One year on, the Ukrainian resistance has been of historic proportions

It takes an effort of memory to recall just how bleak the future of an independent and free Ukraine looked one year ago when Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled in. Then, it looked as though the war would last days and be won by the Russians. Now it looks as if it will take years and the Russians cannot win.

Much of that transformation in fortunes is down to the resolution and resilience of the people of Ukraine. In the first major international European war since 1945, faced with invasion by a nuclear power far larger in number and armaments, the Ukrainian resistance has been of historic proportions, indeed echoing the battles against the real Nazi invaders in 1941. This time last year, the assumption in the Kremlin was that the Ukrainians would welcome the Russian soldiers as liberators, and drive the “neo-Nazi” government out of office and into exile.

Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to run away and end up in America or some other bolthole for cowards. Instead, President Zelensky has become a beloved charismatic war leader, respected around the world, and the very antithesis of the fascism symbolised by President Putin. Far from trying to oust Mr Zelensky, his population has rallied to him and been inspired by him.

At this distance, it is also possible to see the scale of his international achievement. A year or so ago, the conventional wisdom, though shameful, in much of Europe and North America was that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine and if it did there wasn’t much the West and Nato could (or should) do about it. Some, disgracefully, even sympathised with this unprovoked attack and violation of the United Nations – those who made the illogical allegation that the West had “poked the Russian bear”. A timid Germany wished to send nothing more lethal than helmets eastwards. The heresy that dozens of Leopard 2 tanks would be sent into battle wasn’t even spoken of.

The major exception to that flaccid complacency was the UK, and the proactive policies of then prime minister Boris Johnson and the defence secretary Ben Wallace. Their determination to help Ukraine was greatly motivated by accurate intelligence from the British security services. In one of many misjudgements, and based on previous Western weakness after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Vladimir Putin calculated that his audacious attack on Ukraine would only serve to divide and weaken Nato. This time he was wrong. Mr Putin sought less Nato but ended up with more. As President Biden put it, he wanted the “Finlandisation” of Nato but ended up with the “Nato-isation of Finland”, and Ukraine even more set on being part of the alliance. An unprecedented flow of advanced armaments and training has been supplied, with more to come – even some fighter jets.

By contrast, Russia’s military has been humiliated on the battlefield and beaten back by Ukrainian forces. The two puppet “people’s republics” set up by separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk don’t even control all of their nominal territory. What little success the Russian military has enjoyed has been achieved through waging a war of terror on civilians and levelling entire cities. “Victory” has consisted of planting a Russian flag on a pile of rubble, and permitting the Wagner Group mercenaries to commit appalling atrocities. The “special military operation” has succeeded only in drawing attention to how badly led, poorly equipped and senselessly sadistic its armed forces are.

The next 12 months may prove just as surprising. Though the war has gone badly, and Mr Putin is diplomatically isolated, deprived of Western markets and technology, he has nevertheless tightened his hold on the Russian media, particularly television, and enjoys some support among the Russian people. There have been sackings and manoeuvrings at the top of government and the army, and rumours that the president is ill with cancer or Parkinson’s disease, but no sign of a palace coup, let alone a popular uprising. In addition, he has had some success in recruiting the likes of Iran, India, China, Turkey and South Africa to at least acquiesce in his aggression, and break Western sanctions.

Success for Russia in any meaningful sense does seem impossible. Even were Russian forces to overwhelm the Ukrainians, and occupy the entire country, the territory is too large and the population too traumatised and resentful to support Russian rule, still less embrace Russification. Perhaps as Putin intends, it would be like the old Communist East Germany, where he served as a young KGB officer; a population held prisoner by a network of propaganda and snooping. Yet, as with East Germany and the rest of the Warsaw Pact regimes, it couldn’t last forever. Ukraine would be even less docile than East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary; more like Afghanistan under Russia’s unhappy attempt at control in the 1980s.

Sooner or later this war may settle into a kind of stalemate, and it is not too early for Ukraine and the West to consider what “peace” with Russia would actually look like. A peace treaty is some way away, but the West should learn the lessons of the unplanned, confused and unstable aftermaths of the Second World War, the Cold War and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and consider how a new sustainable relationship with Russia can be achieved. But first, there’s a war to try to win, and the Ukrainians need to be given the tools to finish the job.