Ukraine’s Allies Are Inviting Their Own ‘Strategic Defeat’
Germany’s Scholz showed the way with feckless outreach to Putin.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine's president, left, and Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergLast year, some Western leaders started boasting of Russia’s “strategic defeat” in Ukraine. This was always a terrible idea and a line President Vladimir Putin never tires of citing as he pushes the false claim that he sent his armies across the border to defend Russia from Western aggression, rather than invade a former colony for gain.
Now, after more than 1,000 days of bloodshed, we’re finally beginning to see the outlines of such a strategic defeat emerge. Only the potential losers are Ukraine and its allies, not Putin.
I’m not trying here to blame Donald Trump in advance, should Putin succeed in crushing Ukraine and achieving his war aims in the new year. The ill-judged, leverage-destroying rhetoric from some of the US president-elect’s family and advisers doesn’t help and needs to stop. But the primary fault lies elsewhere.