War may be politics by other means, but in Ukraine it has revealed the sort of politics usually kept hidden behind closed doors and bad metaphors. Strip away the noise and you are left with three projects colliding in broad daylight. Ukraine fighting to exist. The West trying to keep a workable security order. And Russia, a neo fascist oligarchic kleptocracy in full imperial cosplay, trying to drag its neighbours back into a world that expired with the fax machine.
Ukraine’s aim is brutally clear. Survival. Not the Westminster variety, where a minister claims the nation is doomed if they lose a junior post. Actual survival. If Ukraine loses, it does not get a stern editorial; it gets occupation, deportation and enforced amnesia. This is politics in its rawest form: fight or vanish.
Russia’s aim, by contrast, is a sort of historical pantomime with live ammunition. Putin wants satrapies because without them he has neither strategic depth nor a convincing bedtime story for the Russian public. The military logic is antique: Russia has been invaded from the west often enough that its security elites still think in terms of buffers and glacis, as if NATO cavalry might come clip-clopping across the steppe at any moment. In that world view, an independent Ukraine choosing Europe is not a sovereign decision; it is sabotage.
But the deeper logic is political. Putin’s regime is not held together by prosperity or democratic legitimacy. It survives on mythology. Russia is surrounded by enemies. The West is plotting. Only the great leader, bestriding his map like a slightly baffled colossus, can restore the rightful sphere. And a sphere, alas, requires subordinate countries to prove the point. Independent neighbours suggest weakness. Subdued neighbours suggest strength. A free and thriving Ukraine, especially one run by a Russian speaking comedian who chose democracy over the Kremlin, is therefore intolerable. It ruins the script.
And yes, resources sit in the wings, waving enthusiastically. Ukraine’s farmland is world class. Its iron ore, lithium and rare earth deposits would be helpful to an economy currently staggering around under sanctions. But minerals are not the core motivation. If this were a smash-and-grab raid for commodities, the Kremlin would not waste time insisting Ukrainians are not a real people. You do not need to erase a nationality in order to steal its lithium. You just need a compliant administration. What Putin wants is political dominion. The mineral wealth is a bonus prize.
Which brings us to the unavoidable comparison with the twentieth century’s other great enthusiasts for territorial revision. Hitler ranted endlessly about Bolsheviks while quietly adopting the same Soviet strategy: secure buffers, dominate neighbours, and justify it all with mystical talk of destiny. Putin has pulled the same trick in reverse. He shouts about fascists while borrowing the communist playbook on spheres of influence and mixing it with a strong dose of fascist pageantry. It is ideological pick-and-mix, held together by fear, oil revenues and a population conditioned to see borders as suggestions.
The West’s aim, naturally, is less theatrical. It wants a Europe where big countries do not get to carve up smaller ones. Supporting Ukraine is not heroism; it is the budget option in a world where the premium alternative is fighting Russia later at ten times the cost. Deterrence is cheaper than war, even if certain corners of British politics prefer waving the Union Flag and shouting about migrants to grasping that dull little truth.
So the Ukraine war, viewed without the filters of propaganda, is the meeting point of three imperatives. A nation fighting to live. A regime fighting to preserve its myth. And a continent trying to avoid replaying the bit of the 1930s that ends badly.
Everything else is embroidery from people who think geopolitics is something you learn from memes.
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