The Greeks numbered around 25,000 soldiers at the start of the Battle of Heraclea under General Pyrrhus in 280 BC. They won, but suffered 13,000 casualties to get there. A year later, after a victory at the Battle of Asculum, Greek casualties numbered 3,500 soldiers. 

"Another victory like this, and I will have to go home alone" are the famous words attributed  to General Pyrrhus who led the Greeks into both battles. 

Since then, the expression "Pyrrhic victory" has come to mean a victory achieved at so much cost and sacrifice that in the end it is not worth it for the winner. 

Russia may be winning such a victory now, with US administration sources revealing at the end of July that 75,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in its current invasion of Ukraine.

Europeans remember waking up on February 24 2022 in disbelief at the "fait accompli" of the pre-announced Russian invasion it had resisted accepting, despite the assertions of American President Biden. 

Six months have now passed, and it seems at times that the initial rapt attention of the media and the world has drifted away to other stories, perhaps due to the discouraging realization that the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian territory has no expiration date in sight.

Strategically and militarily, Ukraine has lost 20% of its territory, mainly the Donbass, a pro-Russian region. Seven million people have become refugees from Ukraine, and of utmost geopolitical importance, Ukraine has lost its access to the sea. The atrocities of the Russian army on the population of Ukraine are evident for the world to see; they fill us with pain, and unite us even more to the proud and noble Ukrainians who say they will never surrender their national dignity.

The “express war” originally planned by Putin turned into a destructive attack, and a war of attrition. Russia’s philosophy appears to be that if Ukraine does not want to be Russian, then it will not belong to anyone. 

There are those who maintain that the Russian ground forces are "bogged down", disoriented and without a unifying command or strategy.

Also true however is that until the attacks on the Russian bases in Crimea, Ukraine has not undertaken any important military offensives, with the exception of the sinking of the Moskva ship, and it depends on a supply of weapons from abroad, mainly from the United States.

 "A major transfer of heavy weapons to the Ukrainian army would hasten the end of the war and the Russian withdrawal," Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted on August 16.

The place facing the most dire potential consequences from the invasion, outside of Ukraine itself, is the European continent. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is currently in Russian hands, and explosions continue around it, with both parties blaming the other for the dangerous situation.

With a long-term war on the horizon, Europe needs to focus on mitigating the inevitable economic repercussions. The restrictions and expected shortages on energy, food, and raw materials have triggered dramatic increases in their prices, which will threaten domestic growth and social stability. The resulting broad inflation across all sectors, including rising interest rates, will increase the cost of business financing and threaten the sustainability of public finances.

The EU is critically dependent on Russian gas. It imports around 155 billion cubic meters a year, which accounts for 45% of its gas purchases and 40% of its consumption. Finding an alternative to Russian gas is a difficult undertaking, because 80% of imports to Europe arrive by gas pipeline, and world natural gas capacity is currently low. Russia knows this all too well, and uses its gas supply as a pressure mechanism on Europe. That is what is behind Gazprom's announcement on Tuesday, August 16 that its price could rise again by more than 60%, "due" to Western sanctions. These sanctions are hurting mostly the people on the ground in Russia, who are seeing the Western symbols of capitalism they enjoyed, the McDonalds and the Louis Vuittons, leaving, while the macroeconomy of Russia does fine with support from other regions of the world than the West.

According to official information, the Russian economy will suffer a contraction this year of only 4.5% of its gross domestic product, rather than the 7.5% initially predicted. 

The leading countries of the emerging world, or the so-called "Global South" that includes Brazil, China and India, depend on certain Russian products for their consumer market, and have thus refrained from applying Russian sanctions. This is how 2/3 of the world's population lives in countries that are neutral or opposed to the application of Russian economic sanctions, while 70% of the world's wealth is found in countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has lost 50% of its gross domestic product and, as a businessman from Kyiv confirmed to me firsthand, production and commercial activities are very limited. The unblocking of grain exports through safe corridors in the Black Sea recently allowed 36 ships to depart from or arrive at Ukrainian ports in the first weeks of August, generating some limited economic movement, but this is not enough.

Russia needs China, and expects its help, but at the same time does not want to increase its commercial and financial dependence on the Asian giant, to which it allocates almost a third of its crude oil exports and 17% of its LNG exports. And China, maintaining a delicate neutral stance so far, cannot allow a critical pillar in the new China-led geo-political world order to fall, or to appear before the eyes of the world as a "broken" country or a defeated military.

And so August ends, and with it the dramatic heat wave that distracted the Europeans for a while. The continent returns to the real world in September, with its leaders lacking the courage and popular support to make Putin feel the pain of his invasion. 
The neverending state of war has had a few moments of "time out", but overall the devastating consequences for Ukraine and the world have now become simply a grim part of the reality we all live in.

His fantasy of a triumphal walk through Kyiv has become a Pyrrhic war for Putin, and so also for the rest of the world. But a Pyrrhic victory, at least officially, is always better than a defeat.

Article : Pablo Munini    English text : Meredith Brunel