I am definitely no fan of the National Review‘s Jim Geraghty, but I have to admire how concisely he summed things up after reading the latest dispatches from Moscow, where indications are that there’s some disconcerted opinion in high places about the direction of the war.
Apparently everyone in Russia with a clear or reliable view of the war can see that it is a disaster, that it is costing the Russian military thousands of lives, that it is wrecking the Russian economy and will impoverish millions, that it is unifying and strengthening NATO and may well expand the alliance, that it is pouring gasoline on the fire of Ukrainian nationalism, that it is turning Volodymyr Zelensky into a legend, and that it is making Russians look like ill-informed, incompetent brutes on the world stage. Anyone with eyes and access to reliable information can see that a sweeping victory is not just around the corner, and that Russia’s best-case scenario is a long, difficult, bloody slog that consolidates some gains in eastern Ukraine.
Here’s the tricky thing. How do we avoid the situation where Russian power brokers are so afraid of the consequences of defeat that they’ll continue to back a catastrophe? To use the Nazi Germany precedent, the threat of Russian occupation was so threatening that Hitler was able to hold his military in line until the bitter end, although he did narrowly survive an assassination attempt along the way. That’s the problem with committing atrocities. Your country has to pay the consequences.
But the precedent of post-war Germany, particularly in the West, is instructive. The future for Russia doesn’t have to be bleaker than the present, or even the past. People can be held accountable, reparations can be paid, a cultural self-examination and reckoning can be conducted. It can all lead someplace positive.
That’s the message Russians need to hear.
