World War III is already underway. In Ukraine.
Three years in, Russia’s invasion has drawn in dozens of countries.
By EVA HARTOG
Illustrations by Jack Smyth for POLITICO
If you had walked the front lines in the early weeks of the war in Ukraine, you might have heard shouts in Ukrainian and Russian, perhaps mingled with voices speaking regional languages such as Buryat and Chechen.
Today, troops on either side of the line of conflict communicate in Spanish, Nepali, Hindi, Somali, Serbian and Korean.
Foreign tongues spoken in muddy trenches are just one sign of how the conflict has taken on an increasingly international dimension.
In the sky above the battlefield, an Iranian Shahed drone might be intercepted by an American air defense system, while on the ground, German-made artillery whizzes past North Korean shells.
Almost three years in, even the most dogged isolationists would have a hard time selling the war as a “regional conflict” between Russia and Ukraine.
What began in February 2022 as the biggest European land war since World War II, now competes for the title of the most global conflict since the Cold War, with dozens of countries directly or indirectly involved.
That aspect of the conflict could ultimately seal its fate as Ukraine risks losing its biggest backer with the ascension in the United States of Donald Trump as president, even as Russia attracts increasing support from Washington’s other enemies, most notably North Korea.
“The last time we saw anything like this would probably have been the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,” said the prominent Cold War historian Sergey Radchenko. “When there was support for the mujahideen from the West and also from Pakistan, and everybody was having a go.”
Proxy war
When Moscow launched its full-scale assault on Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin and its propagandists justified it as a necessary and defensive move against NATO.
Opinions differ on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin genuinely intended to take on the so-called collective West, guns blazing. But there is a broad consensus that he expected the war to be over in a matter days — and that he, with reason, counted on the West to answer with the condemn-but-mostly-accept attitude that it had shown toward his earlier land grabs in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.
“It would have been a local conflict if it had ended quickly,” said Radchenko. “But it didn’t.”
Ukrainians fought back tooth and nail, and Putin’s troops floundered just long enough for the West to snap to attention. Europe worried that its own security was on the line; the U.S. had an image to uphold as a backer of democracy and European security. Within days, Western weapons and intelligence poured in, helping Ukrainians beat back the Russian advance and internationalizing the conflict.
With time, as both Ukraine and Russia have found themselves hamstrung by shell hunger and overstretched troops, that international dimension has become both more visible and more important.
Today, both countries rely on outside help: Ukraine, to keep standing; Russia, to maintain its dominance in the sky and on the ground, while minimizing the effect of the war on its own population.
As they have lobbied the world for more resources, both sides have made large, ideological claims. Ukraine says it is fighting for “democracy;” Russia says it is crusading against what it calls American hegemony and “the collective West.”
Moscow’s sales pitch of a “multipolar world order,” as vaguely defined as it is, has been sufficiently convincing for Iran to provide it with Shahed drones and North Korea to ship it ballistic missiles, millions of shells and, more recently, thousands of troops.
The so-called Global South, too, has tilted toward Putin under the umbrella of BRICS, a club of countries that, despite their stark differences, have found common ground in their shared grudge toward a system that has sidelined them from key institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Moscow’s biggest lifeline is China, which has played a crucial role in buttressing the Russian economy from Western sanctions by providing a market for its oil and fertilizer, while also giving it access to much-needed technology.
“India and others can trade with Russia and that’s significant. But nothing comes close to what China brings to the table,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Separately, Russia has continued and expanded upon its age-old practice of hybrid warfare, stirring up trouble and widening existing cleavages abroad.
Unlike during the Cold War, however, there aren’t proxy conflicts where Moscow can strike at NATO. So “Russia is trying to look for tools to push back,” in other ways, said Gabuev. “Attach costs, inflict pain, avenge.”
That has included interfering with elections, starting fires and other acts of sabotage, and providing support to various anti-Western actors and groups; from bankrolling a pro-Russian oligarch intent on derailing Moldova’s pro-EU course, to providing data to Yemen’s Houthis to help them strike Western ships in the Red Sea.
Western assistance
Meanwhile, Russia’s adversaries haven’t been standing still.
Kyiv’s pitch, telecast by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has won it more than $220 billion worth of aid from Europe and the U.S. NATO countries have delivered more and more powerful weapons: From howitzer artillery shells at the beginning of the war, to F-16 fighter jets and ATACMS long-range missiles today.
In as clear a geopolitical warning shot to Moscow as Brussels is able to give, the European Union has progressed Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia’s bids to join the bloc.
Without Western help, the war would not have survived its first year and would have ended in a “crushing defeat” for Ukraine, said Gabuev.
But the West has also stuck to certain guardrails; choosing a strategy of cautious incrementalism over escalation. Much to Kyiv’s frustration, arms deliveries have come in phases, and with rules attached.
For almost three years, leaders in the U.S. and Europe played deaf to Kyiv’s increasingly desperate pleas for permission to use long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
On the other side, despite frequent threats from Moscow that it might nuke a Western city, the red button appears to be off-limits. And, notwithstanding alarm from countries on Europe’s eastern flank about an impending Russian invasion, Moscow’s troops have steered clear of NATO territory.
China, too, has respected some of the West’s red lines, ensuring that it doesn’t directly violate Western sanctions (although doing so indirectly) and, for now, not providing Russia with any lethal weapons (although it has delivered individual parts and, according to recent reports, it is suspected of delivering drones.)
On both sides, foreign troops on the ground seemed a no-go. While some voices, most notably French President Emmanuel Macron, have floated the possibility of putting Western boots on the ground, the idea has never gone beyond a quickly slapped down proposal.
That’s not to say those red lines haven’t been tested. Ukraine invaded Russia’s Kursk region and used Western weapons to strike Russian targets, such as its Black Sea Fleet. North Korean troops traveled to Russia. And outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden finally green-lighted Ukraine’s use of ATACMS long-range weapons to be used against targets on Russian soil.
Still, the problem with internationalized conflicts — as Ukraine has been finding out — is that external backers can be whimsical and their commitment only as deep as the next electoral campaign.
Toward the end of 2024, the appetite for supporting a Ukrainian victory — defined as a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders — has dwindled in Washington and Brussels.
Even before Trump’s win, the idea that containment in the form of a deal that would freeze the conflict and involve Ukraine ceding territory appears to have gone from being taboo to lodestar.
“It was clear from the beginning that if Ukraine didn’t win fast enough, America would drop out,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York and the great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
“All of this was seen right from the beginning as a Hollywood series,” she said. Initially, she added, Ukraine’s backers thought it would be over after a single season. But then there was another.
“And now there’s a third one, and so of course attention has faded,” she said. “We don’t want a fourth series, but it’s going to happen.”
Radchenko, the historian, is more forgiving.
“For the United States, avoiding a nuclear war with Russia has always been the No. 1 priority in this conflict. The second is helping Ukraine win,” Radchenko said, adding, “Those two competing objectives somehow have to be reconciled.”
Then there’s the fact that Ukraine’s backers, as opposed to Russia’s, have to deal with public opinion. A Pew Research Center poll in July showed Americans were evenly split on whether they thought their country had a responsibility to help Ukraine.
The end of the war
As the conflict heads toward the start of its fourth year, neither side is getting all the help it wants. Meanwhile, the conflict looks more like a WWI war of attrition than a high-tech WWIII.
“It would be logical to see thousands of Iranians and a compact army of Chinese fighting [for Russia] in Ukraine right now,” the ultranationalist Russian thinker Alexander Dugin, considered one of the ideologues of the Ukraine war, wrote in October.
“It is logical that those who are against Western hegemony and in favor of a multipolar world would support Russia with actions. And Russia will then support them in their own anti-imperialist wars.”
So far Russia’s pipe dream of global solidarity has produced nothing more than smoke. Russia is estimated to be hemorrhaging some 30,000 soldiers a month and recruiting only just as many to replace them. North Korea (for now) is not supplying enough troops to make a significant difference.
Kyiv is in even more dire straits. Doubts over the depth of Western support are rising just as Ukrainians are facing another winter, weakened by low morale and suffering a deficit in pretty much everything. According to an estimate from the Pentagon, the country only has enough troops to last another six to twelve months before it runs into serious trouble.
With both Russia and Ukraine struggling to mobilize enough of their own men, the two sides used as triage thousands of foreigners, mostly from impoverished countries, to join their fight.
In addition to troops provided by Pyongyang, Moscow has recruited fighters from Cuba, India, Nepal, Syria, Serbia, Central African Republic and Libya with promises of generous salaries and Russian citizenship (a commitment that isn’t always kept, according to some who have enlisted).
Meanwhile, Ukraine, on top of financial incentives, is offering foreigners the chance to be on the right side of history.
“Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too,” the country’s then-foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on the social media platform X in 2022.
That has led to a situation where, more than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the supposed “end of history,” Colombians are battling Cubans, suffering shrapnel injuries and dying, thousands of kilometers away from home.
“We are fighting for freedom whereas the Latin Americans on the other side are defending an oppressive regime of oppression,” said Jhoe Manuel Almanza Chica, a Colombian enlisted in the Ukrainian army’s 241st Brigade.
He said there was no cause more noble to die for than freedom. “But if I remain alive, I want to be able to tell my children that I was part of history.”
Ultimately, analysts, said, the outcome of the war will likely depend on the decisions of the combatants’ primary backers: NATO and China.
“If you withdraw NATO support to Ukraine, there will be no Ukraine,” said Gabuev. “But if you withdraw Chinese support from the Russian war effort, it would force Moscow to limit its appetite and dampen its hopes that time is on its side.”
Right now, China appears to be the main benefactor of the conflict, said Gabuev. The war has distracted Washington and helped Beijing tighten its hold over Russia — a weakened but, under Putin, reliable partner.
That could change, however, if the involvement of North Korea in the conflict makes it spill over into the Indo-Pacific, which Beijing sees as its backyard, by drawing in South Korea and possibly NATO.
Other factors could tip the balance; in the U.S., an unpredictable Trump. In the Middle East, Iran’s conflict with Israel. In Europe, a surge of popularity for far-right parties, some of which are skeptical of aiding Ukraine.
In the meantime, there’s always the risk of further escalation, said Radchenko. “As long as the war continues, there is a danger that somebody else will join the fight.”
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