As Russia's war on Ukraine enters its third year, Kyiv faces arguably its worst situation since the failure of Vladimir Putin's initial offensive. For weeks, the news from the front has not been good. Ammunition is in short supply and fatigue has set in. The resilience of Ukrainian society is being put to the test.
This fatigue is all the more legitimate given that, for the aggressed country, this war really began 10 years ago, after the Maidan revolution. As soon as Ukraine indisputably expressed its desire to turn toward Europe and the West, the master of the Kremlin opened hostilities to make it clear that this expression of independence and sovereignty was unacceptable to him.
In Russia, the war first revealed an imperial power that justified every monstrosity, such as relentlessly bombing a territory where civilians are seen by Moscow as indistinguishable from soldiers. Today it also highlights a tragic temptation in the US. That of cowardice, of giving up on helping a nation fighting for its freedom even though not a single American soldier is exposed to the fury of the battlefield.
This temptation poses a terrible threat to Ukraine, which would not have been able to withstand the initial Russian onslaught without the powerful military support of Democratic President Joe Biden. Biden is now hampered in Congress by a Republican Party that has gone from unbridled interventionism to the opposite extreme in the space of a generation. Under Donald Trump's bad influence, the party no longer has anything to say to the world.
Russian headlong rush
The US's stalling support, whether or not it is confirmed by the presidential election on November 5, should be a final wake-up call for Europe. What is happening in the East concerns them far more directly than they have so far been willing to acknowledge. A new age is dawning.
In the mind of its Russian instigator, the war in Ukraine is not being waged with the aim of achieving territorial negotiations in the best possible agreement. For Putin, who must be taken at his word on this point, it is an existential conflict, waged against the system of values that lies at the heart of the European model. Everything he has done testifies to this: the industrial-scale filling of Russian brains with propaganda, the transformation of the country's economy into a war economy that can only feed the warmongering at work, the militarization of minds, the undermining of Western opinions, and the ferocious stifling of all forms of dissent.
This Russian headlong rush, combined with the possibility of a US withdrawal, and thus a weakening of NATO, means that Europeans must prepare as quickly as possible to ensure their own security, starting with that of Ukraine. They will only be able to do this united, as they have done for all the other challenges they have faced and will face in the future, from pandemics to climate change, no matter what sovereigntists, who look at the future with their eyes fixed on a bygone past, may say.
The challenge is colossal. Europe's leaders have, until now, risen to the challenge of history. Now they must take on the heavy task of convincing their people. The threat is here, and to ignore it would be inexcusable.