An end to the war in Ukraine – and the energy crisis – is now within sight

The obsequies for the late Queen have, inevitably, tended to block out other news stories that would otherwise have commanded attention. Indeed, the very moment when the nation realised its monarch was gravely ill came just as parliament was debating the government’s proposals to ameliorate the cost of living crisis.

After that, little notice was paid to the energy price guarantee, or to what remains a transcendent problem for too many families – inflation. People across the world have felt the need to grieve for Elizabeth II, in their own ways. This has been a period during which Britain, and the Commonwealth, paused and looked back.

So we have missed things while we were distracted by men wearing bicorn hats, tights and tabards. The various crises we faced a week ago have not disappeared: there have been quite significant developments.

For example, strange to say – and unexpectedly – there is what appears to be highly encouraging news from Ukraine. The Ukrainian counterattacks in the east of the country have taken everyone, not least the Russian occupiers, by surprise. Russian forces, reportedly outnumbered by eight to one, were routed, and retreated so rapidly that they left tanks and ammunition behind (as well as half-eaten meals – though if the rumours about the quality of Russian army rations are anything to go by, this is more comprehensible).

Places assumed to have been lost to Ukraine for ever have been liberated, and Kyiv has hailed its operation as the most successful counterattack since the end of the Second World War (when, ironically, the counterattacks were by Russians and Ukrainians fighting real fascism side by side).

As ever, there is propaganda, and caution has to be exercised in making judgements, but the Russian authorities don’t actually deny the “regrouping”, and the renewed rocket attacks on Kyiv and other cities appear to indicate a thirst for revenge after humiliating setbacks.

The reasons for the dramatic turn of events are straightforward. First, the Ukrainians have acquired for themselves the great strategic advantage of a reputation for bravery. This has been hard won, but itself acts as a deterrent to the Russians. With valiant civilian resilience, it further gives the lie to the notion that the Ukrainian people were yearning to be “liberated” from Nazism by the Russians. Slowly, and patchily, the truth about Vladimir Putin’s dirty little war is dawning on his citizens, and certainly on his soldiers.

Second, the Russian army has long shown itself to be poorly led, poorly fed, badly equipped and generally ill prepared. Morale is low, among both conscripts and the mercenaries recruited from non-Russian ethnic groups. Many poorly educated volunteers desperate for a steady income assumed they would not have to fight many wars, and that their chances of survival were good. The war in Ukraine has not been like that, and in this respect is more like the hopeless war of aggression fought in Afghanistan through the 1980s.

Russian forces have always shown extreme courage when their motherland is threatened, but futile wars of aggression against otherwise friendly neighbours are another matter. Though still far from certain, a golden scenario now emerges: an end to the war, and to the energy crisis.

Further Western military supplies, bolstered with captured Russian materiel, could see the Russians pushed still further back to the original border, and perhaps much of the Donbas and the south returned to Ukrainian control. Crimea, occupied by Russia in 2014, could be cut off, and the Russian blockade of the Black Sea loosened. Effective Western armament, alongside intelligence and economic help, is likely to inflict further defeat on the Russian forces.

In this scenario, President Putin himself surely becomes vulnerable. Russia is an authoritarian state, run by a former KGB man, in which repression is a way of life. It is also a land of revolution and intrigue. Russians are starting to blame their own armed forces and intelligence services for their heavy losses. It may not be long before this morphs into coded, and then more explicit, criticism of the Kremlin – and of the president himself, for lumbering his people with a war they cannot win, may lose, and, either way, are being impoverished by as a consequence of economic sanctions.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

President Putin’s realistic options are few. This is perhaps why the official line suggests that the “special military operation” will continue, indefinitely, until all its objectives have been met – including, presumably, the subjugation of the entire Ukrainian nation, and the departure of its president to exile or worse. The implication is that there is no other obvious course of action.

Such a prospect cannot be reassuring. Mobilising Russia as if for a general war with the West seems impracticable, given the feeble state of the present military effort – and would be deeply unpopular among Russians. Further withdrawals would merely encourage the Ukrainians to press on. The use of battlefield nuclear weapons, or the destruction of atomic power facilities, would literally blow back and pollute Russia itself. Widening the war to Nato members such as Finland or Estonia would invite immediate, crushing defeat. Escalation to nuclear war with the West would be another bluff.

Which leaves President Putin in a similar position to that of the late Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, when the latter found himself dealing with Afghanistan, an unwinnable Cold War, and the unsustainable occupation of Eastern Europe. Now, as then, the Russian economy cannot support the nation’s imperial pretensions. Peace and prosperity, sooner or later, will seem the more attractive option, with or without Mr Putin in charge. It might happen very quickly, and with it will come the beginning of the end of the energy crisis. These are indeed momentous times.