The Only Winner of the “War” in Ukraine is Nihilistic Futility

In theory, there was a logic to Putin’s unprovoked attack on Russia’s closest neighbor. We all told ourselves he was trying to “rewrite the post Cold War world order” or something. It’s easy now to see how wrong we were.

The cold hard truth is that he never had a plan. He had a schizophrenic delusion of history and a desire to blow stuff up. This was all just a futile tantrum from the start. The only question at this point is how far that tantrum will go, how much he has to blow up to feel satisfied that the dog is sufficiently kicked.

Consider where we find ourselves. Russia has allegedly lost 40,000 troops to death, injury, or capture and has marooned its remaining soldiers deep in the melting, muddy Ukrainian landscape, while Ukrainian light infantry methodically picks them off with drones and shoulder-fired ballistics. Russian artillery simply keeps lobbing shells to penalize Ukraine for the audacity of simply existing. The toll of the clearly intentional targeting of the theater in Mariupol is stupefying.

Russia can’t win. It won’t win. And Putin knows it. All he can do is destroy. He can’t occupy Ukraine. He’ll be lucky if he gets even half of his soldiers home. Ukraine will defend its land and eliminate many of the hapless soldiers sent blindly to commit an atrocity. In return for this, Putin will just keep punishing Ukraine. Destroying its buildings, killing its civilians.

Who wins? Literally no one. Russia will sink further into a delusion of self-pitying fiction of persecution. The Russian people will surrender much of their freedom to move around the globe. Ukraine will absorb a massive cost of rebuilding. NATO and the EU may seem to win, when Ukraine joins the alliance just as soon as it can; but its reward is a more dangerous world where Russia follows the playbook of North Korea and uses the constant threat of Armageddon to attract international attention.

As if to prove the futility of it all, Russia is now saving face by playing a game of sour grapes: “We only cared about the Donbas anyway!” Oh really? So you indiscriminately bombed civilians (including 300 taking shelter in a building marked “children”) and leveled Mariupol just to retreat into the Crimea?

Fuck that.

I hope Ukraine pursues Russia right out of the Donbas and Crimea. I actually felt some sympathy for Russia’s argument in 2014. It was a stroke of Khruschev’s pen that gave Crimea to Ukraine, back when it didn’t matter. I felt like Russia had an argument. Now? Have at it, Ukraine. Enforce international law. Reassert your sovereignty over Donetsk and Luhansk. If every ethnic Russian crosses the border into Russia, I will no longer shed any tears. Not after this.

And finally, I hope Ukraine sues Russia for every bit of damage this illegal, unjustified, wholly elective attack leaves behind. Whatever portion of Russia’s GDP can be seized and siphoned to Ukraine to repair the buildings and the psyches Russia ripped apart should be seized.

It still won’t bring back all the dead on either side or make up for the fact that they were sacrificed for absolutely nothing. That’s the real tragedy in all of this. There was never any point, no greater good, no meaningful cause, just an dark void into which one man poured thousands of souls.