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Ukraine – No Way To Peace Without Further War
A week ago I welcomed the talks between CIA director Bill Burns and the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin but was skeptical of any outcome:
There will be no ceasefire now but the talks are good anyway. Both sides should do there best to keep them going.
Russia has asked for a lot: a pullback of NATO to its 1997 position, four parts of Ukraine to become parts of Russia, a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. The U.S. is certainly not willing to commit to those steps – at least not yet.
It will need time and many more talks for the U.S. to come to its senses and to make the necessary concessions to end the conflict.
It will also require the defeat of the Ukrainian military, and anyone who joins it, on the battle field. Russia can do that if it concentrates on that effort.
Since then Russia released another salvo of missiles on the electricity network of Ukraine. This confirmed that the talks were not moving in a positive direction.
Now Yves Smith and Gilbert Doctorow name additional handicaps to the necessary compromises that could end the war.
Smith starts be examining the recent utterances from the U.S. side. There is no sign in them that anyone within the Biden administration is seeking some way towards peace. General Milley, who went public with talk suggestion after he had lost the internal discussion, was in fact whistled back:
Some of the close watchers of the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been talking up the prospects of peace talks. As we’ll discuss shortly, your humble blogger thinks this view is not currently well aligned with reality. Yes, things look to have thawed to the point that the US has backed off of worst-than-the-darkest-days-of-cold-war non-communication with Russia. But while thawing from close to absolute zero to a mere deep freeze is technically warming, it’s still awfully frigid. The two sides have zero bargaining overlap in their positions, which means no basis for discussions.
Another problem with talks is that there is no one to talk to. The Ukrainian comedian Zelensky is not in a position where he can give up and stay alive:
And one of the biggest impediments to any settlement, other than Russia eventually dictating terms, is the leader the collective West has put on a pedestal: Zelensky, with the additional baggage of his Banderite inner circle.
Smith affirmatively quotes the former Russian president Medvedev who had explained the issue:
Vice Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, in a recent Telegram comment summarized in TASS, correctly depicted how Zelensky is boxed in:
Nevertheless, “Zelensky does not want any negotiations for quite obvious selfish reasons. Moreover, they [negotiations] are very dangerous for him,” Medvedev continued.
“After all, unless he acknowledges the realities of Ukraine’s break-up, it makes no sense to sit down at the [negotiating] table. Once he admits it, he will be bumped off by his own nationalists who are connected with the army top brass, and of whom he is scared out of his wits,” Medvedev said, describing the situation by the chess term ‘Zugzwang’ (in which each move of a player will worsen his/her position).
This scenario also underscores the mess the West is in if it were actually to get serious about wanting to negotiate (per above, my read on the rash of news is they amount to a combination of optics management plus some personal jockeying; there’s no sign Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, or Austin have changed position), they can’t maneuver around the neo-Nazi infestation the US bred. Zelensky will have to resist any peace overtures. If he were killed, the neo-Nazis would blame it on Russia and use it as a pretext for even more radical positions. After all, how much would it cost the US to provide intel and other support for terrorism?
Over the last months Russia had made a number of statements that could be seen as requests for talks:
In the last month, the volley of calls for negotiation from Putin has intensified. On September 30, Putin called on Kiev “to return back to the negotiating table.” On October 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia "was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war." Two days later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow is “open to negotiations to achieve our objectives." On October 26, Putin sent a message to Zelensky through President Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo of Guinea Bissau, saying that “He wishes and thinks that a direct dialogue should happen between your two countries.” On October 30, Lavrov said that Russia is “ready to listen to our Western colleagues if they make another request to organize a conversation" as long as Russia’s security needs were considered. And on November 1, Putin said that “necessary conditions” could arise that would be a catalyst to talks.
The phase of Russia seeking negotiations now seems to be over.
Gilbert Doctorow finds that Russia's society has moved on and that prominent politicians are following its lead:
The fact is that Russian society from top to bottom is very unhappy with the present state of the war – but their discontent is with what they see as the pusillanimity of their own government in not responding more resolutely to Ukrainian provocations in the form of continuing artillery strikes on the Kursk and Belgorod regions from the Kharkov oblast just across the border or through atrocities such as the just released video of the cold-blooded murder of Russian prisoners of war by gleeful Ukrainian soldiers. The withdrawal from the city of Kherson inflamed the passions of the Russian public who demand better explanations in their parliament and on their television than they have received so far.
The pressure on Mr. Putin is from his own patriotic supporters, and an untimely truce for negotiations right now could lead to civil disorder in Russia. This is not idle speculation: it was perfectly clear from the latest edition of yesterday’s talk show Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov in which a deputy speaker of the Duma from the ruling party United Russia and a Duma committee chairman from the Communists took an active part, meaning that the nation’s elites are moving with the popular current against Defense Minister Shoigu if not against those still higher in the Kremlin.
As Yves Smith closes:
So I don’t see any alternative other than for Russia to continue on its current path of prostrating Ukraine. And I’m sure the Russians had worked that out a while back and see nothing that suggests it would make sense to change course.
I agree.
The senseless war will for now continue.
Meanwhile it is freezing here in north Germany which will likely have a very expensive winter.
Britain continues to buy Russian oil from third parties while the EU will receive its Russian gas through Azerbaijan. The prices per unit will be much higher than any direct imports from Russia would be. The price differences will enrich a number of middleman at the cost of British and European consumers.
One wonders how long European politicians will be able to justify that charade.
For the bar’s consideration:
Still trying to make sense of the awkward handling of 1) Polish missile strike, 2) repeated shelling of Zaporizhzhia NPP.
(My) base assumption is that the US totally controls Zelensky, and anything the AFU does is either by US/NATO direct command or with US/NATO consent. Any time Zelensky or the AFU doesn’t stay in their lane, western intelligence/military knows about it almost at once. Zelensky knows that, knows where his financial lifeline and arms supplies come from… thus, behaves unquestioningly. Some might argue that Zelensky has some autonomy from his US/NATO overlords so the rest of my argument will not apply.
Now suppose AZOV/ADIAR and the rest of the ultra-nationalist militias were never really absorbed by the Ukraine military (AFU, interior ministry Stazi, National Guards, etc.), Suppose they are still acting largely on their own impetus for their own reasons with their own oligarch financing. They were and remain only nominally under control of Zelensky and the military chain of command, but act on their own whenever they want.
After all, who’s going to stop them? They essentially are in league with the SBU Gestapo, so no problems there. Zelensky as CIC? Hardly, they only seem to tolerate him as a somewhat-reliable arms supplier. AFU? Guards? Isn’t AZOV/ADIAR the punisher battalions in the rear that shoot deserting AFU/Gurads?
Now consider how AZOV/ADIAR can act with impunity towards *their* rabid, psychopathic ultra-nationalist ends.
Russians took Zaporizhzhia? Shell it to punish (or irradiate) them. But [insert any logic against shelling ZNPP here]? Sorry, but AZOV/ADIAR is willing to take that risk… because it will kill Russians or prevent them from ever using ZNPP. Maybe the Russians will leave (or honor a ‘Safety Zone’) and AZOV/ADIAR can take it over and threaten Armageddon. Or build a few dirty bombs – whatever.
In any case, AZOV/ADIAR going rogue and shelling ZNPP explains Zelensky’s crazy denials – he doesn’t know because the ‘real’ AFU is NOT under orders to shell the plant and/or they are reluctant to report back to Zelensky that it’s really AZOV/ADIAR gone rogue. Maybe AZOV/ADIAR is forcing small AFU units to shell the plant under threat of execution, and AZOV/ADIAR will come back and kill them all if they squeal. So all the AFU chain of command above them knows is that they didn’t do anything or know anything about ZNPP shelling.
US/NATO getting cold feet in Ukraine? AZOV/ADIAR solution: launch an S-300 (or ‘something’) into Poland to turn up the heat. Does AZOV/ADIAR have S-300s or something? Doesn’t matter. A little group of them show up to an AFU installation and ‘encourage’ the crews to light a few off towards Poland. And if the crews say anything, well… AZOV/ADIAR knows where their families live. This explains Zelensky’s initial confusion/denial that Ukraine fired anything into Poland. Zelensky could find out the unit that fired it from debris (presuming S-300) so he insists on sending a Ukraine team to look at it. He’ll never admit it was a Ukraine S-300, but he needs to know for himself if it was one of his.
Now keep in mind that the US had an AWACS right on the border all day and knows precisely where the missile was launched from. Poland quickly kicked out the firemen and had it’s spooks sifting through the soil collecting fragments – they have to know by now exactly what it was and have all the serial numbers, etc. If US/NATO and Poland already know it was a Ukraine missile but not fired under the orders Zelensky or the AFU, then they have a bit of a dilemma. I’ll call it the head-chopper dilemma for reasons below.
Now if AZOV/ADIAR have gone rogue on their own genocidal frenzy and Zelensky can’t control them, then what does the US do? It can’t use the SBU Gestapo to purge the ultra-nationalists because the SBU is compromised, too. Neither Zelensky nor his military commanders can do anything because they would get whacked… or worse. The US can’t send in JSOC kill teams because the Nazis are everywhere, including Kiev, and there’s hundreds of leaders. ‘Regular’ Ukrainians seem tolerant of AZOV/ADIAR because they’re useful and effective. If the US decapitated the Nazi leadership, a lot of Ukrainians would be seriously pissed off.
In the mean time, AZOV/ADIAR knows they’re untouchable and will continue to wage war on *their* terms against Russia. There will be no negotiations with AZOV/ADIAR – there’s nothing to negotiate. Their ‘terms’ are exactly what Zelensky has parroted: all Russian troops leave Ukraine, all land returned to Ukraine. Until then, shelling a NPP, fomenting NATO entry into the war or just torturing and executing Russian POWs (and ‘disloyal’ Ukrainians) provides plenty of entertainment. There is no one ‘leader’ that they all follow, and nobody to negotiate with. They’re driven by ideology alone.
Which brings me back to the US head-chopper dilemma from Syria. What do you do when your efforts to hide radical head-chopper jihadis fail? Once too many YouTube videos come out of ‘FSA’ moderate head-choppers doing what they like to do – chop heads – then the whole public support thing falls apart. There’s no way to fund ‘just’ the FSA good guys to fight Assad. You pull the plug on the whole project, lick your wounds and take over some oil fields and granaries to punish Assad.
See why the US might be obsessed with hiding the most serious AZOV/ADIAR provocations/war crimes? If the US admits that Zelensky has no control over them, then the US taxpayers are going to get plenty pissed off that we’re funding terrorists (directly or indirectly) that are trying to provoke WWIII or irradiate Europe. I would think the Europeans would be plenty worried about this too, but they seem to have a high tolerance for suicidal insanity committed by their leaders. I assume many have caught on by now but are in the same position as I am: what do you do when your own government has gone rogue?
Worse of all, if this has happened (AZOV/ADIAR effectively gone rogue) but the US is afraid to admit it or do anything about it, then you have the Head-chopper Paradox: what do you do when you depended on them for earlier political/military gains, and you still desperately want to ‘win’ (Depose Assad, Chase Russia out of Ukraine) but now they’ve become inconvenient and insolent? Head-choppers gonna head-chop.
Now, you’re desperate to 1) hide this fact from the American/European public at all costs, and 2) somehow distance yourself from responsibility for their war crimes that you enabled, Walking away isn’t an option like it was in Syria. These guys are a serious problem, shelling ZNPP and lobbing rockets into Poland is only the beginning. They’ll do more and have to be stopped. But you’re arming them to the teeth even better than you’re arming the AFU (because AZOV/ADIAR takes what they want first, including financial aid). You can’t send NATO in to ‘defend’ Zelensky and the AFU from the head-choppers that put them in power. You know how sensitive westerners are to the sight of their own dead soldiers.
The ‘solution’ to the Head-chopper Dilemma in Syria was to walk away and let Russia clean up our mess. I don’t think that’s going to work in Ukraine. It’s clear that US/NATO are terrified and paralyzed – sending more arms and money is just going to make the problem worse.
Posted by: PavewayIV | Nov 21 2022 20:38 utc | 79
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