IN a Russian town called Yelets, 350 kilometres south of Moscow, Irina barely earns a living by working as a bus ticket collector. “It’s very hard to get by,” she tells the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, complaining about ‘suffocating’ utility bills and ‘crushing’ grocery prices. They are standing close to a mural depicting five locals killed in Ukraine.
Some of the losses are personal: a cousin’s son and grandson, a friend’s husband. Despite her circumstances, Irina contributes to aid packages for front-line troops. Her mind, though, is not at ease. “In the Great Patriotic War, we knew what we were fighting for,” she says. “I’m not sure what we are fighting for now.”
The anti-Nazi struggle she refers to lasted four years: from the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, to the hammer-and-sickle emblem being planted atop the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945. The Wehrmacht’s cakewalk across western USSR was halted on the outskirts of Moscow and reversed after the six-month Battle of Stalingrad, the deadliest such event in history.
In the 1940s, the Soviets were responding to an existential threat. What exactly was Vladimir Putin’s aim when he launched his invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022? Russia faced no immediate risk, notwithstanding Nato’s steady encroachment along its European periphery. It’s not hard to understand why any power would resent the proximity of a hostile Western alliance. But Ukrainian induction wasn’t imminent, and Putin infrequently cited it as a casus belli.
Ukraine’s loss is no one’s gain.
The Russian president focused more on the Nazi nature of the regime in Kyiv, alongside advancing a theory of history whereby Ukrainians (and Belarusians) are effectively indistinguishable from Russians, and hence unworthy of independence. Both these arguments stretch credulity. Sure, there are neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s security forces (the same goes for Russia), while some Nazi collaborators from the German occupation era are hailed as nationalist heroes. That’s reprehensible, but for all its follies and long line of war profiteers, the Zelensky administration hardly qualifies as a simulacrum of the Third Reich.
As for ethnic, cultural or linguistic affinities among neighbours, that pattern is repeated worldwide but hardly qualifies as a cause for conquest. It’s worth noting, though, that Ukrainian independence in 1991 would have proved much trickier had not Vladimir Lenin insisted 70 years earlier that entities such as Ukraine and Belarus must retain their separate identity (and right to secede) as components of the USSR, instead of being incorporated into the Russian Federation. This was a departure from the tsarist tradition that Putin seems inclined to revive — and the reason why he detests Lenin but admires his successor. He embodies the Great Russian chauvinism that Lenin warned against from his deathbed.
Four years ago yesterday, the Russian president wasted two hours on entertaining doomed prime minister Imran Khan, perhaps assuming that Kyiv would imminently be his domain. It didn’t turn out that way. Notwithstanding Volodymyr Zelensky’s belief — shared with various European counterparts — that US intelligence was likely defective, as it had been in the case of Iraq, and that Russia couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to launch an invasion, Ukrainian forces mounted an admirable counter-offensive preventing Kyiv’s capture.
Estimates of war deaths since then range to over two million, with the invading forces paying a bigger price. The Biden administration pumped up the Ukrainian resistance but made no serious effort diplomatically to end the war. Donald Trump who had vowed to halt the hostilities within a day of his election (or perhaps inauguration) at least launched negotiations, while essentially taking Russia’s side in demanding unilateral concessions from Kyiv. The Ukrainian side has more or less accepted vast territorial giveaways as a price for peace, especially in the throes of a bitter winter exacerbated by Russian efforts to deprive their neighbours of heat and light, while insisting on ironclad Western security guarantees for at least 20 years. But Russia wants overlordship even of the Donbas region its forces have failed to conquer.
It’s hard to envisage an outcome from the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, Geneva or elsewhere — and within days the US might be distracted by its impending Iranian misadventure, which could transcend the disastrous consequences of previous US/ Israeli interventions in the Middle East. Zelensky’s conviction that Putin has already launched World War III is exaggerated, but many of his European allies see rearmament as the only viable response to Putin’s perceived ambitions.
This European conflict won’t end well, but its capacity to further complicate an already confused international order resides in the realm of conjecture.
Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2026
