Using crudely targeted long-range missiles, land mines and his army’s historic instinct to barbarity, he is simply destroying Ukraine—its people, its economy, whole cities and infrastructure. After the current “pause,” he’ll go back for more.
The consequences of this obviously unexpected scale of destruction are significant for the West’s calculations. At this point all the arguments, such as they are, for affirming a negotiated settlement that turns so much of Ukraine over to Mr. Putin have become impossible to credit.
It will take a decade and unimaginable amounts of capital to rebuild what Mr. Putin has destroyed. Who exactly is going to do that? Dividing Ukraine in two would effectively turn the eastern part into a Cold War East Germany, which would create the destabilizing post-Yalta imbalances that existed for decades between the wealthy West and those living in the Third World East.
To rebuild the Ukraine under his control, Mr. Putin would have to send vast amounts of his oil and gas revenue into the region. Fat chance of that on the scale needed.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member