Four years have passed since the Russians invaded Ukraine and got bogged down there; today the fifth begins. By now everyone repeats what we were the first to point out: with negligible territorial gains, they have become mired far longer than they fought in the Second World War.
I will not return here to the causes of the conflict
I have addressed them extensively and repeatedly, emphasizing and arguing the falsity and pretextual nature of the reasons put forward by Moscow. In reality, what led them into this cul-de-sac was self-overestimation, underestimation of the Ukrainians and the Europeans, and the mad claim of making up by force the historical backwardness accumulated over time. As early as 2008, Putin began squandering the political capital—both national and international—built up by Primakov and, as a result, plunged Russia back into the same conditions in which Yeltsin had found it.
Let us instead speak about the war which, according to many, should conclude—at least with a truce—before this summer.
Militarily—despite all propaganda—no one will win it. Moscow and Kyiv have long been engaged in a war of mutual attrition, each betting on the hope that the other will collapse first. Russia, by mentality and technological limits, relies on a terrorist logic of wearing down the Ukrainian population and fires indiscriminately; Kyiv, on the other hand, strikes military-industrial and oil targets, aiming at the collapse of the enemy’s war machine.
Who will collapse first?
Without outside intervention it is hard to say. However, at this moment Russia faces exactly the same problems that caused its defeat in Afghanistan and the subsequent implosion of the Soviet system: hemorrhaging resources in the arms race, heavy losses at the front, and a collapse in trade revenues due to falling oil prices. Compared to today—when Moscow has reduced its exports by more than a third and often sells at cost, if not at a loss because it is cornered—the difference is formal rather than substantive.
Who has already won this war, however it ends?
First of all, the usual sharks, who play Monopoly across all theaters, enrich themselves on the stock exchange, and are shareholders in all companies and rival facilities. They float and grow fat between respective enemies.
Then, at the level of powers and nations?
The United States and Turkey. The Americans have expanded NATO, increased gas and oil exports, become more than central in international affairs, and divided with Ankara control of the corridor between the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea through the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.” The Turks have also taken Syria, with American support. China, too, has taken advantage of the war to buy energy from Moscow at cut-rate prices and to position itself on the international stage as an authoritative and assertive superpower.
Who has lost this war, however it ends?
Russia. It has lost it, first of all, in terms of casualties. The most conservative figures speak of a million soldiers dead or incapacitated. It has also lost it through the worsening demographic collapse that has forced Moscow to offer its citizenship widely. It has lost economically, regardless of the resilience of its archaic system, since its main international leverage—namely the production and export of raw materials—has collapsed heavily. It has lost psychologically, because the image it presents—both in military management and political handling of the war in Ukraine—is embarrassing, and even its Chinese “protectors” have made little effort to hide this, having in fact downsized it even within the SCO.
It has lost strategically, having been pushed out of Syria and Armenia, while the Eurasian neighborhood is contested by American and Chinese influence. It has lost politically, since over the past four years it has not only lost its European footholds (above all French and German), but has also seen support from African countries thin out—falling by two thirds—and has proven nonexistent in both the Middle East and the Mediterranean, where it can rely only on the support of the Libyan Haftar, himself a man of the Americans.
By now Moscow does nothing but implore Washington to allow it to save face in concluding its disastrous war.
Another loser in this war—where it squandered top-tier drones—is Iran, because the weakening that occurred in that theater was not unrelated to the strangling action of the Wahhabi alliance that isolated it and forced it to retreat on all fronts, from Lebanon to Azerbaijan, putting it in serious difficulty in Iraq and emboldening internal opposition.
The United States and Turkey have won that war: Russia and Iran have lost it.
Then there are other collateral effects
and these, in the balance sheet, I consider positive for us.
For us Europeans, and for those of us with a national-revolutionary spirit.
Let us begin with Ukraine, a land that has always supplied thousands upon thousands of volunteers for ideal and identity-driven wars. It is more devastated than Russia, because Moscow’s impotent imperialist war is fought there. At the same time, that tragedy has aroused strong patriotic cohesion, stimulated heroic mystique, and ensured a founding myth that will cement it in the future.
Europe itself has gained more from this conflict—despite material losses—than it has lost.
Because the American double game has emerged beyond any doubt (tactical support for Kyiv, but strategic support for Moscow, in keeping with a century-old complicity), as well as the divergence of interests between the two shores of the Atlantic. This has pushed us toward what is mistakenly described as a crisis of the EU, but which is instead its regeneration. Forced by the joint threat—albeit on different levels—of Russia and the United States, we have cast aside the trap of unanimous consent, thus rendering ridiculous the vetoes of governments subservient to Moscow and protected by Washington.
We have moved to an intergovernmental logic alongside the federal one, capitalizing on both and greatly advancing the European process compared to the pre-war period. In industrial, military, engineering alliances and in energy choices as well, significant progress has been made, as I documented in Tu chiamala se vuoi rivoluzione published three months ago. Finally, European sentiment among young national-revolutionary generations has grown enormously and has become firmly rooted in their spirit.
It is time for that war to end
I harbor no illusions that this can be done in a lasting and just way, because that would necessarily presuppose Russian implosion and capitulation, and I do not believe the Americans are willing to allow it.
But whatever form is found to end the bloodletting that the Russians have both suffered and inflicted to please their American masters, the material victory of the latter and European regeneration are now definitive facts.
Will the Russians want to continue indefinitely in order to postpone their internal reckoning for their senseless folly? Possible. But they must also find the strength. And they must make the enormous effort of taking themselves seriously—something that now seems difficult, even if, in sheer brazen impudence, those in the Kremlin remain unbeatable.