Russia has struggled in Ukraine, but everyone else has still lost

 Russia has struggled in Ukraine, but everyone else has still lost

MIDDLE ISRAEL: Moscow’s strategic setbacks in Ukraine have yet to spell victory for anyone else.

By AMOTZ ASA-EL Published: JULY 23, 2022 12:37

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 RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hold talks – and hands – in Tehran on July 19. (photo credit: Sputnik/Sergei Savostyanov/Pool/via Reuters)

Having listened to Nikolai Gogol read to him from his Dead Souls, which mocked feudal Russia through a plan to buy dead serfs’ souls, Alexander Pushkin at one point burst into laughter only to suddenly turn pensive and say in despair: “God, how sad our Russia is.”

Russia still is sad, especially since the fight it has picked with Ukraine and the West, and the list of the strategic blows it sustained is astonishing. Even so, the blows are not only Russia’s but everyone else’s as well, and they call for a sober definition of Western goals as the war enters its sixth month.

Russia’s failures are clear. Politically it failed to unseat Ukraine’s government, militarily it is humiliated, economically it is besieged, industrially its arms have proven inferior and diplomatically its adventurism resulted in NATO’s expansion to Sweden and Finland.

Russia’s strategic crisis became glaring this week, when President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tehran for a summit with the leaders of Turkey and Iran. So embattled did Putin emerge that he found himself seated between the Turk who sold Ukraine the drones that massacred his troops, and the ayatollah from whom he hopes to buy drones that will prove better than what Russia produced.

Such, in brief, is the hole into which Russia’s leaders have dug their country, and such is the face of their initial defeat. This doesn’t make any of this showdown’s other protagonists a victor.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits an area damaged by Russian military strikes, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kharkiv, Ukraine May 29, 2022. (credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS)

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky visits an area damaged by Russian military strikes, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in Kharkiv, Ukraine May 29, 2022. (credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS)

Ukraine

THE WAR’S first non-winner is Ukraine. Yes, it has bravely fended off an invasion, but with thousands killed, millions displaced and entire towns leveled, its rehabilitation will take decades and cost billions.

The United States

The second non-winner is Uncle Sam. Yes, American resolve has been impressive, but, the effort to decide the war through sanctions is set to fail.

Western sanctions remained mainly Western. China, India, Indonesia and Brazil shunned the sanctions. That alone is nearly half of mankind. Add to that all of Africa and you get much of the rest.

The  Jerusalem  Post