The War Over Ukraine

In February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine, restoring and strengthening Ukraine’s sovereignty reemerged as a top U.S. and EU foreign policy priority. Since then, NATO allies and partners have dramatically increased defense, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine – including over $75 billion worth of military equipment, such as Leopard tanks and air-defense systems – while ratcheting up sanctions on Russia.

Nine months into the war, Ukraine’s forces have had battlefield setbacks but are still able to hold their ground. Despite Russia’s efforts to distract attention from battlefield losses by increasing missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, most Ukrainians remain determined to resist and to fight until victory. The Finns have a word for that fierce combination of will and determination: sisu. Ukraine’s freedom fighters have sisu, too.

Putin’s core aim – indeed, his obsession – is to erase the idea of Ukraine, its identity, its people, its culture, its agency, and its territory. But his actions have the opposite effect: They have fueled Ukrainians’ determination to write their own futures on their own terms. Millions of them have rejected the anti-Ukrainian project and have been punished for their choice. They have been slandered, intimidated, and even criminalized for their refusal to renounce Ukraine’s national identity or to join the Russian-led political bloc of separatists and neo-Nazis. It will take years, if not decades, to overcome the enmity that has been sown in Ukraine.