Discovering Ukraine

Brian Bonner talks to his first homeland (USA) about his second homeland (Ukraine).

Discussing Ukraine’s future in St. Paul’s Downtowner

BY BRIAN BONNER

About 35 of us crowded into the back meeting room of St. Paul’s Downtowner restaurant on a Friday in early August to discuss the future of Ukraine and global security for almost two hours.

These weekly civic engagement confabs are organized by John Mannillo, a longtime developer and civic leader. The week before, I sat in on a lunchtime discussion in the same room about the walkability of St. Paul’s streets, particularly Grand Avenue, and why it’s important.

One of the great joys about being from St. Paul, where I worked from 1983-2007 for the Pioneer Press, is how much people care about the world around them—from their neighborhoods to faraway places. And this audience did not disappoint—they were up to speed on the news and knew history.

Thanks to Minnesotans, I discovered Ukraine. I led the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper, in 1999 and again from 2008 to 2021. It was started by Jed Sunden, a Macalester College graduate, who hired me twice. Victoria Sloan, retired from the U.S. State Department and my former editor at the Minnesota Daily, invited me to Ukraine 28 years ago this month to participate in a journalism exchange that the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was sponsoring.

That initial trip in 1996 sealed the deal for me. Ukraine would become my second home, but Minnesota – specifically St. Paul – would always be my first home.

I return to St. Paul every summer to stay in touch – and Mannillo’s events are among the stops I try to make. They allow me to reconnect with retired City Hall employees and former newsroom colleagues such as David Beal, Walt Parker, Bill Salisbury, and more. On this trip home, I encountered Minnesota friends doing great and ordinary things for Ukraine – welcoming refugees into their homes, donating money to charitable causes, or just staying informed.

While leaving the Q&A discussion, a car ahead of me sported the bumper sticker: “Keep St. Paul Boring.” I laughed. Yes, Minnesotans’ earnest discussions about parking meters and streetscapes can be as boring as some of the countless city council meetings I covered over the decades.

But Ukraine needs a lot more of that kind of boredom now. The war, frankly, could go many ways, many of them horrible. Much will hinge on the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.

There are three basic positions that the next president could take.

One is to ignore Ukraine and end military and financial support.

Another is to go all-in with the weapons and money needed to drive Russians out of the nearly 20% of Ukraine that they currently occupy.

And a third is to keep with the current policy of U.S. President Joe Biden – giving Ukraine enough to stay in the fight, but not enough to win. That policy has brought us to where we are today – something of a deadlock with an increasing death toll and financial costs.

I am in the hawkish camp. The costs of Ukraine losing to Russia will be huge, in terms of emboldening autocrats around the world (which we already are seeing) and in the defense spending that it will take to deter and isolate the Kremlin and other autocrats. The West did not stop Vladimir Putin in Chechnya, Georgia or Syria, and there’s no reason to believe the Kremlin leader will be satisfied with just conquering Ukraine – which he regards as part of Russia -- in his quest to reassemble an empire.

Russia is not invincible. Russia has lost wars and can do so again. Ukrainians have the advantage of fighting for their homeland. They are also supplying all of the soldiers who are doing the fighting and dying – and this is important.

As an American in Kyiv, I have thought a lot about the circumstances under which the United States should support wars in other countries. If the nation we are trying to help does not have a military willing to fight, there is no way that America can win – our ill-fated adventures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan showed that. Moreover, if the nation we are trying to help does not have a functioning government, democratic elections, an engaged civic society and a reasonably free press, our involvement will likely ultimately prove futile. Ukraine meets all these criteria and more.

But Ukraine also must do more. For all President Volodymyr Zelensky has done right since the “Big War” started in 2022, the Ukrainian leader has botched the manpower issue, among others.

Ukrainians until recently did not draft fighting-age men into the military until age 27. While the age of conscription has since been lowered to 25, it’s not enough. Russia takes men at age 18 – so should Ukraine if it wants to keep its country, 20 at the maximum. Ukraine’s mistake has left it with a worn-out army suffering high casualties (though not nearly as high as Russia) with an average age in its early 40s. It is hard to see how Ukraine will regain its lost territory without a continually big stream of fresh troops -- trained, armed and financed with the help of its Western allies. It has the numbers – 5 million fighting-age men recently updated their personal data with the government for possible call-up.

Stability in Europe is in America’s interests. Stability requires stopping Russia in Ukraine. But even if one does not think that helping Ukraine is in America’s interests, we owe Kyiv support for one reason alone: In 1994, in exchange for Ukraine surrendering what was then the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, America, Russia, and other nations offered Ukraine security assurances in the Budapest Memorandum. We should honor those assurances lest more nations decide that they need to develop their own nuclear weapons to be safe from invasion.

Ukrainians are preparing for a doomsday scenario. Mindful of keeping bipartisan support in the United States, very few will publicly criticize Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. But most Ukrainians are afraid that he will cut them loose if he regains the White House and his first term in office was an unhappy one for Ukraine.

Ending American aid will have catastrophic consequences. European nations are still mostly defenseless. They cannot substitute American military might. Ukraine is a nation under extreme stress. More than 6 million people – including an estimated 1 million fighting-age men -- have fled since 2022 and most won’t return home until the war is over. Some will never return. Ukraine is in something of a demographic freefall – recording only 187,000 births last year, its lowest number in decades. With men at home and women abroad, families are breaking up. Coupled with COVID-19 and the full-scale war, many Ukrainian children have not seen the inside of a classroom for four years – and they have the declining test scores to prove it.

The economy is dependent on the roughly $100 billion annually in Western military and financial aid. Foreign investment—except for the defense, agricultural, and IT sectors—will largely bypass Ukraine until a secure peace is established (and Ukraine undertakes a real fight against corruption).

There are some hopeful signs, but not many. The international security structure is broken – with no effective ways to prevent wars or punish aggressors and war crimes.

China recently hosted Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, in Beijing, and plans are being made to reciprocate the visit.  Unfortunately, despite proclaiming neutrality, China has been supporting Russia’s war effort. It’s tragic because it is hard to see how Moscow can continue the war if China is strongly opposed and exerts pressure. I believe Xi Jinping has the power to end the war on terms acceptable to Ukraine as opposed to surrender. But right now the Chinese leader is more interested in defeating the West. While Ukraine is ready to negotiate, it is skeptical of Moscow, which has violated every agreement it has made. The issue comes back again to enforcement – who in the world can guarantee that Russia lives up to any peace agreement?

As bad as it is now, it could get a lot worse if the next U.S. president abandons Ukraine. Without military aid, Russia will reduce Ukraine’s cities – including its capital – to rubble, sending the 32 million remaining people fleeing abroad because there is nowhere safe to live. It is that simple and stark.

Hopefully these kinds of discussions are taking place all over the United States, not just on West 7^th Street in St. Paul. They are important to creating political support for the world we want to live in. Ukrainians would very much like to worry more about comparatively mundane matters such as urban design, economic development and tax rates than whether they and their nation will survive this war.