Ukraine - Negotiation Failure Plus Other Items

After some diplomatic gyrations, talks between the Russian Federation and Ukraine took place today in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Russian side had sent largely same delegation which had negotiated with Ukraine in March and April 2022. It sees the current negotiations as a continuation of the older ones, provided that new facts on the ground are taken into account.

The Ukrainian delegation was headed by its Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov. Its task was to demand an immediate ceasefire and to prepare a meeting between the presidents of the two countries.

The talks ended after just two hours.

The Russian side is said to have demanded a Ukrainian retreat from the four oblast the Russians have largely conquered and integrated into their country.

The Ukrainian side demanded an immediate ceasefire, the return of children the Russians had removed from the areas involved in military operations and the exchange of all prisoners (of which Russia has many more than Ukraine). It is obvious that Ukrainian side is not interested (yet) in making peace.

Both sides rejected the other side's demands and that was it. For now ...

The balance of power in the war is clearly on the Russian side. The Ukrainian army will thus continue to bleed and lose on the battlefield.

Another exchange of dead soldiers also occurred today. Thirty four corpse of Russia soldiers were exchanged against 909 Ukrainian ones. The rather absurd relation of 1 to 27 has been the case for quite a while. Indeed it seems that Russian side has limited the number of Ukrainian corpses it is willing to release per exchange to 909.

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There are three reasons that contribute to the strong divergence of the numbers of dead on each side.

• For the Ukrainian side the evacuation of dead (and wounded) soldiers is not a priority.
• The Russian side is moving forwards winning control of areas that the Ukrainian side has lost. This allows to collect all dead while not being under fire.
• The Ukrainian losses are in general much higher than the Russian ones.

Lieutenant-General Andrey Mordvichev, who the Ukrainians had claimed to have killed on March 19 2022, has become the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces in the rank of a Colonel-General.

The Ukrainian government 'lost' over $700 million buying arms and munitions which were never delivered or unusable.

How Ukraine lost hundreds of millions on arms deals gone wrong (archived) - Financial Times, May 16 2025
Desperate to source munitions, Kyiv paid foreign brokers for weapons and shells that were sometimes unusable or never arrived

A Financial Times investigation, based on leaked Ukrainian state documents, court filings and dozens of interviews with procurement officials, weapons dealers and manufacturers, and detectives, has uncovered how hundreds of millions of dollars Kyiv paid to foreign arms intermediaries to secure vital military equipment has gone to waste over the past three years of war.
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To date, Ukraine has paid out $770mn in advance to foreign arms brokers for weapons and ammunition that have not been delivered, according to figures from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, as well as documents seen by the FT.
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Most the deals have (presumably) involved large bribes.

Palestine Open Thread 2025-106

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-105

News & views related to the war in Ukraine ...

Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-104

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine ...

In Saudi Arabia Trump Rejects Interventionism, Regime-Change Schemes

Foreign policy statements by the Trump administration continue to surprise.

At the end of January Secretary of State Marco Rubio made remarks that strongly diverged from decades of U.S. policy. He did away with 'unipolarity' - the assumed leading role of the U.S. in global policy - and acknowledged and endorsed a multi-polar world.

He set a limit to U.S. intervention by acknowledging the legitimate interests of others:

The way the world has always worked is that the Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China, the Russians will do what’s in the best interest of Russia, the Chileans are going to do what’s in the best interest of Chile, and the United States needs to do what’s in the best interest of the United States. Where our interests align, that’s where you have partnerships and alliances; where our differences are not aligned, that is where the job of diplomacy is to prevent conflict while still furthering our national interests and understanding they’re going to further theirs. And that’s been lost.

Rubio wants to reintroduce that concept:

And I think that was lost at the end of the Cold War, because we were the only power in the world, and so we assumed this responsibility of sort of becoming the global government in many cases, trying to solve every problem. And there are terrible things happening in the world. There are. And then there are things that are terrible that impact our national interest directly, and we need to prioritize those again. So it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power. That was not – that was an anomaly. It was a product of the end of the Cold War, but eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet. We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.

That was a great (if very late), and astonishing insight from the U.S. secretary responsible for foreign policy. Especially from one who had been previously affiliated with the neo-conservative movement.

President Trump is currently visiting the Arab states along the Persian Gulf. His main effort there is to collect tribute in from of weapon and investment deals given in exchange for 'security'. In that he is continuing the protection racket that has been a main aspect of U.S. global policy since the end of World War II.

But during a speech (video) at the Saudi-U.S.investment forum, he also entered new territory. He took fifteen minutes to laud his host and to rumble about his own 'achievements'. He lauded the crown price Mohammad bin Salman and other Gulf rulers to then jump, twenty minutes in, into a critique of previous(?) U.S. 'regime change' behavior.

The White House does not provide a transcript of the 50 minute long speech, only short excerpts. But a full transcript is available here.

Here are the excerpts that point to new policies:

Cont. reading: In Saudi Arabia Trump Rejects Interventionism, Regime-Change Schemes

Uncertainty Of Future Tariffs Continues To Hamstring Economy

On April 2 President Donald Trump declared "Liberation Day," announcing a new tariff strategy aimed at allegedly correcting trade imbalances and protecting U.S. workers and industries.

It was the wrong medicine for misdiagnosed illness. Internal U.S. economic problems are caused by legal incentives for financial speculation and disincentives to produce goods people need. Tariffs won't solve that problem.

The tariff rates Trump introduced were ignoring economic realities. The whole economic concept behind was based on some advisors weird theory. It was obvious that the whole Trump strategy implemented through tariffs would fail.

China and other pushed back against U.S. tariffs by introducing some on their own. The markets reacted appropriately. The values of the U.S. dollar, U.S. stock markets and U.S. treasuries decreased.

By April 9 Trump was forced to pull back. He paused the tariffs for most countries for 90 days but increased tariffs on China.

China responded in kind. 

Three days later Trump announced another retreat. Smartphones and computers were excluded from the previously introduced tariffs.

Speculators may well have liked the uncertainty Trump's irresponsible tariff tactics introduced into financial markets. But for markets of real goods uncertainty is a venom that blocks all activities. It soon became obvious that the tariffs would cause huge problems for the U.S. economy.

Trump tried to press China to concede to U.S. terms in some new trade deal. But China rejected all talks until tariffs were reestablished at the previous levels.

That concession was made. Talks over the weekend in Geneva saw the U.S., again, pulling back.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal don't hold back in their comment:

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity.

Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to China’s role in the fentanyl trade, for a total rate of 30%. In exchange, Beijing will reduce its retaliatory tariff to 10% from 125%. The deal is good for 90 days to start, as negotiations continue.

And therein, I believe, still lies the big problem.

The editors conclude:

The 30% tariff is still exceptionally high for a major trading partner, but the 90-day rollback spares both sides from what looked like an impending economic crackup. U.S. consumers were facing widespread shortages, while China feared growing unemployment.

For now, nothing will change with those symptoms.

It is not only the very high 30% tariff (for mostly products with very low profit margins) that will prevent Chinese factories from resuming production and U.S. retailers from restocking their shelves.

The poison that still paralyses everything is the uncertainty and insecurity that comes with the 90 days limit of the deal and with no perspective of what might follow. Who will post orders for, let's say return-to-school items, if it is unknown what price will have to be paid for them?

Paul Krugman agrees:

The prohibitive tariff has been paused, not canceled. Nobody knows what will happen in 90 days. I’ve long argued that the uncertainty created by Trump’s arbitrary, ever-changing tariffs is at least as important as the level of those tariffs. Well, the uncertainty level has arguably gone up rather than down.

This retreat probably hasn’t come soon enough to avoid high prices and empty shelves. Even if shipments from Shanghai to Los Angeles — which had come to a virtual halt — were to resume tomorrow, stuff wouldn’t arrive in time to avoid exhaustion of current inventories.

I guess it’s good news that Trump slammed on the brakes before driving completely off the cliff. But if you think that rationality has returned to the policy process, that the days of government by ignorant whim are now behind us, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

I agree with that take.

An Immediate Peace Is The Best One Ukraine Can Ever Get

The attritional war in Ukraine is moving towards a new phase. The Ukrainian army is crumbling but its leadership, with the support of some Europeans, is unwilling to concede its defeat.

There are still very unrealistic views in the West about the losses and capabilities in this conflict. They prevent those who have them from acknowledging the urgent need for peace negotiations. 

In a new analysis Alex Vershinin, an expert from RUSI, provides sound arguments and numbers for those who support an immediate end of the war.

In military circles Vershinin is a well known capacity:

Lt Col (Retd) Alex Vershinin has 10 years of frontline experience in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. For the last decade before his retirement, he worked as a modelling and simulations officer in concept development and experimentation for NATO and the US Army.

Vershinin is working for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the official think tank of the British military. His experience with modeling and simulations allows him to take the 'big picture' view.

In June 2022 RUSI published his piece on The Return of Industrial Warfare (Jun 17 2022) in which he warned about of lack of an industrial base in the West to sustain a war in Ukraine against Russia. I have referred to the piece in some of my writings:

Russia Is Winning The Industrial Warfare Race - Moon of Alabama, Sep 14 2023

A warning that Russia will outproduce the West was given back in June 2022 when Alex Vershinin of RUSI issued a note about The Return of Industrial Warfare:

The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.

It has become too expensive for the West to regain that capability.

That Russia was running out of stuff was always wishful thinking, not fact based analysis. On that point it took the media more than a year to catch up with reality. On other aspects of the the war, casualty numbers come to mind, the media are still miles behind.

In another RUSI piece published in March 2024 Vershinin repeated his warning. I referred to it in May 2024:

When it came out in March I had read and linked to the latest Alex Vershinin piece at RUSI:

The Attritional Art of War: Lessons from the Russian War on Ukraine - RUSI

The attritional character of the war was obvious since Putin ordered the de-militarization of Ukraine. It is finally getting some discussion.

Vershinin is thus right in that the war in Ukraine is a war of attrition. But it is a one-sided one. It is only NATO and its proxy force Ukraine which get attrited while the Russian military gains in quality and quantity.

Still, it's a must read:

The fastest way to lose a war of attrition is to focus on manoeuvre, expending valuable resources on near-term territorial objectives.

This is exactly what Ukraine has done so far (Bakhmut, Krinky).
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The 'west' (i.e. the U.S.) has lost its mind on the issue:

If the West is serious about a possible great power conflict, it needs to take a hard look at its industrial capacity, mobilisation doctrine and means of waging a protracted war, rather than conducting wargames covering a single month of conflict and hoping that the war will end afterwards.

Shortly after that writing the Ukrainian army launched its disastrous incursion into Russia's Kursk region. It was, after Bakhmut and Krinki, the third large operation which wasted Ukrainian lives and resources on a large scale for temporary propaganda gains.

A months ago Vershinin came out with a third piece that covers the issue. RUSI refrained, for whatever reason, from publishing it. It first appeared in Russia Matters under the title:

Battlefield Conditions Impacting Ukraine Peace Negotiations - Russia Matters, Apr 18 2025

It received little response. It was later republished under a different headline by Responsible Statecraft where I finally noticed it:

Ukraine’s battlefield position is deteriorating fast - Responsible Statecraft, May 5 2025
Should Kyiv collapse, the Russian army will surge forward, pushing the line of contact deeper into Ukraine and peace terms will get worse

Vershinin starts by pointing out the geopolitical importance for the West of wining (or losing) the war:

Cont. reading: An Immediate Peace Is The Best One Ukraine Can Ever Get

Palestine Open Thread 2025-103

News & views related to the war in Palestine ...

Ukraine Open Thread 2025-102

News & views related to the war in Ukraine ...

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-101

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• May 5 - Yemen - They Defeated The Saudis, Then Biden, Now Trump
• May 7 - Yemen - U.S. Concedes Maritime Defeat
  Related:
  - MI5’s Fake Terror Plots 19 - Craig Murray
  - Trump Interview Puts Iran Negotiations in Jeopardy - Ted Snider / AntiWar
  - Exclusive — Steve Witkoff Ahead of Round 4 of Talks: Iran Has Agreed ‘They Don’t Want’ Nuclear Weapon - Breitbart

• May 6 - Germany - Merz Fails To Become Chancellor In Shocking First-Round Vote
  Related:
  - BREAKING: New Merz government orders the pushback of all illegal migrants - Eugyppius
  - How the Establishment Is Domesticating Populism - Thomas Fazi / Compact
  - Romania’s elites are riding the populist tiger - Aris Roussinos / Unherd
  - The Road Right - Wolfgang Streeck / New Left Review

• May 8 - Ukraine - Rada Blocks Detail Agreements Of Mineral Deal
  Related:
  - Vance says Russia ‘asking for too much’ to end war with Ukraine - Politico
  - Hardening lines signal Ukraine peace process collapse - Asia Times
  - Trump’s peacemaking was always doomed - Thomas Fazi / Unherd
  - Trump Still Does Not Understand What Russia Wants and Demands - Sonar21
  
  - Ukraine and allies demand 30-day ceasefire; Putin wants talks first (archived) - Washington Post
  - Putin says Russia is 'committed' to restart talks with Kyiv, suggests May 15 start - NBCnews
  - France, Germany, Poland, UK and Ukraine issue statement on need for ceasefire - Pravda.ua

Dmitry Medvedev @MedvedevRussiaE - 22:57 UTC · May 9, 2025

> Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Tusk were supposed to discuss peace in Kiev. Instead, they are blurting out threats against Russia. Either a truce for the respite of Banderite hordes or new sanctions. You think that’s smart, eh? Shove these peace plans up your pangender arses! <

• May 9 - Trump Decouples U.S. Middle East Policy From Israel's Interests
  Related:
  - Is Donald Trump Putting Israel in the Dog House? - Sonar21
  - Karma Arriving? Times of Israel Frets Over Trump Abandonment With Houthis and Perhaps Even Iran - Naked Capitalism
  - Netanyahu's Israel Cannot Provide Trump With Any Wins He Can Promote Back Home (archived) - Haaretz

• May 9 - Victory Day
  Related:
  - VICTORY DAY 80 - Patrick Armstrong
  - The Moscow Victory Day Military Parade, 9 May 2025 - Gilbert Doctorow
  - Travel Notes, Installment Five: Miscellany - Gilbert Doctorow
  - U.S., Russia In Quiet Talks to Bring Russian Gas Back to Europe - OilPrice

• May 10 - Trump Claims Victory In Achieving Peace Between India And Pakistan
  Related:
  - Normality returns as nuclear-armed neighbours step back from the brink - Dawn
  - Vance called Indian prime minister to encourage ceasefire talks after receiving alarming intelligence - CNN
  - Reluctant at First, Trump Officials Intervened in South Asia as Nuclear Fears Grew (archived) - NY Times
  - China’s J-10 ‘Dragon’ shows teeth in India-Pakistan combat debut (archived) - FT
  - Military operation in Pakistan reveals weaknesses of India's air force - Le Monde

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review - OT 2025-101