Bates experts unsure what might happen next in Ukraine war

Bates College professor Benjamin Moodie moderates a roundtable discussion Wednesday afternoon on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The discussion was held in Pettengill Hall on the Lewiston campus. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

LEWISTON – It’s tough to guess what might happen next in the increasingly vicious war in Ukraine, experts said during a Wednesday forum at Bates College on the Russian invasion.

“I don’t see any offramp on either side,” said Dennis Browne, a retired Bates professor with a longstanding interest in Russian language and culture.

Bates College President Clayton Spencer addresses a roundtable discussion Wednesday afternoon on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The gathering was held in Pettengill Hall on the Lewiston campus. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Bates President Clayton Spencer said the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24 has already torn apart families, destroyed homes and sent 2 million people fleeing for their lives.

The war, she said, is “reshaping aspects of the world order before our very eyes.”

The forum, sponsored by the college’s Department of German and Russian Studies, sought to explore what prompted Putin’s invasion and what people should think about as they try to absorb a flood of information from combatants and wary world leaders.

It’s clear that the “special military operation” that Putin unleashed in a bid to bring Ukraine to heel has fallen short of its early objectives, but the long-term picture remains fuzzy.

“We’re already at the ‘nobody won’ point,” said Cheryl Stephenson, a lecturer in Russian at Bates.

James Richter, a politics professor at Bates, said the war “is going to continue for a while. And the outcome is still unclear.”

“It’s going to be a long trudge,” Browne said.

Marina Filipovic, a lecturer in Russian at the college, said it is telling that Putin last week imposed 15-year prison sentences on anyone who provides “knowingly false information” about the military, shutting down news organization websites for Rain TV and Echo of Moscow radio for “calling the war a war” instead of Putin’s preferred terminology.

Across Russia, she said, journalists have been silenced and sources of information closed off.

Netflix, for instance, is “Nyetflix” now, unavailable to Russians, Filipovic said.

Even so, she said, historians, journalists, feminists, writers and others are finding ways to speak out in opposition.

Browne cited polling that showed support for Putin’s move against Ukraine but speculated that “something like a 50-50 split” on it is likely.

Bates College students listen to speakers Wednesday afternoon during a roundtable discussion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The discussion was held in Pettengill Hall on the Lewiston campus. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Putin’s arguments that Ukraine has cozied up too closely to the West have likely had an impact, he said, and have some merit, if nowhere near enough to justify an invasion.

Stephenson said she’s been interested watching how Ukraine has tried to cope with the public relations issues that are a key element of its bid to survive.

She said its “on-the-fly mythmaking” has helped to draw support from around the world — though its tactics have changed as it realized that focusing on the refugee crisis wasn’t necessarily helpful in countries that wonder if the West only cares because Ukrainians are white.

As a result, Stephenson said, the focus has shifted to talking about individual people and their stories as they try to “live through the war,” the same sort of tales the Soviet Union relied on to rally its citizens successfully during World War II.

Richter pointed out that in this century, two superpowers have attacked countries without cause in the mistaken belief their troops would be greeted as liberators: the United States in Iraq in 2003 and Russia in Ukraine.

At this point, he said, most everyone recognizes that the invasion of Iraq was “a complete and total strategic blunder.”

But what Putin’s doing, Richter said, makes the U.S. error “look smaller.”

Richter said Putin, blinded by two decades of growing cronyism at the Kremlin, underestimated the opposition he would face, “made a mistake” in seeing more division in Europe than truly existed and was surprised by the way President Joe Biden released Russian plans ahead of time, a move that forced Putin to deny what was coming.

When Russia then invaded, proving Biden had spoken truthfully, Putin’s dishonesty was evident, he said.

Biden has done “a very good job, very professional” in rallying the world without risking broader war, Richter said.

Spencer said Putin’s move into Ukraine deserved “absolute and unqualified condemnation.”