The mood in Kyiv is relentlessly upbeat. This is a moment for Westerners to suppress their anxieties and support the counteroffensive. There will be moments of major risk, but Ukraine deserves to become a modern liberal democracy. Now is the time for NATO to agree on Ukraine’s membership. And Ukraine knows it has more to do to encourage future investment in its reconstruction and to secure its place in the EU.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — It is not hard to think of the risks surrounding the coming months in Ukraine; that the much-anticipated counteroffensive might fail; that it might succeed too well and force Russia into using nuclear weapons; that Vladimir Putin could lose power to an even worse figure like Yevgeny Prigozhin or that Russia might even fragment, leading to fears about control of its massive nuclear arsenal. The safety of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant still hangs in the balance. Further in the future, Ukraine might fail to control its corruption and foreign investors may stay away, thereby stalling the much-needed reconstruction of the war-shattered country.
In contrast to these worries, the Cipher Brief’s Economic and Security Forum held in Kyiv last week, was full of energy and optimism. There is belief that the spring counteroffensive has a real prospect of pushing Russia out of eastern and southern Ukraine and possibly from Crimea. Armed with their new Leopard tanks and the promise of F-16s, the inventive and highly motivated Ukrainian armed forces might just break Russian morale leading to a military victory by late autumn.
The Forum welcome more than fifty, mainly American, investors interested in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine and nearly 100 Ukrainians. The Ukrainian government fielded an impressive array of ministers and officials to explain both the current situation and the plans for the country’s future.
The remarkable youthfulness of the Ukrainian ministerial and official participants was striking. One key minister is just 32 years old, and at least half of the speakers were young women carrying huge responsibilities for sectors such as critical national infrastructure and arms supply. The adage that the first task in wartime is to clear out the dead wood could not be truer than in Ukraine.
Delegates also met veterans from the recent fighting. A 25-year-old medic, wounded in the early months, had just returned from having both his legs reconstructed abroad and was keen to get back to the front. A 63-year-old man was upset that a new limit of 60 years old has been imposed on military service. “I may not be able to carry an anti-tank missile,” he said, “but I am a really good shot with a rifle.” A female medic told of enduring 86 days during the siege of Mariupol followed by 5 months of Russian captivity that included occasional torture and a mock execution.
It’s not just for the President anymore. Cipher Brief Subscriber+Members have access to their own Open Source Daily Brief, keeping you up to date on global events impacting national security. It pays to be a Subscriber+Member.
In Ukraine, history is never far beneath the surface. The train journey from Poland took delegates down one of the lines of the German advance in 1941 and of the Soviet counter-offensive of 1944. By googling each station’s name, a litany of war crimes emerged. One building in Lviv was the scene of repeated atrocities against Ukrainians by successive Soviet and Nazi security services. The stunningly beautiful Ukrainian countryside conceals more mass graves than anywhere on earth.
Ukrainian attendees at the forum were conscious of this past but not cowed by it. One grandmother had taken her daughter to a mound outside her village – the site of a Holodomor burial pit from the early 1930s. The same woman served as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Soviet army and said she recognised the different sounds of a Messerschmitt and a Heinkel or a Dornier. Others in her village initially welcomed the German invaders as a means of escaping Stalin’s brutal repressions. In history, Ukrainians have never had good choices until the referendum on independence in December 1991, followed by the Orange Revolution in 2004, the Euromaidan movement in 2011 and the resistance to the 2022 invasion.
There is a danger of thinking too much about the history and the risks and imposing too many restrictions on Ukraine’s freedom to defend itself. The West has been reluctant to clarify its war aims for fear of exposing fissures between the more robust northern Europeans and their more cautious southern counterparts. The objectives should be simple:
- to help Ukraine recover all its territory, including Crimea.
- to ensure that Russia can never invade Ukraine again.
- to rebuild Ukraine after the war.
In support of the first objective, the West has done well. Some argue that the Leopards and the F-16s should have been offered from the outset. In fact, it has been the incrementalism of the approach that has enabled the West to overcome, almost by osmosis, Putin’s various red lines. But each incremental step should have come quicker.
The second aim can only be achieved by agreeing to NATO membership for Ukraine. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum “assurances” proved insufficient in 2014, and the various Minsk agreements failed in 2022.
Article Five NATO protection is the only measure that will stop a future Russian leader from attempting additional incursions. One European diplomatic participant implored NATO to avoid “half measures” and to discuss full membership at the forthcoming Vilnius summit.
For the third aim, Ukraine will need to do more once the war is over. Investors will need more guarantees that their money and reputations will be safe. Vague claims that the oligarchs’ wealth and influence have been much diminished by the war are not sufficient. Indications of creeping authoritarianism and intolerance of dissent hardly help.
That said, the opportunities in Ukraine will be considerable not just for agriculture but also for new industries such as green energy. As in Israel, the constant threat of war has produced a world-class technology sector with opportunities in IT, cyber security, AI and in the military sphere (where Ukraine’s adaptation of drone technology has been spectacular).
Looking for a way to get ahead of the week in cyber and tech? Sign up for the Cyber Initiatives Group Sunday newsletter to quickly get up to speed on the biggest cyber and tech headlines and be ready for the week ahead. Sign up today.
Ukraine’s pervasive sense of optimism deserves international support. The G7 unity evident at the Hiroshima Summit was impressive and needs to remain equally firm even if things don’t go according to plan during the summer and autumn. There will be time-enough in the future for the compromises and deals by which international relations function.
Perhaps symbolically, one young forum attendee told of how she had relocated from Donetsk in 2014 to Kharkiv and then to Bucha, where she hid in a cellar during the atrocities in March 2022. The day before the conference, she said her parents successfully escaped from Russian occupied territory and reached the safety of Kyiv. Perhaps the beginning of more good news stories from Ukraine.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief and stay in the know on national and global security threats by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.
