Qin Hui, Ukraine 4

Qin Hui, “The Russia-Ukraine War and the Soviet-Finnish ‘Winter War’—Ukraine Commentary No. 4”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Qin Hui (b. 1953), who taught at Tsinghua University until his recent retirement, is a historian and one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals.  Translations of many of his writings, treating topics as diverse as Thomas Piketty’s Twentieth- First Century Capitalism, “China as seen from South Africa” and “Globalization after the Pandemic:  Thoughts on the Coronavirus” are available on this site.  Qin emailed me in early March, asking me to translate a series of texts he is writing on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which are being published in FT Chinese.  I am delighted to do so, because Qin’s voice is certainly unique in China, and perhaps in the world.  I have since learned that FT is editing Qin’s texts, softening some of the rough edges and the implicit criticisms of Xi Jinping, and Qin has asked me to translate his original texts rather than the edited versions. At some point, I will compare the two versions and add footnotes to my translations, so that readers can get a sense of the editing process in the Chinese context.
 
In the text translated here, Qin continues to explore the parallels between the current situation and the history of WWII, more particularly examining the fascinating episode of the “Winter War” between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939-1940.  Soviet claims on Finland were almost identical to Russian claims on Ukraine, and Russia possessed a similar military superiority and assumed the invasion would be a walk in the park.  However, like the Ukrainians, the Finns fought back bravely—largely alone, because European powers were frightened and otherwise occupied—even if the Soviet Union ultimately won, at great cost and considerable embarrassment.  When Germany turned on the Soviet Union, Finland sought revenge by joining the Germans and waging the “Continuation War” against the Soviets from 1941-1944, in which the Finns acquitted themselves well, but ultimately lost yet again to the Soviets, in large measure because of Western appeasement.
 
Qin’s point is to remind us that “brave resistance” does not always lead to victory and that wars have consequences that spin out over years and even decades.  In the absence of a firm and resolute stance by the United States and Europe, much of the region between Russia and Middle Europe may well become a power keg ready to explode.
 
Translation
 
Ukraine is not the Czech Republic or the Poland of the immediate pre-war period, but it can still become the Finland of the Winter War
 
 
Russia has been fighting a full-scale war against Ukraine for more than 40 days now. From the outset I have said that the war would change people’s views, not because of the assistance the West would provide, but because of the bravery of the Ukrainians. The 40 days of war have borne this out.  Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, the secondary capital, both of which came under attack from the very first moment, have stood firm under the stubborn resistance of Ukrainians, from the president down to the soldiers on the ground. Russian troops have so far taken only one provincial capital, Kherson, after suffering heavy casualties. Of particular notice is the case of Mariupol, the capital of the Ukrainian-controlled zone in the Donbas, which came under fierce attack at the beginning of the war and was soon surrounded by an extensive Russian-occupied zone.  The entire city was almost completely destroyed by artillery fire, but the Ukrainian army, with only a few thousand regular troops, assisted by 10,000 militiamen and international volunteers, is still holding its ground and killing a large number of invading troops, including Russian Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky (1974-2022), Major General Oleg Mityaev (1974-2022) and Vice Admiral Andrey Nikolaevich Paliy (1971-2022) of the Black Sea Fleet.

Despite the Russian ultimatum to surrender and the permission granted by the Ukrainian president to evacuate, the Mariupol soldiers continue to fight to the death. One might say that even if Mariupol falls in the future, even if the defenders are exhausted and overwhelmed, if they evacuate or surrender, they will still have achieved a moral victory and military miracle, while the invading army has shown itself to be morally bankrupt and militarily incompetent, and even if by virtue of absolute superiority they take this isolated city with its mountains of bones and its sea of blood, they have utterly disgraced themselves already. 
 
At present, although the Russian army has retreated from the vicinity of Kyiv, I am not too optimistic about the overall situation. It is true that the people of the world view Ukraine with new respect, and that the elation of the "Russia fans" and the despair of the righteous during the first few days of the war has now turned around, so that the former are now dumbfounded and the latter optimistic. However, I still fear that the Ukrainians, having proved that they are not the Czechs of 1938 or the Poles of 1939, will inevitably end up as the Finns of 1940.
 
Let’s go back to the history.
 
The Soviet-Finnish Hundred Days War, also known as the "Winter War," which lasted from November 30, 1939, to March 12, 1940, was one of the tragic moments of World War II. After devouring the three small Baltic states, the colossal Red Empire of the Soviet Union launched a massive offensive against the small Arctic nation of Finland in an attempt to wipe out the Finnish army in one fell swoop and reclaim what was once the "historical territory" of the Tsarist Empire (which is exactly what Putin has said about Ukraine). It was also a war to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Finland (anyone the Soviet Union did not like was a Nazi):  the Finnish Communist leader Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen (1881-1964), who was living in Moscow at the time, had already formed a Finnish Soviet government and was ready to join the Soviet Union. 
 
At the time, the Soviet Union was so confident that the leading commander, Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov (1881-1969), claimed that the Finnish capital could be taken in six days, and the Soviet headquarters even warned its officers and soldiers not to cross the border into Sweden (Finland is between the Soviet Union and Sweden) after taking all of Finland. But unexpectedly, the Finns resisted to the death with 200,000 defenders with the most basic of equipment—not only had they no tanks, but few anti-tank weapons—against 1.2 million Soviet troops who were part of the second best army in the world (after that of Nazi Germany, which was seen as invincible at the time), possessing a large number of tanks, planes, and heavy artillery. This was the result of the unity of the Finnish people, the bravery of the officers and soldiers, their skill in fighting in regions of extreme cold, the solidity of the fortifications, and especially the strength and competence of the Finnish leader Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim (1867-1951), as well as to the fact the Soviet army had just lost a large number of good officers in Stalin’s bloody "Great Purges," which affected the quality of the Soviet military. In the early days of the war, the Finns surprisingly caused the Soviets to suffer repeated defeats and losses, and they held the Mannerheim line for more than 50 days, which was a disgrace for the Soviets. 
 
As a democratic country, Finland repeatedly appealed to the democratic powers of Western Europe for help, and Britain and France did sympathize, but only payed lip service and clung to their habitual policy of appeasement—and it is true that they were too caught up in their own war against Germany to think much of anyone else—so they only offered some insignificant material assistance. 
 
Finally, after more than three months of bitter fighting, Stalin having dispatched more troops and engaged in relentless bombing, the small country of Finland surrendered, having suffered 70,000 casualties (26,000 dead). The Soviets won a painful victory with the high price of 320,000 casualties (127,000 dead). Stalin, intimidated by the Finns’ will to resist, abandoned his ambition to annex the country by installing Kuusinen as a puppet and "merely" made Finland cede territory, pay reparations, and disarm (just as Putin today has abandoned his ambition to eliminate Ukraine and destroy its army, and is “merely” seeking land and peace). Finland had to accept the alliance and lost all of its northern coast and its second largest city, Vyborg, as well as a large part of its territory and population. 
 
But on the moral front, the badly treated Finland won the sympathy of the world, and the miracle of Finnish resistance earned even more respect. When the Soviet-German War broke out, while Britain and France continued their policy of appeasement, Mannerheim, who was thirsty for revenge, made a pact with the devil and cooperated with the Germans in the "Continuation War" (as opposed to the "Winter War"), and the German-equipped Finnish forces not only retook their lost territory and attacked Karelia (which had been ceded to Russia as a result of the Winter War), but advanced to the outskirts of Leningrad. 

Later on, when Germany was defeated, Finland had no choice but to break with Germany at the last moment and once again concede to the Soviets.  However, because the Soviet Union's behavior during the Winter War had been so egregious, Finland remained hungry for revenge and the West was ashamed of its appeasement, and everyone opposed punishing Mannerheim. Even the Soviet Union secretly felt guilty, and after once again demanding territory, reparations and neutrality from Finland (Ukraine today is also claiming that it can be neutral), it turned its attention elsewhere and let Mannerheim go. In the Second World War, all of those who allied themselves with Germany (including those who renounced the alliance at the last moment) were generally punished as war criminals. The only person who was not held accountable for his crimes, but is still considered a hero by the people and is celebrated by the historians of the world, is this man!
 
Will Ukraine become Finland?
 
The Dark Clouds of the Donbas War 
 
Can appeasement go away while the aggression is still ongoing? The answer to this question lies with the leaders of today's countries. 
 
Just as Stalin made adjustments after the initial setback of the Soviet-Finnish war, Putin has altered his strategy after the initial setback in the Russian-Ukrainian war.  On March 25, the Russians announced that their missions on other fronts were "basically completed" and that they would henceforth concentrate on "liberating Donbas." The Russian siege of Mariupol and the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians and soldiers intensified, and in the Luhansk region, they also stepped up the siege of the provisional Ukrainian capital of North Donetsk, seen especially in the attack on its northwestern border, the small city of Rubinzhny, which is further to the West—an obvious attempt to cut off the retreat and destroy the Ukrainian defenders of the provisional provincial capital. 
 
More recently, Russian troops have started to attack the strategic city of Slavyansk in the Ukraine-controlled area of Donetsk oblast from Ijum, near Kharkov, in an apparent attempt to cooperate with the westward offensive of Russian troops on the Donbas front, with the objective of encircling and destroying the main forces of the Donbas Ukrainians and occupying the remaining Ukraine-controlled areas of Donetsk oblast, including Kramatorsk, the temporary provincial capital. My guess is that Putin, who, in more than 40 days of warfare, has succeeded in taking only one provincial capital—Kherson—in addition to his rage and embarrassment, still wants to take the two temporary provincial capitals in the Donbas region and seize the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk, so as to achieve his recently declared goal of "liberating Donbas," only after which will he be willing to talk peace, after having dismembered Ukraine and occupying more territory than prior to February 24. To this end, Putin is willing to use tens of thousands of Russian troops as cannon fodder for a result about which he can boast to his subjects, so that he can remain on the throne, avoiding the collapse of his rule and trial as a war criminal. 
 
Although Russian military pressure on Kyiv in the north and Kharkov in the northeast has been significantly reduced, Ukraine and the West still dare not take things lightly, and are beginning to believe that Russian troops are not retreating, but merely rethinking their deployment. The Ukrainians, who have always been at a disadvantage in terms of military strength, achieved the illustrious results of killing eight Soviet generals and wiping out more than 10,000 Soviet troops, resisting the enemy from within fortified cities without abandoning too much territory, but their losses have also been quite heavy.

In early April, the Russians indeed evacuated the entire Kyiv region, leaving behind more weaponry than expected, and out of shame and anger carried out the horrible Bucha massacre. But Ukrainians force only recovered their lost territory, and the once-rumored war to annihilate the Russian army in the north did not materialize. While the danger to Mykolaiv in the south was relieved, Kherson's counter-offensive progressed with difficulty. Kyiv’s relief from the siege gave the Ukrainian army more strength to rescue Mariupol, and the reinforcements heading south also won a victory in Hulyaipole a few days ago, but a glance at the map shows that they are still 144 kilometers away from Mariupol, and despite their victory, it will be difficult for the Ukrainian forces to drive forward since they lack cover from the air superiority of the Russians.  It is hard to be optimistic that the Ukrainian forces isolated in Mariupol, who have been fighting for more than forty days, will be able to hold out until help arrives.
 
Obviously, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have exceeded expectations and have done their utmost to fight heroically, but have not yet been able to turn the tide of the war. They are still in the strategic phase of stalling the Russian army, and their counterattack is only tactical. Given Ukrainian national morale, there should still be a reserve of troops. The problem is that the equipment is still not available. Western Javelins and Stingers are very useful for defending the cities and blocking the enemy's attack, and the Western intelligence and information support is crucial to the Ukrainian army’s guerrilla attacks. However, if the Ukrainian army is to pass from a defensive to an offensive posture, so as to destroy the enemy in open warfare, aircraft, tanks, and other offensive weapons are indispensable.

If the Russian army indeed tightens its focus to a concentrated campaign in the east, the density of troops on the front is bound to increase, and it will no longer be like the first wave of the war with its parachute raids, armored attacks, and isolated troops, and the Ukrainian forces will have a harder time exploiting their advantage in guerilla tactics, with their well-suited weapons finding opportunities to exploit.  In other words, Javelins and Stingers can hardly be used for attacking cities and taking territories, and even Starlights (or Starstreaks) and Switchblades are defensive weapons.  To recover lost territory and defeat the Russian army, the Ukrainian army cannot rely on its current tactics. 
 
During the Afghan war, the Mujahedeen did not need to attack the cities and gain territory, but relied solely on guerrillas armed with Stingers to shoot down helicopters, and the Soviet troops limped away in defeat because they could not replace what the Afghans destroyed. In the Vietnamese War, while North Vietnam ultimately was equipped with a large number of Soviet tanks in the capture of Saigon, prior to this it was the high cost imposed by guerrilla warfare that frightened away the American imperialists. Can the Ukrainians do the same? It looks difficult to me. The Vietnamese and the American imperialists both suffered losses, but the democratic system undermined the American forces because it would not put up with casualties; Vietnam could afford the death of more than 900,000 volunteers, but after 50,000 deaths, the U.S. lost the will to fight.  When Afghanistan and the Soviet Union were in the same situation, is was Gorbachev’s move toward democracy that created the same anti-war pressure.  Would such a strategy work if they were facing someone like Hitler, who did not care how many people died? Almost all Nazi-occupied areas in WWII had resistance movements, like Tito in Yugoslavia, which was aided by the Western Allies on the Adriatic (not the distant Soviet Union) late in the war, with more than 800,000 "partisans" with tanks, planes and naval forces, but the finally victory required entry of the Soviets. It is clear that during WWII, no partisan movement outlasted the Nazis. 
 
Can the Ukrainians today win by costing the Russian army too much? If they can, it will be with the help of the Russian anti-war movement. In terms of domestic, internal repression, I have pointed out that Putin is as yet no Hitler, but he is much more of a tyrant than Gorbachev. The anti-war movement in Russia, which had some momentum at the beginning of the war, is now moribund, with more than 10,000 people arrested and most of the anti-war elite leaving under Putin's crackdown. Putin has been backed into a corner by his own misadventure, and if he loses the war, he will become a war criminal, which gives him even more motivation to oppose the anti-war movement. Even if has regrets, his only choice is to cover up his early crimes with even greater ones, and he will not easily admit defeat. 
 
Many people say that the West's sanctions are hitting hard, that the Russian economy is suffering, and that the losses from the war are unexpectedly high, and from this they conclude that Putin will not be able to pay the price.  This is certainly true when we compare Russia with the West, but if we compare Russia with Ukraine, my sense is that Ukraine is in a worse position.  After all, the war is being fought on Ukrainian territory, and as things currently stand, there is no way for Ukraine to push the war back into Russia.

This means that even if its national morale is high, the war is going well, and in absolute terms, losses from the war have been less for Ukraine than for Russia, nonetheless civilian casualties, economic losses, and national attrition are certainly far more serious in Ukraine than in Russia. The losses Russia incurs due to Western sanctions, although heavy, are after all temporary, and as soon as sanctions are lifted, the economy will improve, and there are those in the West who all along have been advocating the removal of sanctions as soon as Russia agrees to a ceasefire. But large parts of Ukraine's cities have been bombed into rubble, and the loss of infrastructure and manufacturing capacity (the mainstay of the Ukrainian economy) cannot be rebuilt in a couple of years. 
 
Many people say that material aid from the West will help Ukraine carry on, and I too believe that even though the West wants to avoid war, they are inspired by Ukraine, deplore the evil in which Russia is engaged, and are ashamed of their appeasement, so they will ultimately be willing to spend the money so that Ukraine can have enough to eat, can fight the war, and can have a functioning government. But how can the economic recovery occur while indiscriminate Russian bombing continues?  After all, a normal country cannot live solely on aid. 
 
Some say that Ukraine's post-war reconstruction could be paid by the Russian assets frozen by the West, transformed into war reparations, but unless Russia is completely defeated and surrenders, this seems unlikely.  The West’s appeasement is such that even when Putin launched a senseless invasion, starting a major war, the West only froze Russian assets, and did not confiscate them.  Even Switzerland joined in, which illustrates the wrath Putin has inspired. But if Putin simply stops attacking without surrendering, and the war ends in compromise, I don't believe the West will be able to up the level the punishment by escalating the freeze to confiscation and handing over the property to Ukraine.  And if the West does not confiscate these assets and Russia is not completely defeated, will it pay reparations? 
 
Thus if the current war goes the way of the Winter War, the result may be that Russia may achieve a “bad” victory," while Ukraine, like Finland at the time, will remain proud in defeat.  Of course, the other side of that coin is that despite their pride, they still lost, might triumphed over right, and the future looks bleak.
  
After the Finns lost the "Winter War," and looked for an opportunity to avenge their shame, there occurred the Continuation War.  Given the misery Russia is inflicting, the Ukrainians are equally unlikely to forget.  Only when they lost that war did the Finns finally “submit” to the Soviets, which was equally a result of Western appeasement of the Soviets in the final period of WWII.  But the current situation is very different. Not only will Ukraine not accept the "Finlandization" imposed in the 1950s, but even Finland wants to join NATO after Putin's madness. Even if Ukraine suffers a proud defeat like that of Finland in the "Winter War," there may be any number of Continuation Wars, but Putin—unlike Stalin at the time—will not have Western support for having turned against Germany (unless China and Russia turn against each other as the Soviet Union and Germany did). If that happens, the Eastern Slavic region will become a powder keg of injustices, like the Balkans back then and the Middle East today. And because this region is much bigger than the Balkans and roughly the same size as the Middle East, and because it is a region of great power confrontation, including not only proxies on the ground but also the factor of nuclear weapons, then once the powder keg takes shape, it can wind up being more dangerous than either the Balkans or the Middle East, and much more likely to end in human catastrophe.
 
Therefore, completely stopping Putin's madness is not only about relations between Russia and Ukraine and Russia and the West, but also about the future of mankind. 
 
Of course, if Ukraine can stand firm to the point of wearing Putin down, I believe the Ukrainian military and people and their president have the determination to fight on. But this requires the West’s abandoning its stance of appeasement, meaning at the very least supporting Ukraine with the weapons to meet the needs of the battlefield.  We don’t have to talk about “conquering Berlin,” but Ukraine should be able to launch a counter-offensive and reclaim its pre-2014 borders, recover its territory and win this defensive war once and for all. 
 
The West did not Completely Abandon Appeasement after February 24 
 
But what has the West done so far? 
 
They insist that they will not send a single soldier, so okay.  Every day, Zelenskyy denounces appeasement in front of some Western parliament, and sheds tears asking for a no-fly zone. Many Western parliamentarians are also moved to tears and leap to their feet to applaud, but there is no way they are going to implement the no-fly zone. 
 
OK, no no-fly zone, but how about giving Ukraine enough weapons to resist the Russians?  But what has the West given so far? In addition to the original Javelins, Stingers, and the Switchblades, which came later, there is also the Starlight, which is said to be a more advanced anti-aircraft missile than the Stinger with a bit more range. But these are all still portable or light defensive weapons. As mentioned earlier, these things are indeed useful for defense and deterrence, but for counterattack and recovery of the country, it is simply not enough. 
 
Zelenskyy is constantly asking to for airplanes and tanks, not the most advanced Western products, but material left over in Eastern Europe from before the collapse of the Soviet Union, like the MiG 29 aircraft, or T72 and T80 tanks, Soviet-style weapons produced decades ago.  The West has not yet done this.  Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic have talked about this. Romania and others are willing to hand over their Soviet aircraft to Ukraine, and the United States expressed support and promised that more advanced U.S. aircraft, such as the F16, could be provided to these countries to replace these old Soviet aircraft. But the Poles, afraid of upsetting Putin, said they would first send their aircraft send U.S. bases in Germany, so that the U.S. could pass them on to Ukraine.

The U.S., however, was unwilling to do the this, and preferred that Poland give them directly to Ukraine. As a result, not a single plane has been delivered between March 5 and today. The same goes for Soviet tanks, not because they are unwilling to supply them, but because they are afraid of angering Putin, and there are the same struggles over how to get them to Ukraine. Zelenskyy tells Western governments:  “We are holding back the Russian invaders, and we do not need your troops, but if you could give us just 1% of your tanks, we could beat Putin!”  His listeners clap their hands and cry crocodile tears, but feelings are just feelings, and not a single tank has been delivered. 
 
Later, they said they would supply Soviet-style long-range air defense systems, like the S300. Since hand-held missiles like Stingers can only hit low-flying targets, they are indeed a great threat to Russian aircraft that lack precision strike capabilities and can only attack military targets at low altitudes, but they are useless against Russian aircraft that bomb indiscriminately at medium and high altitudes. The S300 can fill this gap to a certain extent. The U.S. said once more that if the Eastern European countries give Ukraine these old Soviet-style systems, the U.S. will replace them with new U.S.-made air defense systems like the Patriot. At the time, Ukrainian sympathizers were excited, believing that the S300s were probably a trick, meaning that the launch vehicles would be Soviet-made, but that the missiles would be replaced with newer U.S.-made ones. But the trick still had to be pulled off. Again, because of the transfer problem, nothing has come of it. And all of this is because of the fear of Russia, which is simply too shameful. 
 
Of course, because Russian atrocities get worse and worse, Ukraine’s resistance not only moves people but also speeds attitude changes in the West (such changes can be very slow in democracies), and the West has made clear progress since February 24.  Denunciations of Russia are becoming more strident in terms of public opinion, parliamentary discourse, national leaders’ statements, and people are also giving more thought to their past appeasement. People like Angela Merkel have been criticized for their appeasement of Russia, and pundits like John Mearsheimer (b. 1947) have been criticized for standing Nixon on his head and arguing that the US should band together with Russia to oppose China.[2]  Over and over, we see videos where the representatives of this or that country are moved, stand up, and applaud when Zelensyy denounces the appeasement of the country he is addressing. 
 
This was especially true of the massacre of civilians in Bucha during the Russian occupation, which was discovered in early April when the Ukrainian army recaptured the town—this was a horror that shocked the world.  To tell the truth, in a previous article I argued that the Russian army was not as bad as the German SS after all, and that while Putin looked worse than Hitler in a comparison of Crimea and the Sudetenland, in other aspects he looked better, this based on videos from the early days of the war where the Russian army, surrounded by people with cell phones, did not fire on Ukrainian resisters.  Now it looks like I was wrong, and when there are no cell phones present, the Russian troops are capable of terrible viciousness.
 
Notes

[1]秦晖, “乌俄战争与苏芬“冬战”：乌克兰评论之四,” published in FT-Chinese (pay walled) on April 10, 2022. 

[2]Translator’s note:  See the following passage from an interview with Mearsheimer: “We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians. The Russians are part of our balancing coalition against China. If you live in a world where there are three great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—and one of those great powers, China, is a peer competitor, what you want to do if you’re the United States is have Russia on your side of the ledger. Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.”