Caspar ten Dam & Ab de Buck
1 September 2022, Leiden, the Netherlands
Demonstration for and by Ukrainians in The Hague, 26 February 2022 © C. ten Dam
One of our worst fears earlier this year – as mentioned in our article on Bosnian-Serb separatist plans in Bosnia [1] – has come to pass: on February 24th Russia invaded Ukraine.
We have anticipated the fierce, smart and thereby effective Ukrainian resistance stymieing and even reversing Russian advances toward the capital Kiev and other places s however. Thus we predicted that “despite the military disparities, the Ukrainian armed forces would not be a pushover if Putin does decide to invade Ukraine.” [2] The currently slow progress at best by heavily concentrated Russian and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region – particularly in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces partially controlled by pro-Russian breakaway republics since the preceding war in 2014 – should surprise no one either. Indeed the entire invasion is “about to run out of steam”, according to Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6.[3] These setbacks clearly have surprised Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who masterminded and ordered the invasion of Ukraine with high ambitions of territorial conquest and regime change.
The Russian invasion force has suffered staggering losses.[4] These losses are massive and debilitating.[5] The losses among the Ukrainian armed forces have been high too, but probably are lower, both in relative and absolute numbers. Worse still, the number of civilian casualties and the damage inflicted on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian objects have been enormous.
One wonders whether Putin is such a self-isolated autocrat that he is genuinely unaware of his country’s and army’s weaknesses. The Russian army shows a stultifying hierarchy, incompetence and brutality and a consequent reliance on artillery and air-to-surface missiles against civilian targets. This is comparable to the performance of the Russian army in e.g. the Chechens wars of independence during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Georgian War of 2008 and the Syrian War in more recent times. The Russian army now systematically bombs residential areas; cities like Mariupol and Severodonetsk have been completely destroyed. Russia is waging a war of terror against Ukraine and bombing targets that have nothing to do with an ‘ordinary’ war wherein the warring parties mainly targets combatants and at least try to uphold humanitarian law, as shown by the following examples[6]:
- On June 1, the Russians threw missiles at Serhiivka. On June 27, such a rocket hit a supermarket in Kremenchuk, in central Ukraine.
- Terror is also the appropriate word for the attack on Chasiv Yar on July 10. Amnesty International reported that the Russians used cluster bombs that are militarily nonsensical, but cause many civilian casualties.
- Extremely concerning is also the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian citizens (estimated 900,000 to 1.6 million, 260,000 of whom are children). There are so-called ‘filtration camps’ in Russia, where thousands of deported Ukrainians are being interrogated, tortured and raped.
So this is no longer simply a war between combatants, but state terror against civilians. These acts show that the Russian army grossly violations the regulations for war, as set out in the Geneva conventions. As a consequence of these acts, millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes, either to countries abroad or inside their own country.
Unlike the Chechens and Georgians, the Ukrainians possess sufficient manpower, motivation, professionalism, territorial depth and outside political and military support to survive Russia’s incompetent-yet-brutal onslaught – and conceivably even win the war waged against them. But for Ukrainian victory to happen in the near future we believe the following actors should undertake the following steps as quickly and effectively as possible:
- As asked by the Ukrainian government: massive and coordinated military aid to Ukraine – especially heavier and longer-range weaponry to offset and overcome Russia’s current superiority in artillery and other heavy weaponry, including offensive weapons to take back the occupied territories. This should go in tandem with largescale humanitarian, financial and economic aid – and effective sanctions against Russia, including especially a total halt in buying Russian gas.
If heavy long-range weapons had been delivered en masse to Ukraine a month or more ago – instead of incrementally and haphazardly supplying such weapons out of a misguided fear of escalating the conflict vis-à-vis Putin’s Russia – then the Russian invasion force might have been fully thwarted, defeated and even expelled altogether by now.
The massive bombing of residential areas and ruthless killing of civilians does justify the elimination of the launchers, also if those terror bombings do come from Russia. So one should deliver longer-range weaponry that may hit targets in Russia that directly threaten Ukraine’s society. This means for example MLRS missiles with a range of 200 miles instead of only 50 miles. A country has a right to defend itself against aggression under international humanitarian law – including attacking the aggressor on its home ground.
- Ukraine should be allowed to retake all its lost lands from the Russian aggressor however long it would take. We should not openly or secretly press the government of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to settle for anything less, by for instance curtailing military aid. Such a policy would simply reward brutality and aggression. It is up to the Ukrainian government to decide when to stop the war.
The Ukrainians themselves, without outside pressure, could wish to stop fighting even when the Russians still occupy some parts of their lands – for instance because they wish to stop further bloodletting on both sides. In that case we would welcome a ceasefire and an interim peace agreement between Kiev and Moscow. In the meantime the only way to stop the aggression of Putin and his cohorts is by confronting them with a strong adversary, and making them realise Russia will not win. Only then Putin might start serious negotiations. However, even a durable cessation of hostilities with maintenance of former battle lines should never lead to international recognition of occupied and breakaway regions in Ukraine, let alone a Greater Russia at the expense of Ukraine, through naked, unwarranted and brutal aggression. One might hold properly held and mutually agreed plebiscites on secession for e.g. the Crimea and the Donbas in the foreseeable future (according to the Minsk accords and a reformed Constitution these regions should get autonomy and full minority rights anyway) – without pressure and interference by Russia or other outside powers. One could hold such plebiscites only once Ukraine is restored and recovered after the war however, with war reparations from Russia and war crime trials at e.g. the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
- The granting of EU candidate membership status to Ukraine by EU’s European Council on June 23, 2022 is crucial in helping the country to survive and overcome the Russian aggression – and maintain and enhance its democracy and security in the future; however, we call for accession of Ukraine to the European Union within a half a decade rather than a full decade or more, if only to forestall future disruptive acts by Putin or his successor. Of course Ukraine must take the final steps of securing a lasting democracy within this period. The same should be true for other accession candidates like Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia. Ukraine should be free and allowed to join both the EU and NATO – as should a hopefully democratic Russia in a post-Putin era, in the spirit of Gorbachev’s Common European Home concept.
Durable peace and reconciliation between Ukraine and Russia are highly unlikely as long as Putin remains in power. Otherwise, apart from a full Ukrainian victory, a temporary ceasefire and an interim peace deal are the best outcomes one could hope for. Hopefully an utter collapse of the Russian invasion will precipitate Putin’s fall from power, by a coup, a popular uprising by the Russian people or a combination of those. Just like his onetime Serbian colleague Slobodan Milosevic, Putin should answer for his crimes before a domestic or international tribunal, together with all those in the Russian government and military who are responsible for the atrocities and terror carried out in Ukraine. In this way one should reverse and punish autocracy, brutality and aggression.
Caspar ten Dam and Ab de Buck, board members of CHI, have since 1996 helped to organise the yearly commemoration of the fall of Srebrenica on the 11th of July in The Hague [7]
[1] Ab de Buck & Caspar ten Dam, ‘Bosnian-Serb separatist plans threaten peace in Bosnia – we can still stop this’, 28 February 2022; see also alternative website of CHI: https://committeehumanitarianintervention.wordpress.com/category/news/.
[2] Caspar ten Dam, ‘State of the World and our Research Projects related to EthnoGeoPolitics: Observations on the Conundrum of Identities, Interests and Resolutions of Conflict by Diplomacy, Deterrence—or War’ Forum of EthnoGeoPolitics Vol.9 Nos.1-2, Winter 2021, , p.11.
[3] Gordon Corera, ‘Russia about to run out of steam in Ukraine – MI6 chief’ BBC News, 22 July 2022; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62259179.
[4] See for these and other figures https://uawar.net/stats (last acc. 20-07-2022).
[5] Tom Parry, ‘Scale of Putin’s losses laid bare with 21,800 Russian fighters killed, Ukraine says’ Mirror, 24 April 2022; www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/scale-putins-losses-laid-bare-26787116.
[6] See Ko Colijn, ‘Defensie-expert Ko Colijn: de NAVO moet nu toch directer ingrijpen in Oekraïne’ (Defense expert Ko Colijn: NATO must now intervene more directly in Ukraine) Nu.nl, 19 July 2022; www.nu.nl/spanningen-oekraine/6213123/defensie-expert-colijn-navo-moet-nu-toch-directer-ingrijpen-in-oekraine.html.
[7] As boardmembers of the former Political Committee Stari Most (PCSM); see http://starimost.nl. We thank Hein van der Hoeven, Jolies Heij, Marcel Buurman and other (former) members and sympathisers of CHI and PCSM for offering their feedback and so helping to improve the quality of our article – even if they do not agree with all the standpoints taken in it.