October 27, 2024: In Ukraine, the damage done to the economy and infrastructure by the Russian invasion requires substantial foreign investment to repair. Currently, Ukrainian per-capita income is twenty-seven percent of what it is in the European Union. In addition, over five million Ukrainian refugees are in Europe and most of them would prefer to return home, if there was a home to return to. Many parts of Ukraine are still a war zone. Russia still fires missiles at major cities. Russian troops are still fighting in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainians still want to get the nearby Crimean peninsula back. The Russian hold on Crimea is weak because years of Ukrainian air and missile attacks on Russian bases convinced most Russian civilians in Crimean to return to Russia. The Ukrainian military believes that if the NATO weapons supplies continue, they will have all three provinces back. While the fighting has been going on for three years, in the last year Ukraine has been on the offensive and the Russians are falling back because of the heavy losses they have suffered. The August Ukrainian invasion of Kursk province in Russia was largely unopposed by the Russians and the Ukrainians are still there. Ukraine recently said they carried out this invasion to demonstrate how weak the Russian military had become. Ukraine is willing to withdraw from Russia if the Russians leave the three Ukrainian provinces they have occupied for the last ten years.

While Russia is stumbling, Ukrainian businesses are offering European and American governments copies of the many innovative weapons, especially drones, that were developed and built in Ukraine during the war. Parts of Ukraine are devastated, but much of the country is untouched and Ukrainian firms are building factories to build their new weapons and much else besides. Even when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was a center for technology and the construction of complex systems. For example, Ukrainian firm Motor Sich was, and still is, a major manufacturer of aircraft engines for fixed wing and helicopter aircraft. After the Russian invasion several Motor Sich plants were destroyed and the workers driven into exile. The factories are now being rebuilt and Ukraine has asked the workers who fled to Europe to return.

Before the war, Motor Sich was selling its products to several countries, including China. The United States wants sales to China to halt, but Motor Sich demands help in finding new customers in Europe and the United States. It’s cheaper to build and operate manufacturing operations in Ukraine. Many skilled Ukrainian workers and engineers stayed throughout the war and are ready to get back to work.

Ukraine points out that as a NATO member, Ukraine will be a safe place for reconstruction and resumption of production of many pre-war Ukrainian products. That will happen once the Russian threat is eliminated. President Vladimir Putin, who has already been indicted as a war criminal for his actions in Ukraine, will hopefully be inclined to end the war to get the economic sanctions lifted and end the huge expense of operating a war economy. Russian personnel losses have been so large that there is currently a labor shortage in Russia.

Ukraine points out that unlike the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ukraine is a European nation that has proved itself capable of protecting the rest of Europe from Russian aggression. NATO was created in 1949 to provide that protection and Ukraine had the misfortune of being the first European nation invaded and devastated by Russia. Aid from NATO nations was invaluable and Vladimir Putin is now willing to talk about a peace deal. The hardest thing for Putin to accept is Ukraine joining NATO. That would make another invasion improbable because NATO is a mutual defense organization and if Russia attacked a member, all NATO nations would respond. Russian threats to use nuclear weapons would evaporate because three NATO nations, the U.S., Britain and France have nuclear weapons as well as half the global economy in terms of GDP. NATO military forces, not including Ukraine, are four times larger than what Russia has. Ukraine’s combat experience has been of great use to NATO because Ukraine passes along what they have learned. NATO nations are already reforming and upgrading their military forces based on the Ukrainian experiences. For all practical purposes Ukraine is already a NATO member.