Doubting Ukraine’s counter- offensive undermines its heroic resistance: A response to Adam Creighton

Ukrainian flags placed on statues in a square in Balakliya, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Adam Creighton asks why can’t we be honest about Ukraine’s counteroffensive, but his analysis shows a very basic and patronising misunderstanding of the reality on the ground in Ukraine.

It has been more than 16 months since Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine and over nine years that Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and began its covert war in the Donbas. From a full-scale invasion Vladimir Putin thought would be done and dusted in five days, Russian losses have been significant; there is dissent in the Russian military ranks; and the Russians are facing severe shortages in weapons and manpower. Meanwhile, the morale of the Ukrainian Armed Forces remains high, with the counteroffensive continuing slowly but making incremental and real gains against heavily fortified positions, with additional Western air power soon to arrive.

Yet some in the West, such as Creighton, seem to be falling for old tropes and Russian disinformation – the West is to blame. This view ignores that Ukraine has taken a committed position.

As President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated, there can be no discussion about Europe without Ukraine, a country the size of France and with a population of 44 million people prior to Putin’s full-scale invasion. They ignore the fact Ukraine has faced Russian imperialism, cultural domination and aggression for over 300 years and is determined to throw off the chains of neo-colonialism.

Ukrainians understand that Putin’s dream of reuniting “Russian speakers” into a new version of the Russian Empire is as absurd as England reclaiming any part of the world where English is now spoken.

But even more importantly, having just returned from my fourth visit to Ukraine, the message is clear. Whether speaking to the Minister for Defence, Oleksiy Reznikov, soldiers in the armed forces, or to men, women and young people on the street, people were united. “We have reason to fight. What are Putin and his green men are fighting for? We have a purpose.”

That is the critical issue.

The spirit in Ukraine is high - the nation, supported by its allies, is in for the long haul. Ukrainians are fighting not just for territorial integrity and national identity but, first and foremost, for democratic values, to resist a bully, and to defeat evil.

The way Russia has fought this war has contributed to the deep aversion and rejection of the “Russian world” in Ukraine. Planting of mines, even in children’s playgrounds; kidnapping more than 16,000 children for “re-education”; the bombing of maternity hospitals, kindergartens and apartments, and; the launching of missiles during the day, which has seen children scrambling for shelter. All of these acts are listed as war crimes under the UN Convention and have underscored to Ukrainians there will be no Ukraine if Ukraine does not fight back.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky walking during his visit to the de-occupied city of Izyum, Kharkiv region.

Having been in Kyiv last year with Anthony Albanese, and having had some one-on-one time with him, his words after visiting the destruction of Irpin and Bucha resonate with me often: “How can one person do this to another person?” During one recent visit, I visited shelters repurposed by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations and Rotary to support some of the millions of displaced people in Ukraine. Speaking to a 92-year-old woman reflecting on her life, having lived through Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine (the Holodomor), the Second World War and, most recently, having her apartment bombed – she said to me: “We have to win. All will be good.” Or I recall the visit to a shelter housing 330 displaced people from Russian-occupied Luhansk where a young woman told me the children deserve a better life – her parting words were: “The next time we meet, we will be back in reclaimed Luhansk. It has to happen.”

And I was moved to hear John Whitehall, a pediatric surgeon from Sydney who recently visited Ukraine, describe his interaction with a young man this way: “In a final discussion with a young man in the rehabilitation hospital who sat with the stump of one leg propped over the arm of a wheelchair, with that of the other covered by short pyjamas, and who apologised for his poor script because he had also lost the arm with which he used to write, I asked what he would say in an open letter to Australia? His reply was immediate: ‘I would tell them we will fight to the death and request help to do it’.”

I raise these examples to give an insight into what Ukraine is fighting for. In the words of Winston Churchill, Ukraine has said: “Give us the tools and we will do the job.” I urge the international community to not stop now. Otherwise, we accept the lowest common denominator and settle for a world that allows a bully to trample on a rules-based order, justice and meaningful peace.

Stefan Romaniw is Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations co-chair and Ukrainian World Congress vice-president.