In his 1998 novel The Turkish Gambit, which is now banned in Russia, Boris Akunin has his Turkish spy state what many currently feel about an aggressively imperialist Russia:

“Today, your immensely powerful state constitutes the main danger to civilization. With its vast expanses, it multitudinous, ignorant population, its cumbersome and aggressive state apparatus […] It is not pleasant for you to hear this, … but lurking within Russia is a terrible threat to civilization. There are savage, destructive forces fermenting within her, forces that will break out sooner or later, and then the world will be in a bad way. […] Russia has to be put back in its place; its reach has to be shortened.”

As many mark what they believe to be the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, it is important to note that this is a war that was actually launched in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea, held a fake referendum to claim their right to annex it, and propped up fraudulent governments in the eastern regions of the nation. Russia’s aggressively imperialist actions are, in this particular instance, at least nine years old.

Despite the near-complete abandonment of Ukraine by the West both in 2014, when it would have been easier to stop Russia, and, at least initially, in 2022, Ukraine has not fallen. Indeed, at the outset of 2023, there are legitimate hopes of full Ukrainian victory, with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky talking openly of such an event. At a video appearance at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in January 2023, he stated that although “World War I claimed millions of lives. The Second World War claimed tens of millions of them. There will be no Third World War. It is not a trilogy: Ukraine will stop the Russian aggression on our land.”

Yet in February 2023, there remain obstacles to victory for Ukraine.

The first is Russia itself. Despite Putin’s calls for a holiday cease fire at the beginning of 2023 and negotiations soon to follow, he was not serious about either. He bombed Ukraine throughout the Christmas season, including on New Year’s Eve/Day, and any offer of negotiations, then or now, would simply be a duplicitous stalling ploy to give Russia time to regroup, reposition its weaponry, and move the recently-called-up 500,000 troops to occupied territories within Ukraine. The simple truth is that Putin cannot afford a settlement, even one favorable to Russia, which Ukraine would never be able to abide, for the war has become essential to his survival and the survival of his regime. Outside of unconditional surrender, he has no choice but to fight to the last available Russian, even if it means the destruction of his own country from within, or until he is removed and replaced by a leader who sees Russia’s barbaric actions for what they are. The latter seems increasingly unlikely as many Russians, particularly those in the leadership, see Ukraine as a lesser entity and its population as a lesser people.

The second obstacle is what many once would have called “useful idiots,” those who parrot Kremlin talking points, either through willful ignorance, a dislike of their own nations, or, in some cases, because they are actually on the Kremlin payroll. Some of these favor appeasement, under the guise of “negotiations,” rather than supporting the continued existence of the same type of democracy that gives them the right to express their own thoughts. There are also those who continue to blame the West and its institutions for this war. However, even a cursory examination of the facts clearly shows that this invasion is not connected to NATO expansion. Consider Putin’s own words. When he announced his initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, his expressed goals were to claim lost Russian territory and protect Russian speakers. In 2022, Putin stated that Finland and Sweden were free to join NATO if they wished to do so; he did not threaten to invade either of them to prevent this from happening. Moreover, Putin has withdrawn nearly all his troops from the Finnish border and redeployed them to fight in Ukraine. Even Putin knows that NATO is not a military threat to Russia, as long as he does not attack the territory of NATO member nations, and was not a cause of his invasions of Ukraine.

The third obstacle, budget-controlling politicians labeling themselves isolationists or pro-Russian, are a boisterous group that includes a number of Republicans who now serve in the majority in the House of Representatives. This continues a sea-change in foreign policy between the two parties, for during the 1970s and 1980s, it was politicians in the Democratic Party who wanted to appease the Soviet Union, both through unilateral disarmament and by refusing to fund groups that opposed them in the then-termed Third World. The 1990s saw a leveling off as a younger generation of Democrats recognized the political cost of being on the wrong side of history in the struggle against the USSR, while the years after 9/11 saw a race between the parties as to which could be the most aggressive in foreign policy and in support for the military. Only with the election of Donald Trump did a serious change start to develop in the Republican Party, a change that continues through the most recent election for Speaker of the House, where several Republicans demanded a reduction in foreign aid, including some to Ukraine, in exchange for their votes for Kevin McCarthy.

This is particularly troublesome for a political party that still claims to be the “Party of Reagan.” As Reagan himself noted on 6 June 1984 at Pointe du Hoc:

“We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”

and later in one of his last public addresses given to the Oxford Union, on 4 December 1992:

“Ironically, the end of communist tyranny has robbed much of the west of its uplifting, common purpose. In the aftermath of victory, we search, not for new enemies but for a renewed sense of mission. With the Soviet empire defeated, will we fall into petty, self-absorbed economic rivalries? Will we squander the moral capital of half a century? Will we turn inward, lulled by a dangerous complacency and the short-sighted view that the end of one Evil Empire means the permanent banishment of evil in all its forms?”

Reagan understood then, as he would understand now, the threat that Russia once again poses to the world and for world peace. He was not an isolationist then, and he would not be an isolationist now, something the “Party of Reagan” should well understand.

The Democrats too are playing political games with Ukraine. When they held complete control of Congress, they did not criticize the Biden Administration for its slow response to Ukraine’s requests for weapons. Only now, with Republicans in control of the House, are they suddenly arguing that the US must give enough to ensure that Ukraine wins. This, of course, is the correct argument to make, but it should have been made during the last year, when the Biden Administration was doing just enough to keep Ukraine from losing, while not doing anything to help them actually win. Their positive reaction to the January 2023 Rice-Gates op-ed in the Washington Post is welcome, but several months too late to be fully credible.

It has been heartening to hear statements from various European nations at the Munich Security Conference stating that “Ukraine must win the war.” It would be even more heartening to hear the same from the Biden Administration, and it would be most heartening for the Biden Administration, which continues to spend more time saying what it will not do to help Ukraine, rather than finding more ways to help Ukraine, to send all the tools necessary to ensure that Ukraine wins the war. This includes making it possible for Ukraine to retake Crimea.

In “Z’ha’dum,” one of the darkest episodes of the 1990s science fiction series Babylon 5, G’kar, a Narn, the entire species of which is facing genocide at the hands of the imperialist Centauri, who have invaded their planet, introduces the episode with these words:

G’Quan wrote, “There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.”

The last eleven months have been quite painful for Ukraine, as Russia has continued its brutal war of attrition, doing its utmost to destroy the viability of the Ukrainian state as an alternative to conquering it in full. So have been the last nine years, along with centuries of history, passing through Stalin’s Holodomor and back into imperial times, all times when Russia tried to exterminate Ukraine. The appearance of an independent Ukraine, with fully recognized national borders – including by Russia – gave hope to a bright future after centuries of pain, pain that returned in 2014 and became more acute in 2022. Yet after these last nine years, Ukraine and those who support her again have reason to be hopeful.

Endemic corruption and incompetence in amounts thought unimaginable have destroyed the Russian military from within, while Ukraine destroys it from without. The Russian military is decimated, losing hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers every day. Eventually Russia will run out of viable troops available to continue the fight, if they actually retain any who are anything more than future cannon fodder. And by now, it should be clear to even the most fretful, hand-wringing individuals that the threat of nuclear war is simply a bluff Putin has been using to coerce the anxiety-ridden to compel the decision-adverse Biden White House away from making the brave choice to support Ukraine to actual victory.

An opportunity to create a no-fly zone was lost a year ago; that no-fly zone would have shortened the war. Many opportunities to give Ukraine the weapons they have now been provided were lost over the last year; given earlier, those weapons would have shortened the war. Ukraine has been asking for tanks and planes; those will shorten the war. Rumors are that the UK will give Ukraine long-range missiles, which will allow Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia that are destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and killing Ukrainian citizens; those too will shorten the war.

President Zelensky has made it clear that, if the West gives him the tools to end this war, defeat Russia, and liberate his entire nation, his Ukrainians will do so.

In his February 2023 speech to the UK Parliament, President Zelensky recalled sitting in Churchill’s chair in the War Rooms during an Autumn 2020 visit. When asked how he felt sitting there, Zelensky noted that only now does he recognize what he sensed then – the knowledge that “bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.”

It is long past time for the US, NATO, and other democratic nations to be brave, as the Ukrainians have been brave, and it is long past time to give Ukraine everything it needs to win, not just enough so it does not lose. In doing so, it will shorten the war, begin to end pain and despair, and reward Ukraine with victory.

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Jonathan Z. Ludwig is a Teaching Associate Professor of Russian at Oklahoma State University