Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating in no uncertain terms that world war three is possible. Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, who is also his country’s former top commander, has suggested that other countries can prepare by learning from what is happening in Ukraine. They certainly can. Better yet, by swiftly preparing their societies for a war like the one now raging in Ukraine, western countries can help prevent another world war.
Had institutions, companies and citizens not been so agile, Ukraine would be facing not just a brutal Russian invader but a collapsing society too
‘Is humanity ready to calmly accept the next war in terms of the scale of suffering? This time the Third World War? Free and democratic countries and their governments need to wake up and think about how to protect your citizens and their countries. We are ready to share all our knowledge’, Valery Zaluzhny told the Land Warfare Conference, held by the think tank, Rusi, earlier this week. Zaluzhny is, of course, not just Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK but also its former top commander: the general who led Ukraine’s efforts to push back the Russian invaders until he was dismissed in a power struggle earlier this year.
Until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western militaries had been training their Ukrainian counterparts to help Ukraine better repel Russia. When the invasion did came, Zaluzhny and his troops put this knowledge to good use – so good that Russia’s planned days-long ‘special military operation’ is still ongoing.
On the basis of logic, having launched one calamitous war of aggression should convince President Vladimir Putin that invasions are a bad idea. But Putin doesn’t operate on the basis of what we’d consider logic. Indeed, he may decide that invading another country serves his and Russia’s interests. World war three is no longer the impossibility it seemed even a few years ago. Britain must be ready for war in three years, General Sir Roly Walker, the UK’s new Chief of the General Staff, told the Land Warfare Conference: ‘It doesn’t matter how [the war in Ukraine] ends. I think Russia will emerge from it probably weaker objectively – or absolutely – but still very, very dangerous and wanting some form of retribution for what we have done to help Ukraine.’
The brutal invasion has given Ukrainian soldiers unparalleled battle expertise, not to mention experience in military logistics, the crucial art of getting soldiers and equipment to the right place at the right time. As Zaluzhny observed, today western armed forces can learn important lessons and insights from the very soldiers they themselves have been training.
Equally importantly, Ukraine has built extraordinary expertise in societal resilience. While countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland have well-functioning civil contingency agencies with broad mandates for emergency planning, two and a half years ago Ukraine found itself the victim of an invasion without a proper plan to keep civil society going. With Russia bombing their cities and marching into their towns, Ukrainians – institutions, companies, ordinary citizens – had to devise methods to make sure daily life didn’t collapse.
Since the invasion, Ukrainian Railways has performed miracles, keeping trains on the rails (and on time, too) and thus ensuring people and goods can be transported across the country. Schools have continued teaching children, including online and in makeshift locations like subway stations. In Kharkiv alone, local authorities have set up schools in five subway stations. Ordinary citizens have teamed up to look after vulnerable neighbours, care for animals left behind by fleeing compatriots and much else besides. (They even organise folk-dancing, theatre performances and ballet in bomb shelters.)
Ukraine’s private sector, for its part, has been tested in ways unimaginable even during Covid: ‘As the conflict escalated, two fundamental war challenges became clear: how to operate production or office facilities to ensure physical security of both people and equipment (cars, computers, and networks); and also how to reassure stakeholders, and particularly international suppliers, distributors and buyers, that the firms were still in existence and in operation,’ experts explain in a report published last September. The experts found that companies swiftly adapted to war. They introduced constant management update meetings, shifted production to safer countries and allowed remote work whenever possible. As a result, the Ukrainian economy has kept functioning.
Had institutions, companies and citizens not been so agile, Ukraine would be facing not just a brutal Russian invader but a collapsing society too, and that would have made the Russians’ task far easier. General Zaluzhny is right: Ukraine has invaluable defence lessons to share with the rest of us. Having strong military and civilian defence will not just be indispensable should world war three come: it could deter our adversaries too.
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