The Three Echoes Of History That Haunt Ukraine

It is said that Vladimir Putin and the Russian military expected that their task in Ukraine would be a relatively straightforward one. A rapid thrust to Kyiv, the removal and likely assassination of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the installation of a puppet regime quite happy to do the bidding of the Kremlin. It would all be over in days, so quickly in fact that Russian forces were apparently carrying their dress uniforms for the anticipated victory parade through the Ukrainian capital rather than little things like the fuel to drive their tanks.

The Ukrainians however surprised everyone with the temerity and spirit of their resistance in the face of Russia’s unprovoked aggression. After Russia’s advances were blunted, Ukraine rallied and took the initiative in its dazzling 2023 counteroffensive, reclaiming huge chunks of occupied territory and driving Putin’s armies backwards.

Those of us who support Ukraine began to believe that there was a chance that they might actually do it. That they could humiliate Putin by besting him in the war he himself had launched, reclaiming the land stolen during his predations. Maybe even taking back the Crimean Peninsula itself, lost to Russia’s machinations during the Maidan Revolution of 2014. I have personally always had my doubts regarding the feasibility of a Ukrainian retaking of Crimea given the importance the Kremlin and the wider Russian public attaches to the territory and the opinions of the inhabitants of the peninsula itself also seemed to come across as markedly more pro-Russian even accounting for the inevitability of pro-Russian propaganda but at the height of Ukrainian success and Russian incompetence, it seemed an impossibility on the verge of tangibility.

We probably fooled ourselves though and 2024 firmed up the edges of what was achievable and what was not, giving us all a cruel reality check. Beyond Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast (from which they have since been expelled), their other offensives stalled, only making limited progress if any.

And then the Russians began slowly but inexorably pushing back at the cost of the lives of their own men that the Kremlin sees as cheap and disposable so long as each life spent gains a sliver more Ukrainian soil for Putin. The reversion to the traditional tactics that have served Russia well elsewhere, of grinding attritional warfare and turning the land before them into a wasteland, have set the tenor of the war ever since. Ukraine launches occasional spectaculars behind enemy lines utilizing creativity and ingenuity, most notably last year’s jaw-dropping ‘Operation Spiderweb’, but their war is now primarily defensive. There is no more talk of liberating Crimea by force of arms. Instead they cling on to every scrap of land with a fierce tenacity that has slowed the Russian advance on the battlefield.

But, crucially, not stopped it.

When you look at those battlefields through news reports, some of us can see the first of the echoes of history that haunts Ukraine. Nothing parallels what is happening in Eastern Ukraine more than the Winter War of 1939-40. Then, as now, you had a relatively newborn country that had broken away from the Russian state and reclaimed a long-vanquished independence. In the Winter War it was Finland which had regained its independence as a consequence of the chaos unleashed by the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

Then, as now, you had a band of territory that this country possessed that the Russian state openly coveted. The Donbas of the Winter War was Karelia, and the Soviet Union demanded Finland cede parts of the region to secure the approaches to Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg). When the Finns refused, the Soviets invaded. It is still an open question as to whether the demand for Karelia was a pretext for a Soviet attempt to take the entire country or whether they genuinely only cared about the regions specified. The later behaviour of Stalin towards the Baltic countries, and his actions in Eastern Europe following the Second World War where he set up pliant client satellite states strongly suggests though that the goal was taking all of Finland. Which of course parallels what was clearly Putin’s initial goal of taking all of Ukraine.

The Finns put up an inspired defense of their lands that moved the world in much the same way the Ukrainians defense of their land and their homes have moved us in the present day. What was initially presumed to be a quick victory for the Red Army turned into a bloody slog. But whilst Russian numbers took their time in being brought to bear on the Finns, they were brought to bear regardless and Finland had no choice but to capitulate given no outside help was forthcoming.

Ukraine currently finds itself in the exact same situation. Facing a larger force whose initial deficiencies have been rectified and engaged in attritional warfare that only Russia can win for the simple fact that Russia has more men, Ukraine may have more help from the rest of Europe than poor Finland did but even so, it is still at the fickle mercy of its backers. No matter how plucky or dogged the defender, superior forces usually win out. God truly does favor the big battalions unless someone on the outside is willing to tip the scales. And unfortunately for Ukraine, the one person capable of doing so is the most antipathetic to their cause you can get.

President Trump’s loathing for Ukraine is well known at this point. He clearly holds Zelensky responsible for the chain of events that led to his first impeachment during his first term and nearly a year ago he gleefully took the opportunity to ambush and humiliate the Ukrainian President in the Oval Office before unceremoniously booting him out of the White House. He also openly admires Vladimir Putin, whose autocratic leadership style is one Trump couldn’t be clearer about his desire to emulate (and his frustrations with the check and balances of democratic systems was on naked display just yesterday in his response to the US Supreme Court limiting his authority to unilaterally impose tariffs). He accepts Putin’s claim to a Russian sphere of influence because, in his view, major powers are entitled to such domains. If he can negotiate an understanding with Russia about their sphere, he expects reciprocal recognition of his own proposed sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. He may actually believe that Putin would respect such a bargain. But to strike that grand bargain with Putin that he clearly covets, he needs to resolve the Ukraine War. And because Ukraine is the weaker side and because he has a strong personal dislike of the Ukrainians he has brought all the pressure he can to bear on them.

This is where the second of the echoes of history that haunt Ukraine can be found, at the peace negotiations, such as they are. Time after time we hear about a new round of negotiations and time after time we see that Russia has the same demand, that Ukraine gives up territory it currently holds and for whom its soldiers have given their lives for. That territory is the remainder of the Donbas, which Ukraine has turned into a fortified redoubt bristling with defenses across which the Russian army now crawls.

This parallels the Sudetenland crisis of 1938 when the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler demand that Czechoslovakia cede a large chunk of its territory to the Reich on the grounds that the population of the region were ethnically German. Less well known was the fact that, in the years preceding the crisis, the Czechoslovakians had invested heavily in building a defensive line in the region in order to deter potential German aggression. As a result of the Munich Agreement however, these defenses were surrendered without a fight on the flimsy guarantee from the Nazi leader that he would be satisfied with the territory the Agreement gave him. As we all know, a scant few months later, Hitler’s forces rolled unimpeded into the rest of Czechoslovakia as the Czechoslovakians had had no time to build new defenses along the new frontier. The Munich Agreement guaranteed that what could have been a bloody affair for the Wehrmacht became little more than a pleasant drive to Prague.

The Ukrainians are well aware of this echo, and they know that the lands immediately west of the Donbas are far less defensible than the territory Putin wants them to surrender without a shot. That Putin would want to resume the war in a few years once his forces have rested, re-equipped and taken the lessons of the current conflict to heart is so transparently his plan that to pretend otherwise involves a monumental act of self-delusion by anyone willing to take him at his word.

Which President Trump clearly is, though admittedly there is a strong case Trump isn’t deluding himself and simply doesn’t care what Ukraine has to give up or sacrifice so long as he can deal with his good friend in Moscow without the war being brought up constantly.

Delusion sums up the third and final echo of history that haunts Ukraine, and it comes in the form of Vladimir Putin’s pre-conceptions. Before the war, he famously wrote an essay entitled ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ which is probably as honest an accounting of his point of view as possible. He truly believes that the Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians are a single people and that the existence of Ukraine is an act of aggression against the unity of Russia (he likely holds the same view of Belarus as well but given President Lukashenko is almost wholly dependent upon him as a de facto vassal he can live with the current situation). Maybe he genuinely felt that his forces would be welcomed as liberators (it would certainly explain the haphazard pre-war planning, though incompetence undoubtedly played a role too). But his belief in this version of history, the echoes of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, is what drives this war.

Thankfully, this is one echo Ukraine seems to be excising. Whatever fraternal ties Putin imagined existed between Russia and Ukraine, he has severed them. No matter how much he held the idea of Ukrainian nationhood in contempt, he has made the idea truly real. Nations are but shared stories, and in those shared stories whole peoples define themselves. He has become the villain of the story of the Ukrainian nation, the mad and bloodthirsty tyrant who dreams of their destruction and oppression. In their resistance they write the story of their people, one that does not include him and does not include Russia.

As we come up on four years since the invasion, the trajectory of the war is one that points towards an unjust peace where Ukraine will have to accept, if not recognise, the loss of sovereign territory to an aggressor, just as Finland faced nearly 90 years ago. We have to hope they can retain their foothold in the Donbas and the defensive lines they have constructed, to ward off the fate of Czechoslovakia who lost both land and defenses to the Nazis and then lost their freedom completely.

But we know that no matter what, Putin’s dream of a single people under the Russian flag died in this war and that he himself has done the most to forge a Ukrainian nation raised in opposition to his hegemonic aspirations. There is some comfort to be had in that.