Ukraine, the Plodding Conflict and the Ongoing Tragedy Charles Elias Chartouni/April 01/2022
The Ukrainian conflict is the perfect epitome of Putin’s policies: arbitrariness, moral callousness and nihilism, which altogether account for the absurdity of this war, its goriness and devastations. The faked victimization he features all along this conflict reflects his unqualified mendacity, cynicism, total indifference to its humanitarian consequences and discretionary power in a predatory State. It’s striking to notice that Russians and their political institutions are mere expedients, and the autocrat is secure about his hermetic hold on power, and the brittleness of countervailing powers, institutions in Russia are simulacrums and mere appendages to the autocratic regime. The only chance for Russia to extract itself from the autocratic clasp is political murder as a typical hallmark of Russian Statehood.
Having said that, what are the chances of this conflict coming to a halt in the absence of an unlikely steady military containment and a working diplomacy? Russians, Ukrainians and the international community are the hostages of a psychotic murderer in power, with nuclear armament, no moral qualms, and an unrestricted instrumentalization of the public treasury. The enforcement of sanctions and the politics of systemic foreclosures applied to various economic and technological sectors are not dissuasive, as long as he finds bypasses and exit routes which enable him to circumvent his state of incremental isolation, let alone his delinquency and nuclear blackmailing.
The extensive support provided to Ukraine and the corollary sanctions, however effective, are not enough to sway the adversity and arrogance of an unleashed beast, while the deleterious humanitarian, economic, social and ecological outcomes of this conflict have reached a climax. Short of a diplomatic breakthrough to overcome the stalemated conflict, the priority should be given to strengthening the Ukrainian resistance, the tightening of international sanctions, and the steadying of transatlantic unity, while keeping alert to the nihilistic tendencies of a psychotic autocrat. Fighting a criminal autocracy is not an easy task since strategic and moral thresholds are trampled with no further consideration.
