Is Ukraine’s Partition Zelenskyy’s Fate?
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears less pressured to meet and talk. What does this tell us? Zelenskyy does not believe further fighting will benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants the war over.
“It’s time to meet, time to talk … time to restore territorial integrity … for Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday.
Zelenskyy added that the need to negotiate was even greater for Moscow. “Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.”
According to the Pentagon, Russia has lost 7,000 soldiers; Kyiv puts the figure at 14,000 dead.
Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears less pressured to meet and talk. What does this tell us?
Zelenskyy does not believe further fighting will benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants the war over.
As for Putin, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Sunday, “He’s not been able to achieve the goals that he wants to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them.” Putin wants more time.
The Russian president began the invasion of Ukraine with Crimea already annexed and the enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk having already declared their independence of Kyiv.
Since the invasion began, however, Putin’s forces have besieged but not taken Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or second largest city, Kharkiv.
Yet, Russian troops are now in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, having completed a land bridge from Russia through the Donbas to Crimea and, from there, halfway to Odessa, the last major Ukrainian port on the Black Sea.
While the Ukrainian army and citizens have put up fiercer resistance than was anticipated in Moscow, Russia is not losing this war.
Measured by territorial gains, Putin is winning
He has not captured Kyiv or Kharkiv, but he has expanded the Russian-controlled territories of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea that he had at the start of his invasion.
While Russia’s costs and casualties have been far greater than was anticipated, Putin has added to the Ukrainian lands he held when the war began. And Mother Russia has not lost an inch of land in this war.
“How does this thing end?” Gen. David Petraeus famously asked on the road to Baghdad.
No political solution appears more likely than a new partition of Ukraine, with lands east of the Dnieper River and along the coasts of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea being ceded to Moscow, and the west of Ukraine being declared a neutral nation like Austria or Finland in the Cold War.
The problem with this probable outcome is that Zelenskyy has ruled out any territorial concessions or land transfers from Ukraine to Russia. And he seeks to “restore,” not to make permanent, the 2014 amputations of Crimea and the Donbas.
The dilemma: Zelenskyy probably cannot survive ceding control of any Ukrainian land to Russia. And Putin probably cannot survive a failure in peace talks to expand the Ukrainian holdings with which he began the war.
The “territorial integrity” of Ukraine is the crucial issue in ending this war.
And it is precisely here where it appears impossible for both sides to come to terms.
The one issue on which both parties will likely agree in any peace settlement is the issue that should have been agreed to — to prevent the war: a formal declaration by Kyiv that it will never join a NATO alliance created to contain Russia and, if necessary, defeat Russia in a war.
A frustrated and enraged President Joe Biden has taken to calling Putin a “killer,” a “murderous dictator” and a “war criminal” who has launched an “immoral war” — comments the Kremlin calls “unforgivable”
Such rhetoric would seem to rule out any role for U.S. diplomacy in negotiating the end to this war. Other nations — Israel, Turkey, France, Germany — have maintained regular relations and constant contact with Putin, who sits and broods atop the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Consider the moral dilemma the U.S. has put itself in.
Our president says Russia is led by “a war criminal,” conducting an “immoral” war in which deliberate atrocities are committed at hospitals, schools, kindergartens and art theaters.
Yet, the U.S. and NATO will not provide weapons to Ukraine, including secondhand MiGs, that might cause Russia to retaliate against us or NATO or risk World War III or risk Russia’s use of tactical atomic weapons.
Because, pillaged and persecuted though Ukraine may be, it is not a member of NATO.
If Latvia, however, with 5% of Ukraine’s population, is encroached upon, we will engage Russia militarily, and to hell with the risk of World War III or Russia’s possible retaliation with atomic weapons.
In war, the moral is to the material as three is to one, said Napoleon. Unfortunately, what George Bernard Shaw said cynically also appears to be true: In war, God is on the side of the big battalions.
Zelenskyy probably cannot survive signing away the title to any Ukrainian land, be it Crimea or the Donbas. And Putin likely cannot survive not bringing home new territory from a Russian “victory.”
Again, perhaps the one issue on which almost all now agree is that Ukraine renounce its right to join the NATO alliance.
He won’t be allowed to do so. The U.S. needs to bleed the Ukrainians as long as possible to create a quagmire for the Russians.
An excellent overview. Whichever fate pans out for Ukraine, it is self inflicted. There’s no cure for being stupid for 8 years straith.
This was a Ziojew inflicted Jewcoup orchestrated by the bloody thirsty Victoria der Vampir Nudelman, Staatssekretärin für hinterhältige politische Angelegenheiten
Unfortunately and most scarily, the longer this conflict lasts, the more likely WW3 becomes…. The USA has gone insane, or most of its official (rather than behind-the-scenes) leaders have. An apparent War Party of media jackals and politicians keep shouting a false narrative as though they’re hardening the public mind for war and calamity.
I emailed Dementia Joe to ask him not to listen to the self-righteous saber-rattlers. I was glad to see that Psaki said giving military planes to that Soros agent was an unacceptable risk/benefit trade-off, inasmuch as, and I paraphrase, “The doubtful benefit to Ukraine isn’t worth risking a disastrously bigger war.” But Dementia Joe’s reply to me was full of Putin-demonization and “He must not be allowed to get away with his crimes,” etc.
I knew in January and early Feb that the neo-Marxists’ making a big deal of the Russian preparations was to divert Americans’ attention from what’s happening to the USA. Well, fighting a war will distract even more. Someone has said that the traitors need a war, and I think he’s right. The question is whether they’re crazy enough to trigger WW3. (Why should I doubt?–these are the same critters who think men get pregnant.) And how much easier would a Great Reset be when the economy is destroyed, the political opposition (such as it is) is out of communication with its constituents and robbed of victory in November elections that won’t happen, and martial law enables the neo-Marxists to enforce anything?
Pondering-
Could this be a good time to think about AntiFa’s dream of her utopian Red raj? Is it a decent time to ponder about the US-Western anti-majority identity politics, kultura and law?
Does the present war signify a clash of values? Does the worship of Zielinsky tell the masses anything? Is there a clash of civilizations between the Woke West, Conservative Russia and production factory-Technocratic China?
Could it be a fact that the big threesome (Deep State-MSM-academia) and it’s identity and gender politics has been implementing youthful self-hate? Why is the open destruction of symbols pertaining to America’s past glorified?
If the above holds water then why has Putin’s pro-majorly stance for Russia made him the number one nemesis. It’s easy to understand why the Western oligarchy’s hatred of Putin is so fanatical. He could upset the apple cart.
Mr. Putin’s speeches show his belief that there’s a concerted attempt by the West’s anti-majority ruling class to push its ‘woke’ ideology onto Russia. He believes that the lessons of the Soviets should have taught humanity that Woke anti-majority ideology is absurd.
Putin, over and over again, has declared and argued about Woke’s absurdity. He has emphasized that Russia had experienced such experiments under the Bolsheviks, that was disastrous.
Who has not read Putin’s speeches pertaining to our Deep State’s reverse discrimination policies against the majority in the interests of a minority? Is there any wonder why the Deep State despises him?
Just look at the lying media and it’s neglect to mention how the Azov no-nazi units have killed about 15,000 people in Dunbar, prior to Putin’s invasion. The monopoly media even tells the public that war victories are defeats and defeats are victories.
Is it any wonder why the propaganda about the jab was so successful? Look, masses believe. Just watch individuals with masks riding alone in their vehicles. Sheeple following? FB screws freedom of speech and retains membership.
Who has not heard Putin’s referring to the West’s demand to give up traditional notions of mother, father, family and even gender? In more than one lecture Putin has condemned the policies that are prevalent for Cancel Culture’s reverse racism? Putin claimed, it’s absurdity as he emphasized that Russia had suffered under such anti-majority experiments generated by a minority that created the Bolshevik system. So, with potential nuclear war creeping around the corner why is the Deep State traveling down that road?
Could it be that the West has an incompetent leadership that is in the pocket of the new oligarch network? Is that why, with all the prevailing evidence about a fraudulent election, there has not been a resetting to remove those in office?