What is Ukraine fighting for?

Even if Ukraine had a chance of reclaiming its lost territories—which it never did—doing so would still make little sense from the standpoint of the country's post-2014 ethno-nationalist project

For Compact, I tried to answer a seemingly obvious question: “What is Ukraine fighting for?”. The answer may appear self-evident: it is fighting to take back its lost territories. But why is it fighting to take those territories back? The question may sound facetious, and its answer as self-evident as the one above: no state can simply stand by while a foreign power seizes its land; it has not only the right but also the duty to resist and repel the aggressor.

One might counter that whatever moral or legal arguments could be made were ultimately undermined by a harsher reality: Ukraine never had a realistic chance of retaking those territories. From this perspective, agreeing to territorial concessions early on — thereby avoiding hundreds of thousands of deaths, the devastation of Ukraine’s economy and the loss of still more land — would have been a far wiser course than embarking on an unwinnable war.

But there’s an even bigger question — one rarely raised in debates about the war — that makes Ukraine’s victory-at-all-costs strategy look even more absurd. Even if Ukraine genuinely had a chance of retaking those territories, doing so would still have made little sense from the standpoint of its broader strategic interests — and it makes even less sense today.

Indeed, from the perspective of the ethno-nationalist project pursued by the post-2014 Ukrainian state, the country’s interests would have been better served by simply cutting loose the pro-Russian regions. So how should one account for Ukraine’s seemingly suicidal strategy over the past three — or indeed 11 — years?

Read the article here.

---

Thanks for reading. Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid, so if you appreciate my writing please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven’t already. Aside from a fuzzy feeling inside of you, you’ll get access to exclusive articles and commentary.

Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)