Creatix / July 29, 2025
Forget the quick fix. It’s time to think like the Russians do—long-term, strategically, and with ice in our veins. Obsession With a Quick End Is the Real Strategic Error
For years, the West has stumbled through fits of hope and frustration, believing that a sudden push—more weapons, a tighter sanction, a fiery speech—might topple Vladimir Putin or snap Russia back to the global community. But Putinism isn’t just a regime. It’s a system, a myth, and a national story deeply embedded in the Russian psyche.
Putin’s power isn’t just about bullets or ballots. It’s about illusion: the illusion of control, competence, and restored national greatness. The way to burst that bubble isn't with a spectacular knockout punch. It’s with a super long-term view for a strategic "endless" war of attrition. This is a military, economic, and psychological game framed in a timeless "forever".
The Long Game: A Blueprint for Victory
Rather than hoping for a peace deal in days, weeks, or months, what would most likely dry out support for Putin is to see the West preparing for a 100-year war. That doesn't mean endless bloodshed. It means an iron curtain of sustained pressure, smart containment, and a patient posture.
Here's why that strategy would work:
1. Military Stalemate Erodes the Myth of Invincibility
Putin built his brand on strength: Crimea, Syria, and ruthless domestic order. But a prolonged, inconclusive war in Ukraine makes him look not like Peter the Great, but like Brezhnev in Afghanistan or Nicholas II in WWI. It cracks the armor. Every funeral, every drone strike on Belgorod, every inch of territory lost and regained feeds the image of a faltering empire stuck in time while the world keeps making progress.
2. Economic Pressure Needs Time to Compound
Sanctions don’t work like lightning. They work like cancer. Effective economic sanctions are the ones that slowly erode the inner workings of the target economy. Short-term pain can be managed with propaganda. But decade-long stagnation? That’s when oligarchs reconsider their plans, and workers start whispering again.
3. Elite Patience Has a Breaking Point
Right now, Russian elites are betting that the West will blink first. They expect deals, fatigue, elections. But if the West signals it's willing to fund and arm Ukraine forever, the calculus shifts. A durable resistance is more dangerous than a desperate one.
4. The Russian People Need a Clear Alternative
A quick collapse often leads to chaos—see 1917, 1991. But a slow erosion gives time for an alternative narrative to take root. A Russia humiliated, isolated, and declining for decades will begin to question its course. That’s when new movements emerge, not against the authoritarian model preferred by Russians, but against the alpha male in charge. We're all primates. No primate leads forever.
Obsession With a Quick End Is the Real Strategic Error
Every time the West pins its hopes on a single offensive, a single summit, or a single scandal to “end this war,” it plays into Putin’s hands. He thrives in short-term chaos and long-term planning. The Russian state was built to endure suffering. However, it is not built to survive irrelevance and endless erosion of power.
The Path Forward: Elections in Ukraine
If Ukraine becomes a fortress of democracy at Russia’s border—armed, funded, and deeply integrated with the West for decades—it will haunt Putin’s regime far more than any failed offensive or fleeting negotiation ever could.
But Ukraine’s strength doesn’t come from weapons alone. Its real power lies in what Putin fears most: a thriving, legitimate democracy that works.
While Russia rigs elections, jails opponents, and silences dissent, Ukraine has the opportunity to show what the alternative looks like: a nation governed by its people, not its myths. That’s why holding elections in Ukraine—even amid war—is not just a democratic duty. It’s a geopolitical weapon.
Why Ukrainian Elections Matter More Than Ever
1. They Undermine Putin’s Propaganda
Putin sells Russians a lie: that democracy is chaotic, corrupt, and Western puppetry. But free and fair elections in Ukraine—despite bombs and hardship—send a clear message: real democracy endures, even in fire.
Each vote cast in Kyiv or Kharkiv exposes the hollow core of Putin’s regime and shows Russians what they’re missing.
2. They Cement Legitimacy at Home and Abroad
War can’t freeze political accountability. Ukraine’s leaders gain far more strength from earned legitimacy than from postponed authority. Elections show the world—and Ukrainians themselves—that they are not just surviving but governing.
It puts to rest any claims of authoritarian drift, and it aligns Ukraine’s moral high ground with tangible democratic process.
3. They Signal Endurance, Not Desperation
Authoritarian regimes fear elections because they represent vulnerability. Democracies hold them precisely because they represent strength. If Ukraine can successfully run national elections while under attack, it proves not just resilience, but institutional maturity.
It tells the world: we’re not waiting for peace to rebuild—we’re building democracy in defiance of tyranny.
4. They Galvanize Western Support
Let’s be honest: democratic values sell better to Western taxpayers than endless war. Elections keep Ukraine on moral and strategic footing. They reinforce that this is not just a territorial conflict, but a fight between autocracy and self-rule.
A war fought by a government elected by its people garners deeper, broader, and longer-lasting support from allies.
A Tactical and Moral Victory
In a long war, symbolism matters. An election in Ukraine isn't just ballots in boxes. It’s a direct challenge to everything Putin claims to stand for. It says:
"Even under siege, we believe in the will of the people. You rule by fear. We rule by consent."
If Ukraine can vote while Russia censors, conscripts, and collapses inward, the contrast becomes unignorable—not just for Western audiences, but for Russians themselves.
That’s how you win a 100-year war: not with blitzes, but with beacons.
Authoritarians don’t fall when others scream and shout. They fall when the ground beneath them rots away. And rot takes time.
Now you know it.
wwe.creatix.one
Comments
Post a Comment