Ukraine: what if the unthinkable actually happens?

One of the most difficult things in both politics (and political journalism) is to admit that some problems don’t have a solution – or at least one that can be discerned in advance. 

The West is more or less united in the conviction that Ukraine must win the war brought about by the Russian invasion. Victory is usually defined as the complete withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian soil followed by a Nuremberg-style trial of war criminals. There is also talk of massive reparations extending far into the future and, of course – the icing on the cake – the arrest or assassination of Vladimir Putin. 

The United States, Europe and the UK are together on this. Dissenting voices have been drowned out. 

So let us imagine that the West’s desired solution has come about. It is late-winter 2023 and Russia has been defeated. What remains of its armies limp back across the border. It is like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, only in reverse. 

What would happen then? It seems reasonable to assume that martial footsteps would shortly after be heard by a terrified Putin in the corridor outside his office in the Kremlin. Would he allow himself to be taken into custody or would he emulate Hitler and blow his brains out? More likely (it seems to me), he would be shot by a stern young sergeant acting on the orders of a colonel-general wearing an expression as cold and unyielding as the ice in Red Square. 

The late President’s closest allies would be rounded up, some of whom would almost certainly share his fate. In the streets, the unearthly silence that first greeted the admission of a level of humiliation last experienced in 1917 would quickly give way to mass protests that would be quelled only be extreme methods. A new regime would emerge directed by elements of the military, the secret police and the business class. 

All of the above assumes that Putin chooses not to use nuclear weapons or is prevented from doing so by those on whom he relies to carry out his orders. Were this not to be the case, if the regime in its madness is finally brought to heel only after the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction, lasting decades into the future, of large swathes of their homeland, the reckoning would proceed along very different lines. 

Exhausted but triumphant, the West would exact unconditional surrender. Russia would be instructed to give up its nuclear arsenal and to withdraw the shattered remnants of its armed forces to barracks. 

If it refused, a cordon sanitaire would be placed around the country so tight that Russia in Europe would be left to wither on the vine. Beyond the Urals, where competing nationalities would run rampant, Mad Max-like figures would arise bent on profiting from the wealth of raw materials coveted by both China and the United States. 

That is one possibility. If, on the other hand, total surrender was accepted, a schedule of reparations would be announced, built around oil and gas, aimed at the economic recovery of Ukraine and its European allies. Survivors of the Putin regime, along with hundreds of those charged with war crimes would be dragged to The Hague to be put on trial. Russia would survive, as it always does, but it would be condemned to a half-life commensurate with the impact of its atomic weapons on the peoples of Europe. 

Later, nation-building would begin, echoing the allies’ treatment of post-war Germany and Austria. The process might produce the desired result, a peaceful, democratic Russia. But, equally, it might fail. Dark forces would rumble in the background, looking for someone to give them voice. Whatever happened, it would be many years before the occupiers could relax their grip. 

The world’s best hope, in advance of any final conclave, is that Russia’s stone-faced generals, working with elements within the Kremlin, step up and bring Putin’s grotesque adventurism to an abrupt end. There can be no doubt that some of them at least are turning their mind in this direction. But what if they don’t, or what if they fail? What if they end up shot themselves? 

In 1945, Hitler’s generals were in despair. They knew the war was lost and that the Führer was insane. But only a tiny number of them resolved to act. Most, at least in Berlin, remained loyal to the end. Now, history, which is largely without any sense of irony, looks set to repeat itself. The appointment this month of General Sergei Vladimirovich Surovikin, the Butcher of Syria, as Putin’s latest commander-in-chief in Ukraine, suggests that there are still those in Russia ready to follow the example of Hitler’s last-ditch Nazis. 

We hear lots of experts saying that Putin will not go nuclear, and others who say that he just might. Then we hear that, even if he did, America would not respond in kind but would obliterate Russian armies and installations – and quite possibly cities – by “conventional” means. What would Putin do then? How close would we be to Armageddon? 

The current crisis in Ukraine will end. Of that we can be sure. But how, and at what cost, no one knows. If there is someone out there who believes that Russia’s deranged leader can somehow be talked down from pursuing his war to the bitterest of ends, they need to spell out their thinking and how it will come about. In spite of everything, my money is on the generals. It has to be. 

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