Africa-Press – Lesotho. Vladimir Putin’s war of destruction against Ukraine rages on. Western media reports and pundits cheer the Ukrainians’ valiant resistance to the point of claiming that the Ukrainians are beating back the Russian onslaught and “winning” the war.
Whether the Ukrainians are on to victory, or these pronouncements are just wishful thinking—or even that Russia will, at a minimum, stop or be stopped—remains to be seen.
On many fronts, the truth is that the Ukrainians are being pummelled by the blunt force of indiscriminate artillery shelling and airborne bombing. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby warned that Russia still has a substantial amount of its firepower available.
As we ponder what a post-Ukraine-war world might look like, it is fair to ask if the inquiry is premature or must await the end of Russian shelling and bombing.
Certainly, the war will eventually come to an end, and no matter how it ends, the world will be somewhat changed: there will be some reset of geopolitical alignments, brakes will be applied to the forces of globalization, the rules-based order, or at least our perception that there is a rules-based order to some degree will need rethinking, and perhaps tribunals will be constituted to consider accountability for war crimes most likely holding trials in absentia.
We cannot yet define the contours that will mark the end of the war. At the most basic level, we do not know if Putin will agree to a ceasefire without significant concessions by Ukraine amounting to a de facto surrender or at the point when its cities have been reduced to ruinous rubble, its male population decimated, and its displaced women and children unable to return to their homeland and carry on their lives before a massive rebuild of infrastructure, homes, services, and civil society takes place.
We do not know, except in broad generalizations what the terms of any ceasefire acceptable to the Ukrainians might be. What we know is essentially some of the Ukrainian and Russianwish lists.
To underscore the point, indeed, we cannot tell if the Ukrainian leadership will survive the assault staged by Putin, nor foretell the shape of the nation that will emerge.
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