Communal workers clean debris next to a destroyed kindergarten following an air attack in Odesa on April 30.OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Bociurkiw is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder of the World Briefing report on Substack.
For the first time in years, spring in my adopted temporary base of Odesa does not feel entirely overshadowed by dread.
The scars of war are still visible. Sidewalks are still quieter than they once were. Some of my favourite haunts have closed after toughing out more than four years of war. And Sabina Nikitenko, the weary director of the Mriya local drop-in centre for displaced mothers and children, tells me she’s now being forced to accept kids from orphanages as violence surges near front-line cities such as Kherson. I‘d feared that Ukraine’s entrepreneurial powerhouse city was tipping towards an irreversible hollowing out.
But beginning last week, after three days of relative calm – a negotiated temporary ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow, accompanied by a proposed 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner swap – there’s more than spring in the air. For the first time in a long time, people have had siren-free days and nights, a harbinger perhaps of something more enduring. That tentative optimism stretched right down to the Black Sea shore, where proprietors were readying their bars and restaurants for summer with paintbrushes, hammers and new shashlik grills.
Victory Day parade proceeds in Moscow with tight security and no heavy weapons
Even though the ceasefire was shattered Monday night – Ukraine claimed Russia launched dozens of attack drones and aerial bombs – the fact that both sides silenced their weapons for even a short length of time is notable.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions remain almost impossible to decipher. Yet, for the first time he has signalled that the war is almost over – a war that has battered Russia’s economy, hollowed out its society and delivered humiliating losses along the front. Recruitment is dipping and Mr. Putin is said to be reluctant to order a second mobilization that risks sparking social unrest. More than a decade after illegally annexing Crimea and dispatching “little green men” into the Donbas, Russia controls only about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory – an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania.
But in case that sounds optimistic, there’s reason to remain skeptical. This is Mr. Putin – a man who never got over the breakup of the Soviet collapse and has shown no willingness to compromise, even at the expense of his own people. On Monday, he lashed out at Armenia for granting Volodymyr Zelensky a platform, punishing a tiny country almost entirely dependent on Russian energy for drifting towards Europe. He remains as a co-belligerent with Iran, providing intelligence for strikes on U.S. and Israeli targets, and is throwing the clerics an economic and military lifeline across the Caspian.
The question neighbours and Canadian diaspora friends ask me most is simple: When does this end? The answer is: nobody knows.
But Mr. Putin’s decision to dramatically scale down Victory Day celebrations last weekend – publicly blaming Ukraine – suggests he is reassessing. His political survival, perhaps his personal survival, may now require ending what he calls a “special military operation.” Could hard numbers be keeping him awake at night? If the oil price bump from the Iran conflict – which were projected to double export earnings in March – evaporates, the Russian treasury may not be able to withstand the shock.
Russia, Ukraine accuse each other of violating U.S.-brokered ceasefire
But again, Mr. Putin is Mr. Putin. He has never deviated from the old Soviet playbook – stretching conflicts across years, sowing confusion with mixed signals, waiting for Western resolve to fray. Within days or weeks, he will likely find a way to blame Kyiv or Brussels for the failure to hold a ceasefire.
If that happens – if this war grinds into more months and years – what do we tell those children at Ms. Nikitenko’s centre? Do we fault the bar owners along the Black Sea for picking up their paintbrushes, daring to believe that summer might mean something this year?
Perhaps the harder question is what the West tells itself. Had Europe consolidated its 20 rounds of sanctions into a single crushing package at the outset – a potential knockout blow delivered before Russian troops had time to dig in – history might have looked very different. Instead, measures were rolled out slowly, telegraphed in advance, giving Moscow time to adapt with the help of friends in Tehran and Beijing. Long-range weapons were debated for months before being approved – then delivered with multiple conditions.
The children at Ms. Nikitenko’s drop-in centre didn’t create this situation. But the very hesitant, incremental choices made in Washington, Brussels and Ottawa did.
Spring has come to Odesa. Whether peace follows depends, as it always has, on one man in Moscow – and on Western leaders still deciding how much they are willing to risk to stop his belligerence.