One Year of All-Out War: The Costs and Benefits of Our Support for Ukraine

By Serhii Plokhii, Director, Ukrainian Research Institute

I am writing these words in conjunction with the one-year anniversary of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine, the largest military conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. I write not to tell you what my colleagues at the Institute have done to spread, in the words of Harvard’s mission, “good knowledge” about this war—you can learn about our numerous activities in that regard from our website—but to share my thoughts as well as those of my colleagues at the Institute on the anniversary of this horrible war. 

One year after the start of the all-out war, over eight million Ukrainians are displaced, tens of thousands have been killed or wounded, and a good part of Ukraine’s economic potential and infrastructure is destroyed, and yet Ukrainians keep fighting, with 95% of them believing in the victory over the aggressor and a bright future for Ukraine and the world.

While it is far from clear when the current war will end, there is little doubt that by repelling Russia’s assault and mobilizing its nation and half the world in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, Ukraine has ensured its continuing existence as an independent state and nation. The war, often characterized as a Russian war in or against Ukraine, became in fact a Russo-Ukrainian war in the sense that the invaders have faced formidable resistance not merely from partisan groups but from a strong, regular army. The Ukrainian state proved itself capable of surviving and functioning under relentless warfare at a degree experienced by few states in the European neighborhood even during the wars of the twentieth century. 

The Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history. Moreover, Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russian aggression will, in fact, shape the future of Russia and its own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country’s identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and in the blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance throughout much of eastern Europe and challenging Moscow’s claim to primacy in the rest of the post-Soviet space.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine produced a nineteenth-century war fought with twentieth-century tactics and twenty-first-century weaponry. Its ideological underpinnings came from the visions of territorial expansion that characterized the Russian imperial era; its strategy was borrowed by the Kremlin from World War II and postwar-era manuals of the Soviet Army; and its key features, used to different degrees by both sides, were not only precision-guided missiles but also intelligence-gathering satellites and cyber warfare. The war posed a nuclear threat to the world from its very inception. Russia’s takeover of the Chernobyl (Chornobyl) nuclear site and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the first days of the all-out conflict constituted a clear and present danger to parts of Europe and the Middle East, as well as a challenge to the safety of nuclear installations worldwide.

The impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war has already been felt far beyond the former territorial possessions of the Romanovs and Soviet commissars. Ukraine has survived the Russian assault and defended itself thanks to the unprecedented solidarity of the international community, which provided the Ukrainian government and people with political, economic, and military support on a scale not seen in decades. For many of Ukraine’s friends, this war represents not only the largest and deadliest military conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, but also the first major war since the victory over Nazism in which there are few shades of gray in its moral dimensions. For many, this war is the first “just war” since the global conflict of 1939–45, a war in which it was very clear from the start who was the aggressor and who the victim, who was the villain and who the hero, and on whose side one wanted to be.

As the first year of the war nears its end, political and academic forums at Harvard and beyond have raised the question as to whether the benefits of American support for Ukraine outweigh the costs. The answer that I and many of my colleagues at the Institute provide to this question is a resounding yes: yes, they do, unless we all are prepared to accept the kind of massacres that took place in Ukraine’s Bucha as a norm, unless we are willing to live in a world ruled by dictatorships. Ukraine is leading the way in this fight for the values of the democratic world, and we should continue to support that fight. This is not just about Ukraine. It is about us all.