The fatal hesitation doctrine
Fearful of provoking Putin, the West instead enables him as Ukraine burns
Alexander and Liudmila Evdoshenko stand outside their home in Staryi Saltiv in northeastern Ukraine. The retired couple continues repairing the house, which was damaged early in the war. (c. Martin Kuz)
“When some propose alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans… it not only ignores the interests and suffering of Ukrainians, who are affected by the war the most. It not only ignores reality. But it also gives Putin the political space to continue the war and pressure the world to bring more nations under control.” — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 25
“Very many. Very, very many. Very many.”
Alexander Evdoshenko spoke with an urgency that defied his limited command of English. He wanted to make clear that Ukraine needed more military support from the West — much more. He held up a hand and, starting with his thumb, raised one finger at a time. “F-16. Patriot. Artillery. Ballistic missile. Tank.” For good measure, he emphasized again, “Very, very many. Very many.”
On a warm evening some weeks ago, I traveled to the town of Staryi Saltiv in northeastern Ukraine to visit Alexander and his wife, Liudmila, to talk about the war and the West’s uncertain commitment to their homeland. The country’s outlook had dimmed since our previous meeting on a snow-dusted day in February last year, when I encountered Alexander carrying a jug of water in each hand as he walked home from a nearby aid station.
Back then, a few months after Ukrainian forces liberated large swaths of occupied territory in the east and south, a tentative optimism prevailed nationwide. Ukraine enjoyed steadfast backing from America and most of Europe, and the military’s plan to mount a spring counteroffensive inspired dreams of a Ukraine again made whole, or at least one with fewer missing parts.
The anticipation succumbed to pitiless reality. Possessed of huge advantages in manpower, weapons and ammunition, and with ample time to fortify defensive positions, the Russian army repelled Ukraine’s advance. By this summer, as enemy troops continued making incremental, inexorable gains in the east while atomizing villages and cities one by one, I sensed that the collective hope of Ukrainians had curdled.
I don’t mean that they had plunged into despair or defeatism, even with the civilian death toll climbing by the day. (The official figure has exceeded 11,700, widely considered a vast undercount.) I met dozens of people across Ukraine, and none questioned the wisdom of the government’s intent to keep fighting or suggested that President Volodymyr Zelensky should trade land for peace.
But their war weariness lurked closer to the surface than at any point since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. For the first time, I heard Ukrainians worry out loud that, with future Western aid in doubt, their country could be reduced to a rump state, forced to relinquish the regions that Russia now controls.
The unease I detected led me to seek out Alexander and Liudmila. After Ukrainian troops reclaimed Staryi Saltiv three months into the war, the retired couple, both in their 60s, returned to their damaged home. Shelling had torn holes in the roof and shattered every window, and with the village only 10 miles from the border, enemy artillery still punctuated daily life.
Left: Some of the artillery fragments that struck Alexander and Liudmila’s home. Right: The patched-up ceiling in the living room. (c. Martin Kuz)
The Evdoshenkos, whose two adult children live 15 miles away in the city of Kharkiv, told me last year that the invasion had deepened their love of country. As he pointed at the patched-up ceiling in the living room, Alexander, speaking in Ukrainian, nearly shouted his conviction. “I would rather die in my destroyed house,” he said, “than live one minute under Russia.”
The memory of his animated patriotism had stayed with me as the war slogged into its third year. Arriving in Staryi Saltiv this summer while traveling across the Kharkiv region, I wondered if the West’s conditional support of Ukraine — providing enough to not lose but not enough to win — had diminished the couple’s belief that the country could retain its freedom.
Once a popular resort destination for Ukrainians and Russians alike, their town emptied out after the invasion began. The population plunged from 3,300 to under 300, and living conditions had worsened in some ways since my last visit almost 18 months earlier. A renewed Russian incursion in the region had brought more artillery and drone attacks to the battered village, targeting Ukrainian forces headed to the front a few miles north.
Alexander wore a tan shirt and a wide smile when I met him at the green gate outside his and Liudmila’s home. I followed him into the yard, stepping past neat stacks of bricks and lumber, and I knew from the building materials that their faith in Ukraine remained unshaken. The war would go on. They would finish repairing their house.
Liudmila emerged from inside carrying dining chairs, and we sat down beneath the setting sun as the day’s heat drained away. The conversation soon turned to the increasing pressure from Western leaders on Zelensky to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.
The Russian dictator’s well-known history of violating borders and ceasefires in Ukraine, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova and elsewhere dates to his first year in power a quarter-century ago. The Evdoshenkos viewed the idea of a peace pact with him as naive in principle and potentially ruinous in practice. They instead wanted U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other Western leaders to supply Ukraine with more weapons and to ease restrictions on its army firing Western-supplied missiles at military targets inside Russia.
“If you try to stop this war with diplomacy, Putin will be stronger,” said Liudmila, a former school bookkeeper. “Then he’ll try to take the entire country.” Alexander, who spent his career as an agronomist, insisted that helping Ukraine defeat Russia offered the West its best chance to thwart Putin from pursuing his ambitions of conquest into other countries. “This is why Europe and America must give us everything to fight,” he said. “We are defending democracy — ours and yours.”
Zelensky delivered a similar message this week to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He responded to those calling on him to cede territory to Russia — a chorus of preemptive surrender that includes Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and Republican overlord Donald Trump — by reminding the world what Ukraine has sacrificed for its liberty.
“It is the Ukrainian people who feel the full pain of this war. It’s Ukrainian children who are learning to distinguish the sounds of different types of artillery and drones because of Russia’s war. It’s our people who are forcefully separated by occupation because Putin decided he could do whatever he wants. It’s our heroic soldiers who are giving their lives to defend our country from invaders trying to steal our land,” Zelensky said. “That’s why we say, rightfully so — there can be no just peace without Ukraine.”
A memorial in Staryi Saltiv honors soldiers from the area killed during World War II. Joseph Stalin conscripted 7 million Ukrainians into the Soviet Red Army; one-third of them died. (c. Martin Kuz)
His speech served as an urgent appeal to preserve the nation’s autonomy, a right embedded in every democracy and denied to Ukraine — primarily by Moscow — for most of its existence until the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991. Listening to Zelensky, I thought back to my recent visit to Staryi Saltiv, where I had noticed a crumbling World War II memorial down the road from Alexander and Liudmila’s home.
The granite statue of a stoic Red Army fighter honors soldiers from the area killed between 1941 and 1945. Joseph Stalin conscripted 7 million Ukrainians into the Soviet military during the war; one-third of them died in forced service of a genocidal regime that had already starved and executed millions of their fellow citizens. Thousands of similar memorials defile the countryside, vestiges of a past imperialist tyranny that Putin has revived in a new century, enabled by Western leaders whose fatal hesitation imperils Ukraine’s sovereignty.
I hugged the Evdoshenkos goodbye as I left their home, unsure of when we might gather again. They walked me to the front gate, and Alexander shared a parting observation as night drew near. “From his first day, Putin always wanted to invade Ukraine,” he said. “The world must not let him win.”
I fear the world is too weak.
Etc.
— Zelensky’s visit to the United States included a stop Thursday at the White House. He sought again to persuade Biden to allow Ukraine to strike military targets in Russia with long-range missiles provided by Western allies. The chances of Zelensky receiving that permission appear small, as the administration remains cowed by Putin’s saber rattling. In this short video, historian and author Timothy Snyder, one of the West’s leading experts on Ukraine, skewers the absurdity of America’s position and its irrational deference toward Russia.
— Close to two-thirds of Ukrainians oppose a ceasefire that would freeze the current front line and require the country to give up land to Russia. An almost equal number reject the idea that Ukraine should drop its efforts to join the European Union and NATO as a condition of peace. Keep those figures in mind when the chorus of preemptive surrender claims to know the will of the Ukrainian people.
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