheering from our doorsteps every Thursday demonstrates, the value of labour and the dignity of the labourer has — at last — been re-valorised. If we care less about what the university-educated think about Brexit or immigration or anything in the next few years, then good. Having a degree in something useless from somewhere rubbish never made your opinion more important than that of the bin man; in cost-benefit terms, each bin man is worth more than a thousand psychology graduates from North London Tech.
I’m married to an electrician. It’s Keith’s experience of globalisation that has ever shaped my politics: transcontinental supply chains (so he can’t choose to buy parts from people he knows and trusts, because his company finds cheaper alternatives from strangers he’ll never meet in countries he’ll never visit); open-doors immigration (so anyone’s qualification from any EU country had instantly the same jobs market value as his own); the downward pressure on wages — in our household, hatred of Blairite globalisation was never theoretical.
If you’re a middle- or senior-manager in a MegaCorp, you’ll know the pressure to offshore and outsource, in putatively British companies, is real. I hope that the new-normal resets this a bit. It’s too much to hope that the Labour Party (a sack of anti-Semitic rats fighting enablers of anti-Semitic rats, both of them dependent on the votes of those psychology graduates) will change. But the Conservative Party has noticed: we are kept alive by the labour of those whose opinions are despised by Labour.
Meanwhile, there has been a collapse in trust between citizen and journalist — and no wonder. The political lobby, in particular, has behaved lamentably, clinging to their dreary, invented gotchas, and indulging in preening displays of scientific ignorance, even as the old-normal paradigm shifted from under their feet. They remind me of backbench MPs at the time of the expenses scandal: in complete denial that anything needs to change. “But this is how things are done, you see,” they puff, as the sandcastle of self-belief they’ve carefully patted into proud existence is washed away by reality’s tidal wave.
Not only the media’s deficiencies have been on daily display. The official from WHO pretending not to hear the question about Taiwan will haunt that intergovernmental quango. I signed a petition from the sort of organisation I’d normally avoid, demanding action against “wet markets”. I don’t think animal welfare will be left to student activists anymore, not when the link between global pandemics that kill millions and the torture of sentient beings for unnecessary meat is so startingly, unavoidably visible. SARS-COV2 wasn’t the first zoonotic jump; we all know who’s responsible. I don’t think we’ll tolerate either health quangos or corporations looking the other way any longer.
Not only geopolitical outfits and MegaCorps will change in the new-normal. More parochially, perhaps we’ll weigh up the costs of devolved assemblies. An email last week from Sainsbury’s CEO told me the company is ready to match up its customer lists with the database of English citizens felt by the government to be most vulnerable and in need of food deliveries, but: “We are waiting for the databases for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and will contact vulnerable customers in those areas as soon as we are able.”
In the name of God, why are there four lists to do one thing across One Nation? “To give Sturgeon material for a press conference” isn’t a good enough answer — not with national GDP likely to drop by around 35%. Like asking a gynaecologist to take time out from visiting her multiple homes to give you advice on immunology, devolution is an expense whose cost cannot easily be justified.
My 74-year old mother is in Scotland and has the sort of lung condition that would make her death from Covid-19 a near certainty should she become infected with SARS-COV2. That she could have had food delivered safely, last week, from Sainsbury’s, if only we hadn’t spent decades indulging the psychological inadequacies of Salmond and Sturgeon, feels pretty fucking unacceptable.
Wishing viruses out of existence has been one of the hallmarks of my life, since HIV first reared its hideous head, but ‘wishing’ didn’t defeat HIV, any more than shouting GOTCHA! at a government press conference. Don’t die of ignorance warned Sir Norman Fowler, and while too many did, most of us didn’t, and not accidentally. Decades of pharmaceutical research and changes in (sub)cultural norms created a new-normal era that ran from the late 1990s until roughly four weeks ago.
You probably didn’t notice those changes, that coming-into-being of the new-normal, unless you’re roughly my middle-age, and gay. But the same focus on pharmaceutical research — on science, darling! — and effecting changes in cultural norms: that’s the way we’ll defeat SARS-COV2.
There’s nothing special about the virus; it just wants to live. The universe co-inhabited by the viral and human genome couldn’t care less about the outcome, so shaking your fist in anger and insisting on the supremacy of the way we lived until February 2020 won’t, to put it mildly, be efficacious.
Instead, let’s start the conversation about what needs to change, to maximise the probability of human success. The fight for the (new) good life starts here. Don’t die of nostalgia for the old one.
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SubscribeThe third paragraph sounds eerily similar to what’s happening in the NHS. Nothing to see here, just keep going, the chosen grand narrative must trump the facts on the ground and the lived experiences of doctors, nurses, and patients … until it doesn’t. And then, the deluge. It ain’t gonna be pretty.
Russia and war and winter……..the two have a very long relationship. Now add in EU and UK business closing in millions and millions of out of work Westerners sitting in freezing homes on some dole being printed off National Debt in the inflation death spiral…..
winter is going to be one to watch…. A Neo-Cons Christmas extravaganza…..
the answer to the debt problem: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/return-to-sovereign-money/
Bingo. Let’s just ignore the pesky circumstances of the 2014 coup. The corruption at the highest levels of Ukraine and their sponsors. The fact that other than those fighting and their loved ones, those suffering most are the poorest and most vulnerable in western nations. “Elites” must be laughing their backsides off as they keep raising prices and those who can afford to just keep handing over whatever is asked. Because they need it. Because they’re worth it. Because Slava Ukraini. Because worse than Hitler. Because it’ll be alright. Allegory of the cave, anyone?
Da Tavarisch!
It’s interesting that there is actually a real “logic” in a psychotic leader’s descent into madness.
Ivan the Dread, Hitler, and now Vova, all began to distrust their own militaries when their wars began to go badly. In his disastrous Livonian War, Ivan recruited vast numbers of worthless militia. He ended up almost losing his own city of Pskov. Adolf sidelined his professional army and began strengthening the SS. We know the results. Now Vova claims his own military is worthless, and only the Donbas militia wins battles. We’ve seen the outcome in the last few days.
Ivan didn’t have the “reach” to destroy civilians in Poland or Livonia. But Adolf certainly did devote enormous resources in attacking civilian targets, both in Britian and in liberated areas of the continent. He also ordered his forces to conduct a scorched earth policy as his armies retreated, even in Germany itself.
Now that Vova realizes he will never get Kharkiv, and is losing Donbas, he seems to be following the same “logic.” The attacks on civilian infrastructure are only the latest examples. The munitions involved would logically be better used against a Ukrainian military taking new ground each hour from the Russian army.
But since 24 Feb, Vova has freed himself from the tyranny of logic.
And sanity…
I’m also reminded of the rail infrastructure and other resources diverted to Adolf’s extermination programme right up to the tail end of the war.
your post wins the History Hyperbole prize, here have five stars *****
Since Russia’s Western Group of Forces–the unit specifically tasked with fighting NATO–has been obliterated by this offensive, Ukraine seems to have made “hyperbole” just quotidian reality.
I have always read that the Russians are so inept that they are unable to accurately hit military targets and civilian losses are the result.
“What they voted for was a system that rejected totalitarianism.” – I’ve been making this point for a while now: the Ukrainian people want freedom more than the Russian people want Ukraine. There’s a good chance that in the end this will make the difference.
I hope the Ukrainians don’t get over-giddy about this good news. Russia is powerful, and there is a long way to go.
But, this is a good step; as Churchill said, the end of the beginning.
Terrific article David but – para 12 – the Turks are occupying Northern (not Southern) Cyprus I believe…?
Not a historian but it appears to me that , yes, overwhelming force can ” take” territory; but…and it is a big but….if the local population refuse to accept the invaders, ultimately, they will be sent back where they came from? Vietnam was the classic example. All Empires have expanded then shrunk, sometimes to nothingness like the Greek/Roman/ Spanish and British. The Commonwealth is perhaps a bigger achievement than it is given credit for by many as a post Empire/Colonial past. My bet is that Ukraine will survive long after Putin’s demise and his special place in history will be, not as a reviver of Russian power and influence but as a murderous thug who ,quite possibly, will have instigated a further diminishment of Russia as the rumours of breakaways begin.
Propaganda is inevitable, but how to explain the harsh reality of the growing number of bodies and wounded soldiers coming home? How to explain why so many western products and services are no longer available?
Calling it a “special operation “ does at least provide a face-saving possibility of a “negotiated resolution “ as opposed to an increasingly bloody outright win/loss outcome.
If Putin suspects he is about to lose, his ego may require him to rain down nuclear havoc and annihilation….surely the worst of all possible worlds.
Had Hitler had nuclear weapons, we can only guess if he would have pressed the button when he pressed the trigger?
The Russian people know what is happening but are too afraid to speak up. I know this from first hand knowledge. As far as freedom of speech, not much has changed from the Soviet era. How many dissidents has Putin murdered?
And who in the UK would feel safe in the work place to say that they don’t stand with Ukraine?
you are correct sir.
this article is the usual drivel from this author.
If any one thinks the Russians are finished, I suggest a visit to the area.
the Russians do not want ukraine, only the parts inhabited by those who consider themselves Russian.
I am astounded by the lack of knowledge exhibited by many here.
many of you will be very rudely awakened in the coming months.
Actually all this article needs is words such as not, can’t, and don’t added to each sentence and then it would be a highly accurate account of the reality.
There’s a big difference between people in the west not speaking up in favour of Russia because their colleagues wouldn’t like them for it, and people in Russia not speaking up in favour of Ukraine for fear of being disappeared by a totalitarian regime
You seem to have forgotten that it was the touchy feely West who used nuclear weapons to kill millions of civilians…..we are of course still cleaner than clean.
Like many others I am glad to hear of the Ukrainian success. But realistically, does anyone imagine a scenario where Ukraine gets all it’s land back (including Crimea) and Putin stays in power as if the special operation never happened?
It seems more likely to me that he does something radical like tactical nukes – he is already guilty of war crimes so what does he have to lose? Hope I’m wrong of course – it would be great to get the insider story from Russia on the likelihood that Putin is removed one way or another.
If he uses nukes, his and Russia’s credibility is gone – no love lost from the West, but China and all other countries will regard it as a pariah. Russians even will turn against Putin. I’m not sure the military would even obey such an order. Putin is said to fear a full mobilisation of the Army, for this he would have to declare a war, that he’d been lying to his people, and that Ukrainians are the enemy.
What are the chances that you will get the insider story from Russia? I don’t think Russia is past redemption, but don’t like the change in the direction of travel.
I very much appreciate articles like this that provide fine grained information that the MSM tend to miss. Especially when the big picture is ever-changing and open to interpretation.
But this one has attracted some wacky comments. Video games? Vampire movies? Dwight Eisenhower? Wow!
The article is well written and a summary of the situation. Russia is about “fake news” and always has been been, before the phrase was coined.
Also remember that the Ukrainian leaders were very corrupt and Russian stooges. Russia perceived the West as weak. As a result, Putin invaded. Success will depend on whether Europe has the fortitude to perserve in the face of rising energy prices, the West continues to provide munitions, and the Ukraine continues to provide human capital.
It is true that Ukraine inherited corrupt ways from Russia, but it was genuinely trying to drop such ways and drop the less corrupt ways of the West. I know this from conversations with Ukrainians from long before this year.
And I get a feeling that modern Ukrainians are now much closer to the rest of Europe than it is to Russia, and than Russia is to us.
To be thought-provoking, an article requires balance. That is sadly missing here. Of course, both sides in a war peddle propaganda – to capture the hearts and minds of their citizens – but the UK is not at war, and we have a right to be given a realistic assessment of the situation. That is particularly relevant today when households are suffering the consequences of this war and our economy is being put in peril.
One of my concerns is this… we were told on Worldservice yesterday that journalists had been “banned” from the front line. That makes me fear for the population there which is largely Russian speaking. As men between 16 and 60 were required to join up, tortuous and deadly reprisals could be taking place there, as may have happened in Bucha. (I highlight this because the Russian request for an independent enquiry in the aftermath of their departure from that city was refused. Why was that not granted if there was nothing to hide)
We were also told yesterday that the Russians had bombed the local power and water plants but is that true? The large nuclear power plant in the area must have been supplying power to homes and businesses there but it was closed because the Ukranian attempt to recapture it made it unsafe.
These are questions that I have had over this last weekend but, sadly, are unlikely to be answered.
We – in the UK – have no “right” to anything here. What makes you believe you have a right to real time information from a war zone ? Or that such information would be timely, reliable and accurate if you had it ? Your expectations are quite unrealistic.
Our economy is not being put in peril. We can and will easily survive this.
Your comment itself shows no balance. You seem more concerned for the Russian side here and have nothing to say about the suffering of the Ukrainians. If you don’t want to come across like Jeremy Corbyn (e.g. his position on Palestine/Israel) a bit more balance in your comment would remove that (perhaps inadvertent) impression.
I would still maintain that as the UK is not at war, we should expect a balanced analysis of the situation in Ukraine, and I believe everyone should be concerned when journalists are banned from verifying the situation on the ground.
I am afraid our economy is being put at peril by this war. Helping everyone with their fuel bills at a cost to the exchequer of £120bn increases our national debt, with interest on it added to the enormous debt which we are already servicing.
I was not a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies, but he had a valid political point of view and was always a gentleman when Theresa May was trying to humiliate him in parliament. That made him likable.
Show me where journalists have a right to be present on the front line of a war. Is this something the Russians are allowing and the Ukrainians are not ?
I offered you the opportunity to put some balance into your own comments here. The fact that you declined tells me everything I need to know.
If Corbyn was humiliated by Theresa May (!), that says it all. But he didn’t need any help there – he humiliated himself. Though lacking the self-awareness to realise it.
The major damage to the UK economy came from the wartime measures taken during the Covid lockdowns. You are taking a far too short and narrow view on this. The Ukraine stuff is second order in comparison. And far less than the problems built up living beyond our means for over 25 years – which we must now start to repay. It is a fantasy that the Ukraine war is the major cause of any of this. In any case, we shall survive and endure regardless.
Indeed we are not directly at war here. But it appears the Russians believe they are at war with us. Wake up. The current Russian government are not our friends – and never were.
It is the Ukrainians that are refusing journalists access to the frontline, according to the News, and I must ask why, when it was not the case before,
The handouts during the Covid crisis have had a detrimental effect on our economy but the government pay-out to offset increased energy bills will cost the exchequer more than that paid-out during the pandemic, according to More or Less this morning.
I would suggest that providing arms to Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers is an act of war against Russia.
When you say that “the current Russian government are not our friends – and never were” I must assume that you are American. Europe and the UK had friendly relations with Russia up until this conflict.
The UK did not have friendly relations. Not sisnce the various poisonings were carried out on British soil by Putin thugs.
We traded with them, played competitive sport against them and had cultural exchanges which we all enjoyed
As far as the poisoning cases are concerned, I would suggest that it suited our government to blame the Russian government, but the Skirpal case was very peculiar. For example, the Russians would have known that Skirpal’s daughter was staying there at the time and putting a poison on the front doorknob was hardly an efficient and assured way of killing him and not anyone else….
Spies pursue a deadly trade and thus will create deadly enemies. But who knows!
Why does the UK have a right to know about military operations in Ukraine? Why should Ukraine risk sensitive information becoming publicly available and potentially risking the lives of its citizens simply to appease your being rather nosey?
As far as the plants go, the Russian supporters of the war are PROUD that Vova is destroying civilian infrastructure, and just hope more is obliterated.
Sorry, the rest of the world is in no way like the UK.
I agree with Peter, your expectation of a “balanced” view of the war is unrealistic. Any intelligent person recognizes that the Ukraine also uses “propaganda” to further their cause. This is a necessary component in all wars. To put things in context, remember who started the murder of civilians and the invasion of a sovereign nation.
I suggest you look outside the MSM for news.
The level of propaganda is horrendous.
the country is being lied to,and fed rubbish like this article.
we voted for non of it,but we’re financing it,and your money is keeping it going.
Ukraine good Russia bad its bollocks.
people need to wake up.
James, It’s going to be awesome seeing how the “free world” media is going to report the liberation of Odessa and the collapse of Keeeev’s Banderist hate-regime.
Don’t come to the Unherd comments section for insights on Ukraine. Not from this bunch of blustering old farts. They’re a laugh.
“…journalists had been “banned” from the front line. That makes me fear for the population there which is largely Russian speaking.” If they hadn’t been (banned), wouldn’t it make you fear for the journalists? After all, it’s not some cool computer game. Whether you fear or not for the population, Russian speaking or not (btw, language became an issue there only when Russian soldiers started murdering civilians), means nothing, zilch, nada. Russki mir brings death, and always has. Ask the nations who have seen it.
Seriously, it’s a mistake reading UnHerd past midnight, while pop is playing full blast in my earphones. I’m reading this article, as ‘My Favourite Game’ by The Cardigans comes on, and tiredness and sleepiness catching up, suddenly I’m in a half hallucination, half dream where Putin, in Nina Persson style leather pants and a mike in his hand, is stomping around a deserted Kremlin, as he belts out the song karaoke style, singing:
https://youtu.be/u9WgtlgGAgs
And I’m watching a vampire movie, Let Me In, as I read the article – quite apt, considering the nature of Putin.
Lets hope the Ukrainians can consolidate their gains before the Russian vampire seeks revenge.
I suspect Vova will not last the week.
This is looking more and more like the end of the 1991 failed coup.
The only real question is whether Vova makes it out alive from Russia.
For years true conservatives have been pointing out that “freedom equality diversity” have been taken to extreme and maniacal lengths in Western society. The war in Ukraine shopwindows the divide between “liberal” totalitarianism and Eastern style authoritarian regimes.
Survival is the desired end product in this war and now we have the discomforting example of Fascist militias fighting a proxy war using Western weapons and subjecting Western citizens to serious privations to maintain an illegal Ukrainian regime in power as a buffer against the inevitable rise of the East, which will come about through the well- planned development of Africa and India.
We are about 20 years behind the curve on these issues, we squandered billions on “Freedom equality and Diversity legislation which only weakened our economy and destroyed our sane society, while China and Russia invested in underdeveloped areas like Africa and India. If we don’t come to terms with the East pretty damned quick, Western Europe will become a poverty- stricken backwater.
Ukraine will run out of young men before Russia does.
The big difference is that Ukraines young men are happy to fight in this conflict. I doubt the same can be said for young Russian conscripts from the metropolitan cities
I think it is hard for any of us to have any idea of what is actually happening over there – or why it is happening. Progressives and our mainstream press have decided to be enthusiastic about this war – which means that everything we hear is being run through an ideological filter.
Might we just use our eyes and a map?
A lot less Ukrainian territory is under Russian control than last week. A lot more Russians have been taken prisoner.
Those are facts.
“TCT’s” ?
Maybe it’s obvious, but still !
I would have been extremely wary of saying ANYTHING that might justify the targeting of civilians by Russian forces, in Russian held territory even in throw away articles like this.
Obviously I could have expressed myself better, but
, what an earth are ‘TCT’s’, or am I just being a bit thick ?
So, as of writing, I’ve received at least 4 down votes, which doesn’t overly bother me, I think my point is perfectly valid, but, unfortunately, nobody has deemed it appropriate to say why !
Nobody, presumably tucked up safe in their homes or cafés, has said ‘Why’ they think it is perfectly reasonable to allude to local civilians, in Russian occupied territory, providing targeting information on Russian positions. Some people, no doubt watching “Slava Ukraine” videos, on YouTube, seem to think this is all nothing more than some big video game. Desperate people do desperate things, and if the Russian soldiers (with guns) think that civilians are trying to kill them, then they will kill civilians, and the more desperate the situation, the more indiscriminate the killing will become. And maybe, in the near future, as Russian prisoners are brought to trial, for war crimes, they will point and say, maybe with some justification because of articles like this, “There were NO civilians”. And who proves what, except that lots of innocent people are dead, because ‘WE’ gave them the veneer of an excuse.
This really takes the biscuit.
You are seriously trying to suggest that words on here would cause or justify war crimes in Ukraine ? Even if the Russian soldiers were reading UnHerd and understood enough English (the first is certainly unlikely), this is utterly ridiculous.
The excuses of the Putin apologists get more absurd every day.
I can assure you I do not regard what Russia has done – and continues to do – in Ukraine as a “game”. No comment I have read on here does.
I keep having this fantasy of Ukraine routing, and then raging over the border, racing for Moscow, joined by Poles and Swedes and Turks.
It’s only a pipe dream, but, please, let me dream.
If this thing grinds to a halt, I fear The Bagman will eventually prevail, using the same “win at any price” mindset that he seems to be committed to.
Dreams are dangerous things. Russia has tactical and strategic nuclear weapons that are designed to protects itself from the type of existential threat of which you fantasise. Tread gingerly.
No need to cross the border. The Russians will do that for the Ukrainians.
The pro-War Russians will eventually hang Vova–or do something far worse.
The memory of defeats in 1855, 1905, 1917 and 1989 are a difficult burden to bear, and having a scapegoat for this latest debacle is very satisfying.
And this is precisely what Ukraine and the US have been doing. Gradually ramping up the presssure. As each new step was reached, Putin and co mouthed off about what they were going to do – and nothing happened. Finland and Sweden couldn’t join NATO … but they will. Gradual ramping up off the types of weapons supplied. Putin will never be given the excuse for nuclear escalation.
What an utterly ridiculous proposition. Mind, it’s just more of the kind of ahistorical and puerile reasoning that got the world here in the first place.
Sorry, but the author…and many readers (as usual) … seem unable or unwilling to grasp that the Russian SMO is:
a) A limited operation currently engaging no more than 10%-15% of the country’s total forces. All (reputable) military analysts are in agreement on this. And, no, it’s economy is not bleeding to death – yet, though that is of course the USNATO’s aim (read: hope).
b) Russia, keeping an eye on the coming winter and the prospect of political and social disruption across Europe – and mindful of risking popular support for the SMO at home (not to mention historically established tactics) – withdrew its forces to limit unnecessary human losses, knowing full well that Ukrainian logistics could not sustain a strategically significant counter-offensive.
c) More specifically, it has become clear that the Western and Eurasian worlds are now splitting apart: politically, socially, commercially and monetarily. Against this backdrop, the proposition that a limited (and long overdue) Ukrainian tactical push might affect the strategic picture and/or the objectives of the SMO is, well, yet more naive, magical thinking.
No one wanted this war …except the USA and its venal EU elite stooges. A miscalculation that may yet cost us all everything that we have. But the underlying logic is actually quite simple: the only thing that offers a nuclear-armed world some degree of safety is the principle of M.A.D. Given what the US and NATO have perpetrated across the world over the past 70 years, does any sane person expect Russia to allow a 30-sec flight time for US nuclear warheads while its response would take 30minutes?
Come on man. Think!
Pitiful. If anything exemplifies “ahistorical and puerile thinking” this does.
Keep denying reality if you must. The world will move on without you.
You assert that but offer nothing concrete to any point in rebuttal. Let’s limit it to the last point. Is it your position then that the world is safer under the threat of US hypersonic nuclear missiles (once they perfect them) on Russia’s borders when there is no strategic balance? Reframed: the country that unilaterally exited the strategic nuclear treaty in 2002/3, the INF treaty in 2019, and then the open skies treaty (let alone all the others including the JPCOA) should be trusted on the borders of a country it has openly declared a strategic enemy with the intention to “balkanize”? Your membership of the one-eyed “US/NATO might makes right” now confirmed. Thank you.
There is no point replying to your question since you have already made your assumptions about who I am and what I believe (in your last sentence) without any evidence.
And the ‘strategic balance’ would be? A string of countries doomed to be Russia’s buffer? If Russia were really that worried about being attacked, it wouldn’t have ‘regrouped’ most of its forces to Ukraine. Being vulnerable elsewhere to the point of several ‘armed unrest’ in areas of its traditional dominance (Central Asia).
“Russia…withdrew its forces to limit unnecessary human losses, knowing full well that Ukrainian logistics could not sustain a strategically significant counter-offensive.”
Perhaps you need to tell that to the Ukrainian Army. They’ve just captured 100s of armoured vehicles and 1000s of Russian soldiers around Kharkiv.
Or is Vova even more generous to the Ukrainians than we ever suspected?
Nobody forced Putin to invade Ukraine. Not this year, nor 2014. If he had accepted democracy and freedom in both Ukraine and Russia, both countries could have lived as slavic brothers (like Sweden and Norway).
Why is USA so deep into this war? Why is USA fighting a Proxy war costing a hundred Billion $ before we even get to the Trillion rebuilding, and why are EU and UK in it too?
Is this really about hallowed Principals of freedom? I do not think so.
Vietnam war was stated to be fought to stop Communism from spreading throughout the globe like an ink stain on wet blotting paper. Did anyone think Russia was going to do this after Ukraine? I cannot think so.
We began the Afghani/USSR war to bankrupt USSR. Remember arming and funding the Mujahideen resistance in Afghanistan? We had a deal with KSA, Dollar for Dollar, they matched what USA spent, only they did it hearts and minds and on the ground spending, we gave the money for the weapons – we tried hearts and minds but using the Pakistani ISI as intermediaries, and our Western Liberalism, and that was not optimal. Saudi created all the Madressas, a kind of Salifist/Deobandi/Pashtunwli school system in the Western Frontier that created the Taliban, and that is something else – and then when we won decided another 20 years would be good, for the NGO’s and the Military Industrial Complex, and even to distract voters.,…… Anyway Afghanistan got 40 years of war of a sort, and we left it none the better.
Does this venture remind one of that? It does in the distracting voters if nothing else…. but there is else……
Iraq? I could talk on and on about that – why did we do it? We kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, good action, what else was it….? Syria? Libya dalliance…
Anyway, the country is in shambles, millions of citizens refugees, and not all of them will return, and they are needed at home after; with the bad demographics there, the German metal smelters closing, Euro went below the $ in value, they talk of $ and £ parity, inflation said to get 19% in 2023 in UK, I heard Ukraine says $700,000,000,000 needed to rebuild….the leaders there are as corrupt as any anywhere in the world…
So… glad to hear this good news, that by not going to the table at the beginning and stopping all this by diplomacy the Ukrainians are winning. I think the word will be Pyrrhic victory at best, and I can think of no real reason this all went to this state – and it is not done yet. The harms as far as Siri Lanka and Orkney and Barcelona will take a long wile to recover from….
Remember President Eisenhower, the Supreme leader in WWII, then USA President, when leaving office, his warning?
”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
I suppose there are a lot of good reasons for us doing this, being in this war – I wish Unherd had some experts give us some of them, because I cannot think of any. The negociating table was always better than this disaster for the world, coming on top of our self inflicted covid disaster.
Agreed!
Why did Ukraine invade Russia? Why did they do it?
It’s seems so senseless. We need to find the NATO people who are pulling the strings–who are in turn simply minions of WORLD CAPITAL (i.e. the mil-industrial complex).
Why look for complex causes when it’s already laid out in full by Marx?
I upvoted your comment on the basis that it’s satire. It IS satire, isn’t it? It’s so hard to tell these days.
I completely disagree with you on this Aaron. I didn’t think the Ukrainians could mount an effective counter attack but supported the sacrifice of their country for the benefit of the west generally, before the confrontation with that far greater foe, China. The scale of this counter attack by the Ukrainians is tremendous news – showing the sheer weakness and ineptitude of the Russian forces and leadership – and maybe giving the Chinese pause for thought before they embark on empire building by force.
There’s a few good reasons – and then Ukrainian right to self govern too, but that’s just a side benefit for the west.
Totally disagree – this is not a “disaster for the world”. It is necessary. Necessary also for Russia to eventually rid itself of its mafia regime, perverted view of history, top to bottom corruption and completely censored press. Best case, it will do for Russia what the Falklands fiasco did for Argentina – bring more democracy and freedom and kick out the crooks. Not that optimistic, but it might.
I don’t believe we/the USA started the Afghan/USSR war either ! Didn’t the USSR/Russia kick that off with an invasion too ? Again, because they wanted a tame puppet regime in a neighbouring, but independent state.
I see all the geese on here swallowed the agenda corn without exception. Neo-Con’s gotta Neo-Con I guess.
But actually the King of Afghanistan was pushed out by a Marxist government in 1973. The people began rebelling against them eventually – for a lot of reasons, but they were the elected government. In 1979 it looked like civil war was going to unseat them so they Invited the Soviets in.
So the thing of just invading is not really the case – puppets maybe, but not so simple.
Life is so easy when you get your truth from the MSM I guess…all neatly packaged and predigested for all the good little sheep….
lockdowns anyone? Covid boosters? masks? Get in the war at every chance, F-the Real costs…remember, it if is for the great reset it is good for you.
Baaaaa
Instead of answering the points made in replies, you choosing to resort to childish insults tends to suggest you don’t have as much faith in your arguments as you proclaim.
Aaron, the answer to WHY is the same always – MONEY.
Cov!d – gigantic donations to V..-peddlers.
“Ukraine” – gigantic donations to the Arms Trade peddlers WHO WIN ALL WARS.
Hence Saint Boris rushed over to Istanbul to ensure the profitable war did not end too soon.
Realpolitik is a phrase I heard bandied around a lot at the start of this invasion, usually by those who believed Ukraine and the west should let Putin should do as he pleases because Russia is a powerful country.
Well to me the Americans and Europeans arming Ukraine is an example of realpolitik, albeit one from the opposing side.
Without risking a single soldier, and for a lot less money than an open conflict would entail, simply by heavily arming the Ukrainians those western nations have a chance to significantly weaken a hostile rival regime and bring Ukraine much more closely into its orbit, providing another ally and line of defence against any potential future Russian aggression.
The alternative is to allow Russia to expand right up to the borders of those former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe, which then require long term investment from NATO to keep them heavily fortified.
If the conflict also leads to an end of Europes dependency (Germany especially) on Russian gas and oil then that’s clearly an extra bonus
AND might send a clear message to China – which is a hell of a good investment !
Ach, the proxy war again. Do you really and truly believe that it is possible to somehow make a nation of millions fight when they do not want to? The incentive being, then…? The Russians declared a deadly motivating one: Ukraine is a fiction, no real nation, with no real history. Therefore, fight or die.
Historically, how has Russian been invaded in the past? Ukraine. While everyone is cheerfully penning the “Ukraine is winning” news pieces, Russia is turning the lights off, a tactic they’ve been holding off on. Meanwhile, the US makes bank selling arms.
If you’re looking at history, time and again over recent centuries, Russia has invaded its Western neighbours. When Finland gained independence during the Russian Revolution (1918 or so), it had previously been a Russian possession; similarly for Poland, which had been in Russia off and on for centuries; then the Baltics in 1940; Eastern Europe (doubly victimized) at the end of WWII – the list goes on and on. And here we go again, in Ukraine.
The US isn’t making money out of this war – the exact opposite, actually – something that is exercising many US conservatives.
I am not defending Russia, just stating that Ukraine joining NATO was Russia’s Red Line, as historically Russia was invaded via Ukraine. We used to honor this request, and now, with no known diplomacy happening, we’ll see continued war. Regarding the U.S. making money off the sale of arms, where there is war, there is grift. The world’s five largest arms companies are all American: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Surrounding nations (including China) are purchasing more arms than they usually do (as a result of the conflict) from the US.
No, it wasn’t. Reuters: “Vladimir Putin’s chief envoy on Ukraine told the Russian leader as the war began that he had struck a provisional deal with Kyiv that would satisfy Russia’s demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, but Putin rejected it and pressed ahead with his military campaign, according to three people close to the Russian leadership.” His press-person denies that, of course. Like they denied their men invading Crimea etc, killing civilians, shooting the MH17 (I even watched their ‘press conference’ with ‘evidence’ of things causing horse laugh in specialist aviator forums… youknow, some laws of physics can’t be terminated by Russia even). Etc.
There is nothing thought-provoking about this Rah! Rah! Ukraine article. Why we are supporting a brutal mafia state is beyond me. Why we provoked Russia by tearing up agreements is beyond me. How this misinformation article talks about Russian fake news is not beyond me. It is what I expect these days.
This article does not even talk about the real predicament the Ukrainians are now in. Critically short of artillery ammunition because the West is critically short. Much of their equipment is now out of position as the Russians are now encircling Bahkmut, a critically strategic town for the Ukrainians and the most powerful position of Kherson, which is a launch pad to take Odesa has been retained with a kill ratio of 5:1 in the Russian’s favour.
It seems to me that the Russians are conducting this war within strict parameters and attempting to avoid escalation. So I agree with the article that stasis on the front line is a good thing for Russia, so long as this war drags on into the winter and into next year, Russia will achieve a victory. All Russia needs to do is sandbag and continue to erode Ukraine’s ability to fight and the West’s willingness to support Ukraine.
I did think that Russia had already won, but the Karkhov thing made me think twice. Now I see what Russia managed to achieve on the back of that withdrawal, then I am minded to think, in practical terms, this is their war to lose.
However, I can’t fault the Ukrainian PR department, they even had me on occasion until I checked for myself.
Antony, the liberation by the RF IS going to win. The lies of the “free world” are coming home to roost. The lies have never been more gross than those currently about Kharkiv area.
It is Russia which ‘tore up’ an agreement; the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. What agreement did ‘we’ tear up? Putin puts forward a statement that NATO would not expand eastwards, eagerly quoted by his lackeys, but there are three things about that; it was an informal statement by one person, which didn’t even involve most western countries, it is taken out of context, as confirmed by Gorbachev, and it supposes that NATO is aggressive, when it has a single purpose; mutual defence against potential aggression by Russia.
It kind of lost its purpose in 1991, following which, although not disbanded, most members disastrously relied on expected peaceful relations to reduce defence expenditure. In contrast, Putin used the wealth flowing into Russia to modernise and re-equip his armed forces, and then use them in Chechnya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, Crimea, and then Ukraine again (not to mention a number of nasty assassinations).
It took that much bad faith to finally make the West realise that NATO was indeed a necessity. Well done, Putin. Is that really what you wanted?
Don’t you know that “Freedom, equality and diversity” which have been fraudulently proposed by the West, have now become “Weapons of war”?
“Putin used the wealth flowing into Russia to modernise and re-equip his armed forces, and then use them in Chechnya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, Crimea, and then Ukraine again (not to mention a number of nasty assassinations).”
How very Western of him!
This so called successful counter attack brings us closer to a tactical nuke being used by the Russian.
Failure is not an option for Putin and when he does use his nuke the west will release its bowels. It’s one thing to jump around in a tv studio and another to deal with a mad man. Ukrainian will be dumped faster that it takes to spell nuke.
I disagree, but the point you make will be made by many – our feeble minded partners in this war will start to cry out that we can’t take on a wounded bear – that Putin can’t be allowed to be defeated for fear of the consequences.
Then we will start to withdraw some of the vital support we are providing – and ultimately there will be a long slow stalemate where we let Russia have a bit of the Donbas and Crimea as a reward for their troubles.
To use the Hitler parallel the author uses – maybe we should have let the Germans have Austria as a consolation prize for the second word war.
(: not surprised to be down voted……and I am not saying we should dump Ukraine. Unfortunately, Europe doesn’t have England resolve during the Blitz when articles in papers warn us how cold we will be this coming winter and good gracious me !!! We might be out of mustard.
No one has the faintest idea of what a tactical nuke would do. To the Ukrainians….yes, sure thing, but to climate, radio active clouds …..etc and to us.
This counter attack doesn’t impress me one bit knowing the Russians have already conquered 22 % of Ukrainian territory……how much is this counter attack worth in terms of territory???
As long as Putin calls the shots, it will have no end and if he was to get toppled…..I fear it would by even a crazier group……like it or not.
Ukraine has also trapped 20,000 soldiers on the wrong side of the Dnipro. They can neither be re-supplied nor withdrawn.
In Kherson, Vova has replicated Stalingrad–on his own army.
A tactical nuke will do to world climate what the ‘tactical nukes’ (they weren’t; but their yield was about that of today’s tactical nukes) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did – nothing.
Or, rather, maybe Russia should have allowed US nuclear weapons on its borders? Sure! If there’s one sane, peaceful country in the world, that doesn’t have 650+ military bases surrounding its enemies (read: competitors) it’s them. Right?
Sorry.
Even if by some miracle Vova wins this war, wherever he draws the border, NATO will always be just on the other side of Russia.
And able to deliver hypersonic missiles in an instant.
I can understand Russia being unhappy about NATO expansion, but the Russians need to admit that time and again over recent centuries, Russia has invaded its Western neighbours. If those countries now want to join a defensive alliance, the purpose of which was to keep Russia out, you can’t blame them, or be surprised.
If the Russians are unhappy about the expansion of NATO, they only have to look in the mirror to see the fundamental cause.
Please provide citations for historical Russian aggression towards the West? Not Soviet. Russian. Please also juxtapose against Western aggression across the globe: military, economic, political, monetary.
You do realise that Russia has had US nuclear weapons on its border with Alaska since the early 1950s.
Also, they’ve had a direct border with Norway (NATO) for well over 40 years.
Those don’t seem to have been a problem.
Please come up with more sensible arguments. This one is nonsense.
No, we are talking about a fundamental shift in the post-Cuban missile crisis detente. The counter argument to this shift is that this NEW detente should be acceptable to Russia or not. The Russians said no. After unilaterally ending ABM, INF and Open Skies, the US/NATO said – quite literally “there’s nothing to negotiate or talk about. Suck it up”. Russia said “Nyet”. QED
Yes Peter. This claimed Russian obsession about “nukes on the border” border seems absurd given the range of nuclear armed missiles. What real difference does it make if the missiles are fifty or a few hundred miles away?