It is difficult to imagine peace during war. This is particularly true at present when Russia has dug in for a long war and continues to target drones and missiles on Ukrainian cities, killing and maiming civilians and inflicting untold damage on the country’s economy.
Understandably, many Ukrainians fear not just a long war, but a potentially ‘endless’ war. As the Russian historian Sergei Medvedev has observed, Russia finally found its ultimate national idea after a search lasting three decades – since the collapse of the USSR – and that idea is war.
For today’s Russian authorities, war is a tool for preserving the cohesion of society and ensuring the legitimacy of their rule even if this requires increased repression. However, although the Putin regime is brittle like most personal autocracies that lack reliable mechanisms for succession, the country appears far from a situation comparable to 1917 when war weakened Tsar Nicolas II’s grip on power and made revolution unstoppable. On the surface, Russia appears both equipped and motivated to continue the war for several years if necessary.
The risk of a long war for Ukraine is that the country will struggle to consolidate the peace that finally emerges because of the long-term damage to its human and social capital from deaths, migration and trauma, not to mention the destruction and dislocation of its key economic assets.
Predictions are not the purpose of this paper. It considers instead how the war might stop or end, and the condition Ukraine will be in when this point is reached. It seeks to identify the practical challenges that post-war Ukraine is likely to face and how these could impact its future security and stability.
The strategic challenge that will confront Ukraine when martial law is lifted is whether the country will be able to maintain sufficient unity and resolve to strengthen its institutions and create the level of economic growth that will allow it to recover and defend itself against future attack. Ukraine will need to restore a functioning parliamentary-presidential system in line with its constitution, including reactivating checks and balances between and within the branches of power, ensuring media freedom and full access to public information as well as decentralizing authority.
To rebuild the economy and create the underlying strength to resist further Russian aggression, Ukraine must dismantle the deeply entrenched system of crony capitalism (systema) that was such a strong brake on consolidating the country’s independence from the mid-1990s up to 2022.
