The Four Horseman of the Ukraine’s Ruin 2.0
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an expert analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com
Cross-posted from Russian & Eurasian Politics
As I wrote nearly two years ago, the Western strategy of NATO expansion to Ukraine at all costs is leading to a second Ukrainian ‘Ruin.’ There are four Western deceptions and lost opportunities for ending Ukraine‘s violence that have led Ukraine to slaughter. These are the four horsemen of the Ukrainian apocaplypse or its Second Great Ruin or Ruin 2.0.
First was the violation of February 21, 2014 agreement between Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the Ukrainian opposition of the Maidan to pull back both demonstrators and police and hold early presidential elections late in 2014. Instead of seeing this agreement through, the neofascist wing oft he Maidan opposition carried out a snipers‘ terrorist attack killing both demonstrators and Berkut security police leading to the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, who was blamed by the Maidan opposition and the West for the shootings. The West hailed the putsch as democratic “revolution of dignity“ and never mentioned the February agreement; one brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to then Polish Foreign Minister and agreement participant, Radek Sikorski. Russia responded by giving the West a taste of its own medicine by supporting separatist actors in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Kiev responded by declaring an “anti-terrorist operation“ that began the Ukrainian civil war, bringing Russian troops into Donbass to protect the pro-Russian separatists.
Second were the violations of the Russo-Ukrainian Minsk agreements. This was nothing other than a Minsk Fake or Feint, which, as numerous Western and Ukrainian officials acknowledged, the Putin-Poroshenko Minsk ceasefire accords were used to buy time for building up Ukraine’s army for an assault on Crimea and Donbass. Thus, the civil war did not end but persisted, with Kiev inflicting more than 10,000 casualties on Donbass civilians in 2015-2021.
Third came the U.S. violation of Joseph Biden’s December 2021 promise to Putin that the US and NATO would not deploy cruise missiles in Ukraine. Instead of holding tot hat promise made in a Biden-Putin phone call, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the US was withdrawing that promise, opening up the possibility of deploying conventional and/or nuclear cruise missiles in Ukraine, with flight times to Moscow of minutes. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, requiring Putin to undertake a military response to the Ukrainian crisis on 24 February 2022—the so-called “unprovoked and full-scale attack on Ukraine.“ Fourth and finally, (4) the Western scuttling of the Russo-Ukrainian Istanbul agreement to end Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Much has now been written about this, so I will not repeat the details here; I will only provide a link to all the sources, confirming this (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1746596120971673766.html; see also https://x.com/i_katchanovski/status/1750362694949966291?s=51&t=n5DkcqsvQXNd3DfCRCwexQ; and www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=8229337113762769&set=a.117187214977840).
These “four horsemen” and that which they have been intended to facilitate – NATO expansion – are the causes of “Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine“ and hence Ukraine’s apocalyptic Second Great Ruin — Turn 2.0.
Western strategy of gradual escalation — if it is a strategy and not just ad hoc, knee jerk reaction — has turned Ukraine into the sacrificial lamb on the altar of NATO expansion. The destiny of the West’s persistence in escalating in order to level a “strategic defeat against Russia” can be seen in the proposal of some of its officials, according to the New York Times, to ‚return‘ nuclear weapons to Ukraine (www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/politics/trump-russia-ukraine-war.html). This would end either in a pre-emptive Russian nuclear or massive conventional strike that would complete the process of the Second Great Ruin — total destruction of the Ukrainian state if not people — a far greater Ruin then the first incarnation.
The Ukrainian Ruin 1.0
The great Cossack ‘Ruin’, which like Cossack legacies themselves have been appropriated by modern day Ukrainians by dint of its occurrence on Cossack lands, was a period of civil war, anarchy, chaos, and devastation nurtured by foreign powers’ interventions. In many ways, it resembles Russia’s ‘Smuta’ or Time of Troubles of seven-eight decades earlier, which combined chaos, internal conflict, and foreign, mostly Polish intervention. The 17th century great ‘Ukrainian’ or Cossack ‘Ruin’, which lasted from the death of Cossack Hetman Bodgan Khmelnitskiy in 1657 until the rise of the next great hetman, Ivan Mazepa, in 1687. Khmelnitskiy led the dominant Zaporozhian Cossacks to sign the 1654 Pereslavl Treaty, which brought many Cossack lands under Russian sovereignty. But chaos and destruction were sewn through political machinations, violent raiding, and full-scale attacks by Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, and the Crimean Tatar Khanate, occasionally backed by Sweden in order to contest Russian and Cossack sovereignty. In particular, the Polish-Russian War (1654-1667) sparked by the Pereslavl treaty generated much of the conflict and dislocation of the Ruin. Other wars raged across what is today Ukraine: the Ukrainian-Polish war (1666-1671), the Ukrainian-Moscow war (1665-1676), and the Polish-Turkish war (1672-1676), with various Cossack groups joining and changing sides often enough.
At the same time, Russia’s protection and presence, combined with the pressure from other ‘Others’, especially the hated Poles, formed a contrast against which a Cossack identity began to be consolidated across a broader swathe of the population on both sides of the Dniepr. The Russian attempt to subdue and organize the Cossacks, who had declared their loyalty to the tsar, violated Cossack traditions of decentralization, anarchic freedom, lack of rule of law, and a resulting internecine conflict and violence. Discontent with and internal disagreements over Russian rule fueled further conflict between those who supported and opposed it. Additional internal tensions were driven by conflict between non-Catholic nobles and the Cossack officer class or ‘starshina’ over new, ownerless lands seized from Poland and comprising some 50 percent of Cossack territory. The fighting over these lands divided the poor peasantry from rich, landed Cossacks.
But most unsettling was the fighting between Russia and Poland over Cossack territories, with Poland struggling to control the ‘right’ or western bank Ukraine and Russia usually the ‘left’ or eastern bank. This forced Cossack hetmen, starshina, and ‘society’ to split between these and other outside forces, leading to internal power struggles, constantly shifting allegiances that pitted Cossack against Cossack as well as Cossacks against outsiders. The Ruin’s consequences included: the division of Cossack (Ukrainian) lands by Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Ottoman Turkey, Polish-controlled right bank Ukraine’s loss of more than half of its inhabitants many of them to the Russian controlled left bank, and the mass devastation of Cossack settlements. It was not until the end of Catherine the Great’s reign, when the left bank Cossacks lost the limited autonomy they had enjoyed under the Pereslavl Treaty, that Cossackdom’s entire left bank and much of the right bank lands were stabilized and integrated into the Russian Imperial system.
The Ukrainian Ruin 2.0
Now, the Second Ukrainian Ruin is here. In addition to the human, social, political, and economic destruction reminiscent of The Ruin I, the country possibly is facing a similar partition, perhaps by several states, and incorporation of large areas into Russia. The Western media is only just beginning to report what I have been predicting and demonstrating for more than a year: that Ukraine’s army will dissolve and that any attempts to keep the losing proposition that is Kiev’s continued participation in the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is driving the deep schism in Maidan Ukraine that risks regime, state and social collapse.
The human factor is the most disturbing. Ukrainian casualties (deaths and wounded unable to return to the battle) easily exceed 650,000 and could rise to 1 million by year’s end. Surveys by Ukraine’s Kyiv International Institute of Sociology for the U.S. Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute this summer revealed that 77 per cent of respondents have lost during the war family members, friends or acquaintances, four times as many as two years earlier. 22% of respondents said they have lost a relative. Two-thirds said they were finding it difficult or very difficult to live on their wartime income (https://archive.is/Ylpt9#selection-4781.0-4785.257). The Ukrainian fertility rate is the world’s lowest, and few Ukrainians who left the country intend to return. The country could be left with less than 20 million by war’s end, whenever that may be – likely late this year or early next year. Socially, both domestic and street violence (against military and police mobilizers) is increasing, and the mobilization of all men aged 24 and above into the military is destroying families. . A social explosion and political revolt against ‘Zemobilization’, as it is called by the populace, is but a gunshot away. As it stands, there now appears to be an organized anti-mobilization movement that is burning mobilizers’ vehicles on a nightly, sometimes mass basis. The number of Ukrainian external and internal refugees is almost equal to the domestic population.
Economic dislocation is set to further grind the country to a halt. Its economy has shrunk several times over and is now around $200 billion in size. Ten percent of Ukrainians report they have insufficient funds to buy food (https://ctrana.news/news/475204-kakomu-kolichestvu-ukraintsev-ne-khvataet-deneh-dazhe-na-produkty-opros-.html). This is more than a hundred times smaller than the US economy and several times smaller than its military budget. Government spending doubles revenues. Thus, borrowing has become Ukraine’s mode of financial and economic survival: $58 billion in 2022, $46 billion in 2023 and likely $52 billion this year. Western governments are sufficiently strapped so as to be pushing an unworkable and illegal plan to use $300 billion in confiscated Russian assets to finance an economic aid package.
Kiev was on the verge of default as of late July, but a July 22nd preliminary deal put off doomsday. Nevertheless, instead of the 40 percent debt reduction requested by Kiev, investors led by JP Morgan agreed to a $20 billion hit, restructuring the debt payments. Kiev committed itself in the bargain to reduce (!) its debt/GDP ratio to 82 percent by 2028 and 65 percent by 2033. That ratio is currently at nearly 100 percent, and the risk of a default is 60 percent next year and as much as 80 percent the next (https://t.me/rezident_ua/23323). However, Ukraine’s debt is mounting despite additional loans from some of its creditors. For example, While the deal with IMF will provide $1.1 billion, according to the final deal worked out in September, Ukraine must re-pay the IMF just over $2 billion by year’s end (https://ctrana.news/news/471849-ukraina-vyplatit-mvf-po-dolham-bolshe-chem-poluchit-po-novomu-kreditu.html). At the same time, Ukraine’s Central Bank has been devaluing its currency, the grivna. Over the last six months it has lost some 10 percent of its value, forcing even great money printing which will increase inflation woes.
Meanwhile, the corrupt Maidan regime – one of the most corrupt in the world – is adding a kind of official corruption to the numerous schemes for unofficial corruption, including such war-related schemes, such as salaries for dead soldiers, bribes to avoid the draft, and skimming of weapons’ production and supplies needed at the front. The official scheme is that on the background of the ravages of war and economic and social dislocation, the Maidan government is planning large pay hikes for bureaucrats, despite there numerous opportunities for profiteering through unofficial corruption. For example, in the 2025 budget, the Verkhovna Rada’s apparat is getting a 26 percent salary increase, the Cabinet of Ministers – 20 percent, the specialized anticorruption procuracy – 71 percent, the Economic Security Bureau – 75 percent, the National Commission for Bonds and Bond market – 50 percent, the General Procuracy – 26 percent, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau – 28 percent, the Accounting Chamber – 38 percent, the Tax Police – 39 percent, the Customs Service 15 percent (https://ctrana.news/news/472335-v-sledujushchem-hodu-v-hosorhanov-vyrastut-zarplaty.html).
The war is driving businesses into the ground. Shortages of electricity and the mobilization of all men over the age of 24 is forcing hundreds of businesses to shut down (https://t.me/rezident_ua/23326). This downward trend will intensify as the result of a recently mandated audit of vital enterprises during which some 10 percent of enterprises lost such status and tens of thousands of men lost draft-exempt status and so will be sent from the workplace to the front (https://ctrana.news/news/475288-posledstvija-audita-predprijatij-v-ukraine.html). A signature event symbolising the devastating and destabilising effect of mass, coercive military mobilization is having on Ukraine is the recent cancellation of a popular pop singer’s concert because her entire band was mobilized (https://ctrana.news/news/475307-olha-tsibulskaja-otmenila-kontsert-iz-za-mobilizatsii-muzykantov.html). Yet Zelenskiy himself has acknowledged that there is a “personnel crisis” in both the private and public sector due to war casualties (www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/11/17/7484951/).
Ukraine is about to see the last vestiges of its vital and once vaunted metallurgical and coal industries disappear. The loss of Mariupol to Russian forces in 2023 meant the loss of approximately half (estimates range from 40-66 percent) of Ukraine’s metallurgy industry and most of its coal and other raw materials mining capacity—key ones for the country (www.epravda.com.ua/rus/publications/2024/11/14/721795/). What remains of Ukraine’s metallurgical and coal industries have become ever since almost totally reliant on its plants and mines in and around Pokrovsk and a few other smaller ones elsewhere. Now, with the loss of Pokrovsk imminent around the New Year will almost completely eliminate Ukraine’s metallurgical and coal industries, as the coking coal needed for them are almost entirely processed in and near the town to its west (www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2024/10/25/721007/). This means other industries will lack the steel and other metal products needed for manufacturing, including military production. Oleksandr Kalenkov, president of the association of enterprises “Ukrmetallurgprom” says the only remaining mines, those “mines in the west of Ukraine, in the Lviv region,…(do not provide) the volumes that could satisfy our enterprises. The deposits and mining there are very small, scarce, so they, unfortunately, cannot be a substitute….We are talking about a few percent (of Ukraine’s mines as of 2014), so these are insignificant volumes and they will not save the situation” (www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2024/10/25/721007/).The war has led to a shortage of fresh water and other resources needed to preserve harvested fruits and vegetables, with losses estimated at 40-60 percent this year (https://www.epravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/11/14/721831/).
Moreover, Russian military power has destroyed perhaps 60 percent of Ukraine’s energy-generating capacity and could well destroy 100 percent. EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson reported in August that as a result of Russian attacks and captures Ukraine has lost 9 Gigawatts (GW) of productive energy power, comprising approximately half of the energy supply Ukraine will need for the coming winter. He warns of an impending „catastrophe“ unless the West can help repair damaged infrastructure, supply small generators to facilitate decentralization, install solar panels of hospital and school rooftops, and increase energy exports to Ukraine (www.ft.com/content/75649cf7-b40d-45da-94d0-6a571308f74b). According to the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), there will be electricity blackouts across Ukraine this winter lasting variably from 4-18 hours daily. The Mission’s leader Daniel Bell warns that the longer cutoffs could lead to „catastrophic consequences“ (www.epravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/09/19/719547/). A leading Ukrainian energy expert assesses that if two of Ukraine’s remaining atomic energy stations are disabled, the country would be plunged into a universal blackout (https://ctrana.news/news/475053-kohda-v-ukraine-mozhet-nastupit-blekaut-i-skolko-on-prodlitsja.html).
Given widespread shortages in every sphere, Kiev is being driven into hyper-dependence on the West and its global institutions, crippling Ukraine’s state sovereignty for years if not decades to come. The Ukrainian state, including the military and police, and much of its economy are funded by Western states and private bondholders, saddling the country with massive debt. For example, it must continue to auction away large state assets to the highest foreign bidders – such as large swathes of Ukrainian territory to Blackrock.
The military mobilization passed and being carried out this year with such a debilitating effect on the economy and society is failing to replace current losses at the front with completely inexperienced recruits with low to no morale (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8yMTGKURYU). There are reportedly no more volunteers, and by spring some Ukrainian officials report the situation will be irretrievable. Moreover, desertions from the Ukrainian military, ignored in the Western media for three years, have recently been revealed to have exceeded 100,000 since the war began. Moreover, more than half those desertions have occurred this year alone (https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0). This would amount to perhaps more than 10 precent of the Ukrainian army. Almost all new recruits are old or unmotivated, The Economist reports (https://ctrana.one/news/475629-nekhvatka-soldat-v-vsu-stanet-kritichnoj-vesnoj-the-economist.html). Most recently, Western governments have reportedly been pressuring Kiev to extend the mobilization to the age cohort of 18-25, which would bring a near catastrophic demographic collapse to a population already depleted by some 30 percent because of war deaths and emigration (https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-biden-draft-08e3bad195585b7c3d9662819cc5618f). Already many men are fleeing the country in greater numbers in order to avoid Ukraine’s desperate and draconian forced mobilization measures, sometimes at great risk to their lives and to sociopolitical stability.
Meanwhile, discipline in the military is eroding. Commanders are reporting that 90 percent of their troops on there frontlines are new, coercively mobilised men (https://ctrana.news/news/475190-v-vsu-sejchas-vojujut-v-osnovnom-zhiteli-sel-horodskim-lehche-sprjatatsja-ot-ttsk.html). Thus, morale is low, and unauthorised retreats are increasing in frequency. Ukrainians soldiers are refusing to carry out operational orders because they amount to suicide operations and are beginning to surrender as whole units, in one case nearly a full battalion (e.g., 92nd Combat). Indeed, refusals to follow orders or undertake counteroffensive measures are increasing. In one recent case, the Azov Brigade’s chief of staff, Bogdan Koretich, accused a Ukrainian general of such poor command that he was described of being resonsible for more Ukrainian war dead than the Russians, forcing his removal (www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/06/24/7462293/). At lower levels, commanders are being fired in large numbers (https://strana.news/news/467266-itohi-852-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html).
With the front collapsing and the army on the verge of dissolving, Zelenskiy’s post-Maidan regime is deeply divided and in danger of dissolution, which could bring state collapse, internecine warfare, and widespread chaos. Ukrainians’ trust in Mr Zelensky has fallen, from 80% in May 2023 to 45% a year later, according to America’s National Democratic Institute (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/26/ukraine-is-on-the-defensive-militarily-economically-and-diplomatically), and have continued to fall. Thus, the most recent Ukrainian opinion poll by the Social Monitoring Center in Kiev shows that only 16 percent of Ukrainians are prepared to vote for Zelenskiy in any future presidential election, and 60 percent would prefer he did not run. At the same time, Zelenskiy-dismissed, former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy would lead in any such election and be backed by 27 percent, according to the poll (www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/zelensky-popularity-poll-fallen-three-years-war-stzqf5bpn). According to the Presidential Office’s earlier in-house opinion polls as well, Zelenskiy today would lose a presidential election to Zaluzhniy. The fired general registers as Ukraine’s most popular political and military figure, according to other recent polls (https://ctrana.news/news/459385-opros-o-politicheskikh-simpatijakh-k-zaluzhnomu-rezultaty.html). In trust ratings, Zelenskiy has fallen to third place – after Zaluzhny and the head of military intelligence (HRU) Kirill Budanov, whom the President’s Office is now trying to fire (https://ctrana.news/articles/analysis/475099-kak-skladyvajutsja-otnoshenija-trampa-i-ukrainskoj-vlasti-.html). Most recently, Zelenskiy was forced to conduct a purge of the state guard service after a plot to assassinate him and other officials, including military intelligence (HRU) chief Kyrylo Budanov was uncovered inside this organ created to protect the Ukrainian president (www.reuters.com/world/europe/zelenskiy-orders-purge-state-guard-after-assassination-plots-2024-06-24/). Despite the forced hibernation of Zaluzhniy in London, tensions are again escalating between Zelenskiy and the military. For example, Zaluzhniy has criticized Zelenskiy’s failing and soon to be disastrous Kursk incursion into Russia.
Zelenskiy’s Rada attack dog, deputy Mariana Bezuglaya, has been conducting a campaign against Zaluzhniy’s successor Sergei Syrskiy, accusing him of incompetence and using “Soviet” “authoritarian methods” (https://strana.news/news/467266-itohi-852-dnja-vojny-v-ukraine.html). Even as Zelenskiy resists peace talks and Western military and financial assistance begin to fade, the exhausted populace is now ready to sue for peace. Polling by Ukraine’s Kyiv International Institute of Sociology for the U.S. Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute this past summer showed that 57 per cent of respondents believe Ukraine should engage in peace talks with Russia, up from 33 per cent a year earlier (https://archive.is/Ylpt9#selection-4781.0-4785.257). Zelenskiy’s refusal, though weakening, risks a final political isolation, leading to his fall and perhaps political chaos.
Finally, the strategic escalation between Moscow and the West as reflected most recently by the latter’s supply to Ukraine of intermediate-range missiles and the former’s use of a new hypersonic, MIRVed intermediate ballistic missile, Oreshnik, is further destroying Ukraine and risks a penultimate blow. In conditions of high escalation, Putin is unlikely to choose striking the West with nuclear or even the new Oreshnik. Rather, he likely would opt if deemed necessary to attack Ukraine with a tactical nuclear missile.
CONCLUSION
The U.S. and NATO continue to escalate a war that only serves to use Ukraine as sacrificial lamb on the altar of NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and elsewhere. In response, Moscow is on the verge of levelling a debilitating attack on Ukraine using its revolutionary Oreshkin missile and other advanced weapons. At the same time, Russia’s ground forces are advancing on the ground at an accelerating pace as I suggested would be the case a year ago. All this is happening on the background of a renewed Russian air campaign crippling Ukraine’s already decimated energy sector. In the new Ukrainian Ruin it becomes very possibly for a fully ruined Ukraine. The material, social, and economic destruction is accompanied by the growing risk of regime and state meltdown. With no presidential elections as long as the war lasts, the only ways to put an end to the war are illegal forms of regime or leadership change. Zelenskiy’s survival may well be in jeopardy if defeat in the war persists and/or negotiations bring the same result as the Istanbul agreement he jettisoned in April 2022. A coup could further divide the country and army, bringing chaos on a scale unknown in Europe since the beginning of the last century.
It is because of all of the mounting Ruin II that Zelenskiy and others are now putting out peace plans — cautious feelers — for getting peace talks with Moscow underway (https://strana.news/news/469756-perehovory-kieva-i-moskvy-kohda-zakonchitsja-vojna-rossii-i-ukrainy.html). The press of war on state and society is destroying Ukraine’s unstated ‘social contract’ between state and society, which allowed Ukraine’s semi-anarchic disunity to hold shakily together since at least the Maidan (https://t.me/stranaua/128628 and https://t.me/stranaua/153704). They smell their own blood in the water and know the sharks are out there soon to strike. Whether the greatest threat to Zelenskiy’s version of Maidan governance is the neofascists, military, secret police (HRU or SBU), a political palace coup, or a public uprising, given his declining approval ratings, is anyone’s guess. All could play a role in the downfall of Zelenskiy and the present Maidan regime. But it is almost a sure thing that the people who are most likely to seize power in the event will do so at the barrels of guns. Some may rise up to end the war, but the rather numerous neofascists and ultranationalists will do so in order to keep it simmering, there is little prospect for unity and stability in any post-war rump Ukraine. This problem will fall to Russia and the West, perhaps in different geographical zones and ways and could very well be used by either to prolong the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War by means other than conventional war. Partisan war, terrorism, and even nuclear war may lurk over the horizon as Ukraine’s Second Great Ruin churns.
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