Dear Editor,

The two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has come and gone with no end to this conflict in sight.

Jamaicans, whose world views are often fashioned by those bottomless mines of misinformation in the mainstream media of developed countries such as USA, Canada, and UK, may not be aware of the dangers lurking if this conflict escalates.

The most objective assessment of this conflict is that it is now a stalemate. Russia, with vast superiority in firepower and boots on the ground, has merely confirmed what the world has failed to comprehend from the retreats of the USA from Vietnam and Afghanistan. Boasts about being the world’s great nuclear powers are empty rhetoric when it comes to conventional warfare.

The Russians have been hopelessly incompetent, bombing hospitals, apartments, schools, and other civilian targets, committing the same kinds of war crimes the Israelis have been committing in Gaza. Meanwhile, Ukraine railway lines transporting military hardware from the West remain intact! So even if the Russians had wanted to overrun all of Ukraine, rather than just the Russian-speaking four regions and Crimea that they now control, the evidence of the past two years strongly suggest that they could not. So much for the preposterous propaganda spouted by the West that if Russia prevails in Ukraine it will then take on all 31 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. Not a chance!

On the other hand, the smarter, braver, more inventive Ukrainians have made a good fist of defending their homeland. But they are outnumbered and are dependent on the West for the kind of military hardware to match Russia. They have suffered heavy losses; the average age of their soldiers is now said to be over 40; their country is being destroyed; they are short of ammunition and the tide is now turning in Russia’s favour.

Meanwhile, the West continues to pour money and arms into Ukraine as it cynically fights its proxy war against Russia and is prepared to do so down to the last Ukrainian grandmother. At the same time the sanctions against Russia have boomeranged and Europe, especially Germany, having deprived itself of cheap, reliable Russian energy, is in deepening economic malaise. The conflict has also led to higher food prices worldwide as Ukraine and Russia are the breadbaskets for several basic food items.

It is hard to find any beneficiaries from this crazy conflict which, despite denials from the West, started way back in 2014 with the Western-backed coup which ousted the Russian-leaning, democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. So it’s a bit rich when the West bleats about its support for Ukraine being in defence of “democracy”.

So it’s a conflict neither Russia nor Ukraine can win. But there are two major possible consequences if the world super powers don’t come to their senses soon.

The first is that taxpayers in the West are getting increasingly weary of shovelling money to not only buy weapons for Ukraine but pay the pensions and wages of Ukrainian public servants. Besides, Ukraine has to be rebuilt. Now the West is fixing to confiscate huge sums of Russian money now frozen in Western banks. Quite apart from what kind of sharp response this would elicit from Russia, it could lead to a major upheaval in the world’s monetary system and rapid loss of confidence in Western currency and banks. This is serious business.

Even more frightening is the wish expressed by Western leaders, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, that Ukraine should “defeat” Russia.

Fortunately, it is only in the
Bible that David slays Goliath. Western leaders who talk like Trudeau should be careful what they wish for. Ukraine “defeating” Russia would mean Russia losing territory in the Donbas and Crimea that it has gained at the cost of much treasure and blood over the past 10 years. It would mean even more Russian soldiers returning in body bags. Putin would be humiliated.

Given Russia’s violent history, how Putin is alleged to have treated his rivals, a cursory glance at Putin’s life story and what would likely be Putin’s own fate should Russia be defeated by Ukraine and the West, Trudeau, US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and others might want to think again.

For reasons not entirely clear, Putin recently moved some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons from Russia to Belarus, just on Ukraine’s northern border. Faced with an imminent Russian defeat and his own possible demise, one wonders whether Putin would just allow those nuclear weapons to sit there and rust. Don’t bet a ruble on him doing that.

The quicker this conflict ends, the better.

Errol WA Townshend

ewat@rogers.com