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A massive fire blazes in Kyiv, Ukraine, after a Russian missile strike on Sept. 2, 2024. (Reuters/Yonhap)

By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer

Russia’s war with Ukraine uprooted 34-year-old Natalia Suh, a Russian ethnic Korean, from her hometown in Donetsk, Ukraine, and forced her to flee to the Koryo-saram, or Kareisky, quarter in Ansan, South Korea. 

The war broke out for her not on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the week before, on Feb. 18. Suh, who lived in a satellite city to the west of Donetsk, fled when the city was bombarded by gunfire from Ukrainian soldiers.

When asked if the attack was part of the Donbas war, a civil war that began in 2014, Suh replied, “The civil war had been limited to a front further west and it had never affected our daily lives.”

For Ukraine, this is a war of Russian aggression; for the US and other countries in the West, it is a war to quash Russia’s instinctive thirst for expansion; for Russia, it is a “special military operation” to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

For Ukrainians living in Ukraine, this is a war about defending their homeland; for the ethnic Russians in the country, it is a war for autonomy and independence.

If we look past every country’s particularities, the war in Ukraine is a conflict in which the West and Russia are vying for power. This objective situation begs the question of whether the war will go down as a second Afghanistan for Russia or a second Vietnam for the West.

The West has imposed unprecedented sanctions, including a complete freeze on Russian assets outside of Russia and a blockade of Russian energy exports. However, these measures have landed Russia in what’s known as the “sanctions paradox.”

Russia’s GDP growth is over 3 percent, a number higher than most Western countries even, according to statistics provided by the International Monetary Fund. As Russia’s once-idle heavy industry booms due to wartime production, the country has reached a stage in which it is short on manpower. 

On top of that, Russia’s oil and gas exports to China and India are not paid in dollars but settled using the respective country’s currencies, shaking the hegemony of the dollar.

Russia is joining forces with China to create a so-called “multipolar” world. The period following the start of the war in Ukraine shows a distinctive rise in the Global South. Western allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Brazil, have declined to join in the efforts to sanction Russia and are doing the opposite by expanding trade with it. 

BRICS, an intergovernmental organization of the non-Western emerging powers of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, expanded membership to include Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia in August 2023. 

It was evident from November 2022, the early stages of the war in Ukraine, that Russia wanted to solidify its de facto occupation of the country. Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which began in June 2023, faltered, with Russia beginning an offensive at the end of 2023 to expand buffer zones to strengthen its hold on Russian-occupied areas. 

Ukraine invaded Russia’s Kursk on Aug. 6, but what followed was the collapse of the existing east-south front. Pokrovsk, a key location on the eastern front, is on the verge of falling, which will fuel Russia’s advancement to the west. Ukraine is expending its forces to defend the invaded city of Kursk, further entangling itself in Russia’s war of attrition.

The West has provided more than US$200 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine, including US $100 billion from the US, but Russia has a 10-to-1 advantage in artillery, which is key in this war.

Since Ukraine's attack on Kursk, both sides have stepped up attacks on the other’s territory, especially energy facilities. It’s clear who has the advantage in this war of attrition.

Attacks on energy facilities in their opponents’ territory began in October 2022, the first year of the war, by Russia. Shortly before that, in late September, the Nord Stream, a network of gas pipelines that run from Russia to Germany, was attacked with explosives. At the time, the West accused Russia of self-sabotage, but Russia vowed to retaliate against the actions of the West and Ukraine. Germany recently pointed to Ukraine as the perpetrators of the incident and initiated a manhunt for key figures involved in the case, who had fled to Poland.

In the early days of Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk, a risky artillery exchange took place near the nuclear power plant there. The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has also been the site of dangerous skirmishes since the outbreak of the war. 

The West and Ukraine accuse Russia of engaging in self-destructive blackmail by using the nuclear plants in regions that it occupies. We need to be rational when making any judgments.

Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk was an attempt to gain leverage for future negotiations, but it only hardened Russia’s position. Next time, Russia will further drain Ukrainian power in Kursk and advance on the existing front in the east and south.

One thing that the war has made certain is that Ukraine has to cut clean ties with Russia to be completely independent. The issue of Russian-speaking regions or ethnic Russians in Ukraine should be dealt with in a way that involves giving those regions and people the right to self-determination, and Ukraine should remain a buffer zone between the West and Russia.

If this is not acknowledged, the war in Ukraine is more likely to become the West’s new Vietnam rather than Russia’s second Afghanistan.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]