Appeasing Russia versus Holding Russia to Account

"Russia's combat force in the Donbas is highly likely to be operating in increasingly ad hoc and severely undermanned groupings."

"For both sides fighting in the contested towns, frontline combat is likely increasingly devolving to small groups of troops typically operating on foot."

British Ministry of Defence

"[France, Germany, Italy and Romania] are doing everything so that Ukraine alone can decide its fate."

"We are side-by-side today with Chancellor Scholz. One hundred years ago, we were at war and allies helped France win. France committed a historic mistake. It lost the peace because it wanted to humiliate Germany. The question of humiliation I always placed in a context to come, not the current context."

"Today, this war must be won. France clearly supports Ukraine so it prevails."

"Germany, like France, will never be in situations where they negotiate on Ukraine's behalf with Russia."

French President Emmanuel Macron

 

"My colleagues and I have come here to Kyiv today with a clear message: Ukraine belongs to the European family."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

President Klaus Iohannis of Romania, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany holding a news conference after meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday.  Credit...Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Moscow, it seems, has rejected the opportunity opened to it with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to join the 'European family'. For a while it looked as though a succession of presidents from Yeltsin to Gorbachev with his perestroika and glasnov initiatives, were edging closer to bringing Russia into the European mainstream, willing and able to change the communist character of Russia to more closely resemble the democratic character of Europe. That changed when Yeltsin's successor was a former KGB officer.

And despite George W.Bush ruminating that he was able to see Vladimir Putin's soul through the sincerity of his eyes, what he really saw was his own naivete reflecting back at him through the mirror of Putin's inscrutable eyes. Behind those eyes was a yearning for the days of the Soviet Union and its position as a world power with its power-commandeered satellite-nations at its command.

 

Ukrainian forces firing toward Russian positions with a Caesar self-propelled howitzer in eastern Ukraine. France promised to provide more of the weapons, prized for accuracy.  Credit...Reuters

The Russian Federation has moved itself forward to a new plane resembling the old one and its president's frustration with the slow pace of advancing toward the past, committed Russia to a rash act of attempted violent destruction of a neighbour. In the process, Russia has found its own military put to the rack and its victim, while suffering great losses, has at the same time effected great gains in destroying the illusion that it would fold under Putin's demand.

It is fully understandable and certainly deserved that Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has in mind the humiliation of an invading nation that has caused countless deaths, created millions of refugees and displaced, and destroyed huge swaths of Ukrainian civic enclaves, reducing towns and villages to smoking ruins. The simple fact is that Russia deserves to be humiliated. And Zelenskyy's challenge to Europe to shun and humiliate Russia is fully justified.

France and Germany in particular see any such act of recrimination and punishment as self-defeating; burning the bridges of their future relationships with Russia, given its vast energy stores so anxiously waited on by both countries, along with the rest of the continent. It is a searing kind of justice that Zelenskyy insists upon, a penalty imposed for mass murder, looting and cultural defacement. Macon and Scholz can speak as feelingly as they wish; they are not the targets, theirs was not the sacrifice and their solution is nothing short of sanctimonious.

Mr. Scholz in the devastated city of Irpin on Thursday.  Credit...Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters