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Zelenski Changes His Peace Plan
Zelenski's 'peace summit' in Switzerland had failed:
The reviews of Zelenski's latest show ain't positive:
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The summit served warmed up bullshit without any significant nutritional value. The most important points weren't even discussed:
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The war will continue until the complete destruction of the Ukrainian forces can no longer be ignored.
The last point may have come earlier than anticipated.
On June 27 Zelenski had changed tact (machine translation):
During a speech in Brussels, the president said that Ukraine wants to start negotiations on ending the war in the near future.
"Ukraine does not want to prolong the war, we do not want it to last for years. We need to put a settlement plan on the table within a few months, " he said.
Zelensky said that in the near future it is planned to develop a plan for the second world summit.
On June 28 he gave more details (machine translation):
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine will present its detailed peace plan "this year".
The President announced this during a press conference in Kyiv.
"It is very important for us to show an end-of-war plan that will be supported by the majority of the world. This is the diplomatic path that we are working on. Not everything depends on us, our production of technology, drones, and artillery is really increasing, because we need to be strong on the battlefield. Because Russia understands nothing but force. These are two parallel processes: be strong and develop a detailed, clear plan, and it will be ready this year, " Zelensky said.
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Note that the Ukrainian peace plan has long been presented by Zelensky. It implies the withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders. However, many countries of the world (especially representatives of the "global South") consider it unrealistic.
In other words, a new plan will probably be prepared.
Earlier Russia's President Putin had announced his conditions for a permanent peace agreement. How many of them will Zelenski accept within his new 'peace plan'?
Glad “b” is back. That cool look at the reality is most valuable. Hope he doesn’t overdo it. Things moving so fast, so much happening, that a realistic summary becomes more and more indispensable. The straight narrative of the week’s events that Rob Campbell now puts out also helps to hold things in memory. Martyanov said a while ago that he doesn’t expect a blow by blow summary of the SMO as a whole until after the war but it’s impossible not to look at the conflict in real time, however lacking in detail that look must necessarily be.
I didn’t have a lot of luck enquiring here for more detail about the period I think is vital, the very beginning of the SMO. What I did get confirmed my suspicion that the initial operation was well planned and executed, allowing for the fact that the initial target was a speedy settlement following an efficient incapacitation of the then Kiev forces. Also ensuring that the danger of the Kiev forces entering the territory of the self-declared Republics was removed for good.
Russian aims have expanded since those early days. They now extend, seems, to arriving at a new Security Architecture of the entirety of Eurasia, not just Europe! But as the Russians attempt that, it’s getting forgotten what the initial aims of the SMO were, in particular the aim of safeguarding the Donbass.
I don’t think that ought to be forgotten, especially since notable figures such as John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs give us an entirely false picture of the reasons for the SMO. Their thesis, and the thesis of most of those who are opposed to the part the West has played in this war, is that NATO pressure on Russia had become so great that the Russians finally cracked and invaded Ukraine to push that pressure back.
And I see that a minor but currently important figure in British politics has adopted that thesis tout court and had adopted it years ago. Nigel Farage is now emphasising that Boris Johnson himself had declared in 2016 that the eastward expansion of the EU – which was a necessary part of NATO expansion – was undesirable and would lead to unnecessary tension. But since Farage and those like him attribute the SMO to that NATO/EU pressure alone they fail entirely to explain why that SMO was undertaken.
Also in Germany, by far the most important European country, opposition to Western policy in Ukraine is similarly unfocused. The main opposition is from those worried about the economic effects of the sanctions war. Some opposition also deriving from the underlying “Ami go home” sentiment among some Germans. Considerable opposition also from those who believe that NATO pressure had indeed been too great and that it was that that provoked the Russian invasion. Almost no opposition in Germany from those who are able to relate the invasion to the threat posed by the Kiev forces on the LoC in February 2022.
And virtually no recognition in German politics that it was the West that fostered and then supported the extremist movement that has had an increasing say in Ukrainian politics since 2014, or that it was that extremist element in the Kiev forces that made the threat of a Kiev incursion into the Donbass dangerous, a threat so dangerous that it demanded an immediate pre-emptive military response from the Russians.
That is the justification for the SMO and there can be no other.
For the Mearsheimer/Sachs explanation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails even in its own terms. How could NATO pressure be relieved by an SMO that must inevitably and predictably increase that pressure? We now see, as a direct result of the SMO, an increase in NATO membership and proposals to base nuclear weapons yet closer to Russia. Proposals, even if unrealistic, to station a large Rapid Response Force near the Russian border. Proposals, again even if unrealistic, to greatly increase European arms production. And we see Borrell’s successor calling, not only for the defeat of Russia but also for its dismemberment. All that is a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all foreseeable, and to argue that the SMO was undertaken to reduce NATO pressure when it so clearly would increase it is fallacious.
And in truth, if the Russians wish to push back against NATO pressure, or had wished to do so in 2022, they have and had remedy to hand involving no military action at all. NATO pressure is exerted only via Europe. Without Europe it cannot be exerted. In the real world, and forget the wild talk of men with snow on their boots marching through Berlin, the only effective means the RF has to counter the use of Europe as a base from which to exert NATO pressure, and the only effective means it had in 2022, is to cut essential supplies to Europe.
They did not do that. On the contrary, they continued supplying Europe, in as far as they were allowed to, with hydrocarbons and raw materials even as some of those supplies were converted into arms and ammunition with which to kill Russian soldiers.
NATO pressure was of course essential background to this war. Mearsheimer and Sachs, as one would expect from distinguished academics, set out that background forcefully and well. But they fail to understand that it was the urgent threat posed to the people of the Donbass by the Kiev forces on the LoC in February 2022 that left the Russians no choice but to take pre-emptive military action to forestall that threat.
Strobe Talbot, a voice from the past but still alive, is reported to have emailed after the start of the SMO some such message as “We’ve got Putin cornered at last”. I’ve no idea whether he did that or whether indeed any copy of the email exists, but that was the position as the Russians moved their tanks in. We, the West, had finally put the Russians in a position that gave them as no option but to respond.
For if the Russians had not responded, and the Kiev forces had overwhelmed the considerably smaller LDNR forces, the resultant mayhem in the Donbass would assuredly have led to popular disillusionment with the Russian administration, that in turn leading to the failure of that administration and the subsequent destabilisation of the RF. Putin was faced with no agreeable choice. Take pre-emptive action and brave the sanctions. Or risk the Kiev forces invading the Donbass and thus risk mayhem in the Donbass. A forced move, it’s called in chess, and we forced a reluctant Putin to take it.
That is why, incidentally, the Western politicians insist, and have insisted from the beginning that the invasion was “unprovoked”. The entire dispute about this war boils down to that one word. Was it an “unprovoked” invasion or did we provoke the Russians, force them in fact, to undertake it.
Until the Mearsheimers and the Sachs’ and the great number of those who follow their thesis focus on that, rather than on vague talk of “Nato pressure”, we’re not going to get to the root of those events in early 2022. After the war’s over I hope we’re going to get chapter and verse on those events. The crucial first few frantic days of the SMO, and what preceded them, do merit more attention than they have yet received.
Posted by: English Outsider | Jun 30 2024 11:38 utc | 153
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