Ukraine: presidents at large

By Richard North - February 22, 2023

You wait all year for a president and then two turn up at the same time, Putin in Moscow and Biden at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. At least, Biden’s speech was mercifully short. Putin’s, on the other hand, has been published in sections and is not yet complete on the Kremlin website.

In a sense, they’re two very different speeches. Biden’s is very much focused on the Ukraine war. Putin, apart from justifying the Russian invasion, interweaves his with a sort of “state of the federation” report, which goes to explain in part its added length.

When assessing the speeches of UK politicians, it’s quite common to weigh every word and ponder over the precise meanings and nuances, and then to evaluate the content, not only for what is said, but what isn’t said – the latter sometimes being the more significant message.

I think it’s fairly safe to venture that this process can be applied to the speeches of US presidents. What is said can be taken literally, and omissions can set the tone for the entire speech.

With that, there can be no doubt that Biden doesn’t want a shooting war with Russia, and he is at pains to make that point. “The United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to control or destroy Russia”, he says. “The West was not plotting to attack Russia … and millions of Russian citizens who only want to live in peace with their neighbours are not the enemy”.

“This war was never a necessity; it’s a tragedy”, Biden goes on to say, putting the responsibility for it firmly in the Russian president’s court. “President Putin chose this war”, he says. “Every day the war continues is his choice. He could end the war with a word. It’s simple. If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war”.

In what may then be a highly nuanced statement, he adds that, “If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine”, declaring that: “That’s why, together, we’re making sure Ukraine can defend itself”.

In a direct swipe at Putin, he tells his audience: “Autocrats only understand one word: No. No. No.” That’s three words, but never mind. We know what Biden is getting at, especially when he says: “No, you will not take my country. No, you will not take my freedom. No, you will not take my future”.

He then repeats what he said last year, when he gave a speech in the same place in Warsaw. “A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease [erase] the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine – Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never”.

In what appears to be a recognition of a long war, Biden forecasts that, “As Ukraine continues to defend itself against the Russian onslaught and launch counter-offensives of its own, there will continue to be hard and very bitter days, victories and tragedies”.

In a rush of rhetoric, he then consoles us with the thought that “Ukraine is steeled for the fight ahead”. And, he says, “the United States, together with our Allies and partners, are going to continue to have Ukraine’s back as it defends itself”.

Getting towards the peroration, the president expresses the view that the world is “at an inflection point”, warning that, “the decisions we make over the next five years or so are going to determine and shape our lives for decades to come”. That’s true, he says, “for Americans. It’s true for the people of the world”.

The decisions to make, he asserts, amount to a choice between captivity and freedom, prompting a commercial break to promote the concept of freedom – “the enemy of the tyrant and the hope of the brave and the truth of the ages”.

“Freedom”, he concludes. “Stand with us. We will stand with you”, he declares, calling on his audience to “move forward with faith and conviction and with an abiding commitment to be allies not of darkness, but of light. Not of oppression, but of liberation. Not of captivity, but, yes, of freedom”.

That an American president speaks up in favour of freedom isn’t exactly news, but what stands out for me is the references to helping Ukraine defend itself, and having its “back” when it does so. But in his one reference Ukraine launching “counter-offensives”, Biden talks of them being “of its own”.

I maybe reading far too much into this but my take home point is that, in seeking to reassure Russia that the US holds no hostile intent towards it, Biden will support Ukraine’s defence of itself, but will not directly assist its recovery of occupied territories.

What makes an interesting comparison is the speech by Franklin Roosevelt in March 1941 – before the US entered the war – when he talks about mobilising industry, calling not merely for a defence of democracy, but “nothing short of an all-out effort” to win. He calls for the effort to be sustained “until the victory is won”, and tells the world that “aid will be increased, and yet again increased until total victory has been won”.

Eighty years on, Biden’s only reference to “victory” is in the context of denying it to Russia. Never once does he talk of Ukraine’s victory, much less total victory. The entire focus is on defence – there is no sense, as was conveyed by Roosevelt in his time, of “winning” the war.

“Unless we win”, Roosevelt said back in 1941, “there will be no freedom”. Nothing of this comes from Biden. His freedom is the absence of captivity.

Interestingly, when it comes to Putin, we also seem to have a lack of ambition for victory – insofar as his speech can be read literally. “We are not at war with the people of Ukraine”, the Russian president says.

“The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources”.

The “neo-Nazis” have but one ambition, to deprive Russia of the “historical territories that are now called Ukraine. This is their goal”, the repeat of an historical objective. Back in in the 1930s, and now, Putin says, the design remains the same and it is to direct aggression to the East, to spark a war in Europe, and to eliminate competitors by using a proxy force.

To that effect, the West expedited the implementation of this project today by supporting the 2014 coup. “That was”, he said, “a bloody, anti-state and unconstitutional coup. They pretended that nothing happened, and that this is how things should be. They even said how much money they had spent on it. Russophobia and extremely aggressive nationalism formed its ideological foundation”.

Putting the disparate elements of the two speeches together, it would seem that Putin’s primary objective is the destruction of the Kiev regime, following which – one assumes – he will regard the threat to Russia as contained. On the other hand, Biden is taking about defence – essentially defence of the Kiev regime.

What we seem to have is rock meeting hard place. There is no clearly articulated ambition from either side to end this war, seeking an expeditious decision. We heard two presidents, essentially, commit to a long, brutal war with no decisive outcome. Nobody wins, but nobody loses.

And if that amounts to conjecture, it also matches the facts on the ground. The US and the other Western allies have so far refused to commit the materiel and support needed to force a decision on the battlefield – Roosevelt’s “total victory”.

On the other side, Putin’s forces seem to have neither the resources nor the capability to conquer and occupy the whole of Ukraine and, in any case, Zelensky’s supporters will ensure that that never happens. But the strain of a prolonged, albeit inconclusive, war could bring down the “Kiev regime”, by dint of destroying Ukraine’s economic capacity to function as a nation.

Whatever the nuances, however, I think that what we saw and heard yesterday pointed to a declaration of perpetual war. No one could be confident that there is an end in sight.