The Ukraine War Dilemma

When thinking about the war in Ukraine, I try to keep two things in mind at once:

1. Russia is waging an imperialist war against Ukraine and has no right to Ukrainian territory.

2. The war has been a bloodbath for both Ukrainians (soldiers and civilians) and Russians (mostly soldiers) and this human cost makes ending the war morally urgent.

The problem with these two points is that there is some tension between them. The first point implies the political importance of victory for Ukraine while the second implies the humanitarian importance of a speedy ceasefire absent such a victory. To put it simply, the Ukraine war is a situation where, at least in the short term, peace and justice are incompatible.

The cost of the war to Ukrainian civilians is startling. The Council on Foreign Relations’ summary of the war states, “Fighting and air strikes have inflicted over 40,000 civilian casualties, while 3.7 million people are internally displaced, and 6.9 million have fled Ukraine. 12.7 million people need humanitarian assistance.” According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, Russia “carried out the forcible transfer of between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens (including some 260,000 children) to Russian territory…” When Russian soldiers were pushed out of the areas around Kyiv shortly after the full-scale war began, war crimes committed by Russia against Ukrainian civilians became apparent.

Total numbers of military casualties are disputed. A piece by The Kyiv Independent notes:

The true military death toll is the subject of intense media debate. In December 2024, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky disputed reports that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed during the full-scale war.

Zelensky's comments likely referred to the Wall Street Journal's claims published in September that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with a further 400,000 wounded. The outlet estimated Russia's losses at as many as… 200,000 killed and 400,000 injured.

It is tempting to offload the moral weight of Russian war casualties by saying that these soldiers deserve what they have coming to them. I find this morally dubious even if all the soldiers made the free and fully informed decision to fight, but it becomes even more difficult to maintain when you learn more about Russia’s military.

According to a finding from earlier in the war, men from Buryatia, where there is a large number of ethnic minorities, were 75