As winter approaches, Russia has lifted its ban on diesel exports and is preparing to sell hundreds of thousands of tonnes to the United States and other nations. The move stems from a deal between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which led the US Department of the Treasury to issue a sanctions waiver on Russian fuel. Announced just weeks before the US midterm elections, where Trump’s Republican Party risks losing its majority in both houses of Congress, the deal’s primary significance is political.
Trump needed to appear caring to American voters. Turning to Putin, who could oblige, highlighted Russia’s pivotal role in the global energy market. It also exposed the White House’s readiness to abandon a client in a moment of weakness, Ukraine, to serve domestic interests. Whether this marks a turning point in the US approach to the war remains uncertain. The fate of last year’s Anchorage understanding suggests caution. Trump’s sudden post-deal mention of an “energy ceasefire”, which Russia finds unacceptable, looks like an attempt to balance a move toward Moscow with reassurances to Kiev and European allies. Regardless, the US’s ambiguous stance is not helping Ukraine and its European partners as they grapple with an energy crisis and continuing losses.
The conflict has never been solely about the battlefield. When the West led by the US in spring 2022 declared the “strategic defeat of Russia” as its top goal, it hoped Western sanctions would, as then-US President Joe Biden famously said, “turn the rouble into rubble” and leave the Russian economy in tatters, leading to Russia’s military collapse. This did not happen.
Now, Ukraine and its European allies confront another difficult winter that will test their resilience in a war of attrition. Their strategy of escalating through a heavy air campaign against targets deep inside Russian territory has also failed. The expectation was that ordinary Russians, once directly affected by the war, would rise up and force the Kremlin to agree to a ceasefire, giving Ukraine much-needed respite. The opposite occurred: support for the Kremlin’s policies grew.
In retaliation for the campaign, which Putin admitted cost 1 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product, the Russian army launched its own. It shed some restraint it had imposed on itself and began striking targets it had previously avoided, such as ships carrying goods to and from Ukraine, bridges across the Dnieper River, and data centres. Some observers speculate that for Russia, this is a way “to escalate to de-escalate”: six to nine months of intense air war combined with ground advances that could bring the conflict to an end.
Ukraine’s economy is suffering severe damage. Its Black Sea ports can no longer handle wheat exports; the steel industry has halted production; rail logistics are disrupted by a lack of operable engines. Meanwhile, Kiev is subjected to daily, around the clock drone and missile attacks. The Ukrainian capital’s outlook for the coming winter is dire. Local authorities have started urging residents to leave, as winter preparations such as heating backups and food and water stockpiles may not be enough to endure the cold months.
Yet Ukraine’s leader, Volodymir Zelenskyy, remains defiant. For him, there is no turning back. If he agrees to withdraw Ukrainian forces from the remaining part of Donetsk, as Putin has demanded, he fears for his life. If a new presidential election is held in Ukraine, he will clearly lose. Once he loses, his patrons will abandon him, just as they did to Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s ex-president, who is now serving time in a Tbilisi prison. Ukrainian politicians have grown more restive lately, but they are not breaking ranks with Zelenskyy on the issue of war and peace. Nationalists at home and donors in the West are adamant that the fight will continue.
For Europe in particular, this war is not about Ukraine. It is about Russia. The current opportunity to use what was once the second largest republic in the former Soviet Union to weaken Russia, Europe’s historic adversary, is too good to miss. Europe, which pays for half of Kiev’s budget, appears to believe it can afford to continue fighting “to the last Ukrainian”, hoping to kill more Russians and thereby cripple their country. This is not to blunt a supposedly imminent Russian threat, which is a red herring. Russia is precisely the enemy at the door that the EU needs to hold itself together. Military Keynesianism offers a way to relaunch the economy, and branding political competitors as “Putin’s agents” is extremely convenient.
Moreover, several EU and NATO members are covertly pursuing historical revanchism: Germany for Hitler’s defeat in 1945, Poland for its several partitions, Sweden for Russia ending its great power status, Britain for the loss of its empire, and so on. Ultimately, having invested hundreds of billions in Kiev, Europe will not quit Ukraine until its financial and political losses begin to outweigh the usefulness of its Ukrainian proxy. Or until a version of the 1962 Cuban nuclear missile crisis brings them to their senses.
Russia’s proven resilience in this war surpasses Ukraine’s in material terms and Europe’s in nonmaterial ones, which will likely shape the future. The odds are that both Ukraine and Europe will survive this coming winter, despite all the losses, privations, and suffering. They will live to fight another day, meaning a year or two, or less as Putin recently suggested. But in the end, Kiev is bound to lose, and Europe will have to grudgingly accept its client’s defeat while pretending that the existence of a rump Ukrainian state constitutes a victory of sorts. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
