Alexander J. Motyl
Who is winning, Ukraine or Russia? And whose prospects are better in the long run?
In other words, whose side is time on?
The Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven states matter-of-factly that, “as everyone now seems to agree, time is on Russia’s side.”
But is it? At one time, everyone also agreed that the Ukraine War would be over in a few weeks — an alert to the perils of groupthink. And now, as then, the reality is rather more complicated.
As with everything, there are two opposing schools of thought: the optimists who think Ukraine will prevail and the pessimists who bet on Russia.
The bottom-line pessimist case is based on numbers. Russia’s population, economy and military-industrial complex are much bigger than Ukraine’s. The numbers will therefore decide ultimate outcomes, even though Russian battlefield losses are exceptionally high and its economy has been battered by sanctions and Vladimir Putin’s anti-consumerist economic policies.
Expert analysts Collin Meisel and Mathew Burrows explicitly adopt this approach in a piece titled, “Russia Can Afford to Take a Beating in Ukraine.”
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