Some of you may be aware of the video (embedded below) that went viral on social media of this American veteran who went to Ukraine to volunteer in the fight against Russia. He described his harrowing experience and warned others that going to fight as a foreign volunteer fighter in Ukraine was “a trap.” His name is Harry Hoeft and Alex Rubinstein of The Grayzone spoke to him.

https://twitter.com/KaczynskiOhana/status/1503737123261800452

US veteran who volunteered to fight for Ukraine describes ‘suicide mission’

By Alex Rubinstein, The Grayzone, 3/30/22

A decade after Henry Hoeft joined the US Army at age 18, he was back on the battlefield, but this time as a volunteer for a foreign military engaged in a proxy war against a powerful foe. After answering the Ukrainian government’s call for foreign fighters this February, however, the American veteran quickly decided he was being sent on a “suicide mission” against the Russian military.

After escaping with his life, claiming his own allies had threatened to shoot him in the back, Hoeft posted a viral message advising other Westerners against joining the fight in Ukraine. Within days, he was at the center of a global information war, with the military for which he had volunteered publicly branding him a Russian agent.

It was not the first time Hoeft had placed himself in the middle of controversy. Years before his ill-fated mission in Ukraine, his passion for guns and the Second Amendment led him into the ranks the Boogaloo Boys, an enigmatic militia-style organization that confounds even self-styled extremism experts. 

Members of the Boogaloo Boys uphold a staunchly anti-communist, anarchistic perspective that incorporates political positions and symbols familiar to both radical right and leftist movements. They have marched in support of Black Lives Matter, to the obvious discomfort of many liberal social justice activists, and protested coronavirus lockdowns, usually while openly toting assault rifles and sporting the Hawaiian shirts that have become their trademark. 

Hoeft was a prominent figure in the Ohio chapter of the Boogaloos and appeared at the Ohio statehouse in Columbus to deliver introductory remarks at an armed “unity rally.” There, he emphasized the group’s non-partisan politics and defended a transgender activist from insults.

But Hoeft said it was not his former affiliation with a militia-style organization that drew him back into the field of armed combat. Instead, it was the emotional impact of news flashing across his Facebook timeline about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this February and being taken in by heart-rending stories of civilian suffering. He was a father now, and he saw his own child in the faces of Ukrainian youth fleeing for their lives from the Russian military onslaught.

So the moment Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky implored Westerners to travel thousands of miles across the ocean to join his country’s fight, Hoeft mobilized. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country please come over, we will give you weapons,” Zelensky appealed days after the full-scale war erupted.

When he arrived in Ukraine, however, he was forced to confront the dispiriting reality of a rag-tag volunteer paramilitary thrust into a proxy war against a powerful military machine. After about a week, he decided he had signed up for his own death.  

“They’re trying to send us to Kiev with no fucking weapons, no kit, no plates. The people who are lucky enough to get weapons are only getting magazines with like 10 fucking rounds,” Hoeft complained in a viral video rant from the field. “People need to stop coming here. It’s a trap and they’re not letting you fucking leave.”

Hoeft went on to make a series of explosive claims, including that the passports of Westerners trying to leave Ukraine were being torn up; that foreigners were being sent to the front lines without rifles; and that the Georgian Legion was threatening to shoot those who refused. 

Once it became clear that Hoeft’s account was undermining Kiev’s public relations campaign, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine denounced him on its official Twitter account, branding the American as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and posting his photo beside the caption “Made in Russia.”

Next, Georgian Legion fighters joined the social media assault, denouncing Hoeft and branding him as a liar. “Whatever may or not be circling right now from Henry,” one American volunteer claimed in a video published by Daily Wire reporter Kassy Dillon, “it is completely false.”

Finally, the corporate media trained its sights on Hoeft.

“Ukraine’s foreign fighters ridicule American Boogaloo Boy who RAN AWAY,” a headline from the Daily Mail tabloid said. “A Boogaloo Boi Tried to Join the Foreign Legion In Ukraine — It Didn’t End Well,” claimed Rolling Stone. And via the aggregator Raw Story: “Boogaloo Boi’s attempt to fight in Ukraine ends in disaster and him fleeing.”

Amidst the corporate media’s taunting, Hoeft agreed to an interview with The Grayzone. He told this reporter that he was determined to set the record straight about his connection with the Boogaloo Boys, his political views, and most importantly, the serious dangers volunteers face on the Ukrainian battlefield. 

“There’s no such thing as glory in death,” Hoeft told The Grayzone. “You’re going to die in a trench and you’re going to get left there and it’s gross and it’s bad.”

“We can possibly stop a world war”

When Henry Hoeft signed up for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion in late February 2022, he was convinced his experience as an army veteran trained in infantry tactics and mortar fire would make him a valuable asset. Tens of thousands of foreigners who flocked to Ukraine, pouring across the Polish border with the quiet assent of NATO governments, and zealous encouragement from Kiev, apparently felt the same.

“Being a veteran that has a specific skill set, I felt like I could put it to better use there in Ukraine than sitting here on my couch while watching women and children be targeted by Russian forces,” Hoeft told The Grayzone.

A few days before shipping off to Ukraine, he told The Columbus Dispatch, his hometown paper, about the raw emotion that was driving his decision: “Russia is firing on civilian structures, and there are kids who died. The fact that so many veterans across countries are stepping up, that’s very inspiring to me. We feel like if we can hold Putin for long enough, we can possibly stop a world war.”

Today, Hoeft says, “I still feel the same way. But I never had an intention of going to Ukraine on a suicide mission. I have a child. I have work. I have school. My original intent wasn’t even to be a frontline combat soldier. I intended to volunteer, which I did, and provide training, medical supplies and support.”

Hoeft submitted to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, DC a copy of his passport and proof of his military experience, the sole requirements of foreigners looking to fight for Ukraine.

Once he arrived in Poland, getting over the border was “a very easy process,” he said. “It was very fast paced. It took us probably five, ten minutes to get into Ukraine.”

But as Hoeft explained to The Grayzone, getting out was not so easy. 

Inside the Georgian National Legion

After entering Ukraine, Hoeft and a few fellow volunteers made their way to Lviv. “In the town center of Lviv, they’re recruiting people from a bunch of different groups. You had Georgians, Ukrainians from local militias, and you also had more hostile groups like Azov and stuff like that,” Hoeft recalled.

Since the Ukrainian Foreign Legion required a contract, Hoeft opted to join the Georgian Legion, which was conveniently stationed nearby. 

Incorporated into the Ukrainian military, the Georgian Legion runs three bases with hundreds of fighters. Previously a unit that fought on the front lines against Donbass, the Georgian Legion is now headquartered in the West where it is led by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a veteran of four previous wars with Russia, including Georgia’s disastrous invasion of South Ossetia.

Mamulashvili and a small group of men he led during the Maidan coup d’etat have been accused by fellow Georgian fighter Alexander Revazishvili of carrying out a dastardly false flag massacre in Kiev’s central square. According to Revashishvili, Mamulashvili ordered his snipers to open fire on a crowd, killing 49 protesters in a cynical attempt to escalate the conflict by pinning the blame on the government they were seeking to topple.

Photos from both 2017 and 2018 posted on Facebook by Mamulashvili show the Georgian hard-man inside the US Capitol rubbing elbows with some of the top figures on the House Foreign Relations Committee. They included then-Rep. Eliot Engel, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, former Rep. Sander Levin, Rep. Doug Lamborn, and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. He posted more photos showing him visiting Senate offices, including that of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee…

Read full article here.

Published at Simone Weil Center, 3/27/22

The following Le Figaro interview with the French-Russian author Andrei Makine is noteworthy in several respects. First of all, there is Makine’s devotion to thought, and for this same reason his devotion to freedom. This is of a piece with his scorn for propaganda.  Of equal interest is his positive proposal, which comes toward the end of the conversation. Makine envisions a Europe that is whole in the sense that it includes Russia. It is a concept which, if desirable, appears to be something now achievable only by a miracle. This interview, conducted by Alexandre Devecchio, was originally published by Le Figaro on March 10, 2022. Published here by Landmarks with the permission of Andrei Makine. (Translation by Matthew Dal Santo.)

“I regret that European propaganda is opposed to Russian propaganda … ” — Andrei Makine.

Andrei Makine, born in Siberia, has published a dozen novels translated into more than forty languages, including The French Testament (Goncourt Prize and Medici Prize 1995), La Musique d’une vie (ed. Threshold, 2001), and, more recently, A Loved Woman (Threshold). He was elected to the French Academy in 2016.

Q.: As a writer of Russian origin, what does this war inspire in you?

Andrei MAKINE.  For me, it has been a matter of the unthinkable. I think of the faces of my Ukrainian friends in Moscow, whom I saw above all as friends, not as Ukrainians. The faces of their children and grandchildren, who are in this caldron of war. I pity the Ukrainians who are dying under the bombs, as well as the young Russian soldiers engaged in this fratricidal war. The fate of the suffering people matters more to me than that of the elites. As Paul Valéry said, “war is waged by men who do not know each other and who massacre each other for the sake of men who know each other and do not massacre each other.”

Q: Part of the press calls you a pro-Putin writer. Are you?

It was an AFP journalist who first glued this label to me about twenty years ago. It was just after Boris Yeltsin’s departure, whose record was catastrophic for Russia. I explained to him that Yeltsin, in a state of permanent intoxication, with responsibility for the atomic button, represented a real danger. And that I hoped that Russia could become a little more rational and pragmatic in the future. But she produced the headline: “Makine defends Putin’s pragmatism.” As it was an AFP dispatch, it was repeated everywhere. And when I entered the Académie française, a prominent weekly newspaper, whose name out of charity I will keep silent, published, in turn, a report entitled: “Makine, a Putinist at the Academy”… This says a lot about the world of lies in which we live.

Q: You condemn the Russian intervention…

My opposition to this war, to all wars, must not become a kind of mantra, a certificate of good citizenship for intellectuals in need of publicity, who all seek the anointing of the moralising doxa. In repeating common places, we contribute absolutely nothing and, on the contrary, entrench a Manichean vision that prevents any debate and understanding of this tragedy. We can denounce Vladimir Putin’s decision, spit on Russia, but it will not solve anything, it will not help Ukrainians.

To be able to put a stop to this war, we must understand the background that has made it possible. The war in Donbass has been going on for eight years and has left 13,000 dead, and has left as many injured, including children. I regret the political and media silence that surrounds it, the indifference to the dead when they are Russian-speaking. To say that does not mean justifying Vladimir Putin’s policy. Just as questioning the warmongering role of the United States, present at all levels of Ukrainian governance both before and during the “Maidan Revolution,” does not amount to clearing Putin of his share of responsibility. Finally, we must keep in mind the precedent set by the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of Serbia by NATO in 1999 without obtaining the approval of the United Nations Security Council. For Russia, this has been experienced as a humiliation and an example to remember. The Kosovo war marked the Russian national memory and its leaders.

When Vladimir Putin says that Russia is threatened, it is not a “pretext”: rightly or wrongly, the Russians really feel besieged, and this stems from this history, as well as military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. A conversation reported between Putin and the President of Kazakhstan summarizes everything. The latter was trying to convince Putin that the installation of American bases on his territory would not pose a threat to Russia, which could find an accommodation with the United States. With a smile of regret, Putin replied: “That’s exactly what Saddam Hussein said!”

Again, I do not legitimize this war in any way, but the important thing is not what I think, nor what we think. In Europe, we are all against this war. But we must understand what Putin thinks, and especially what the Russians, or at least a large part of them, think.

Q: You present Putin’s war as a consequence of Western politics. But hasn’t the Russian president always harboured revenge against the West?

I saw Vladimir Putin in 2001, shortly after his first election. He was another man then with an almost shy voice. He sought an understanding with democratic countries. I do not believe at all that he already had an imperialist project in mind, as is claimed today.  I see him more as someone who reacts rather than as an ideologue. At that time, the Russian government’s goal was to integrate with the Western world. It is stupid to believe that the Russians have a disproportionate nostalgia for the gulag and the Politburo. They may well have nostalgia for economic security, and the absence of unemployment. Understanding between peoples too: at Moscow University, no one made any difference between Russian, Ukrainian and other Soviet students … There was a honeymoon between Russia and Europe, between Putin and Europe, before the Russian president took the position of the betrayed lover. In 2001, Putin was the first head of state to offer his aid to George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11. Through its bases in Central Asia, Russia then facilitated American operations in this region. But in 2002, the United States left the ABM Treaty, which limited the installation of missile shields. Russia protested against this decision, which it believed could only revive the arms race. In 2003, the Americans announced a reorganisation of their forces towards Eastern Europe.

Putin became noticeably tougher starting from 2004, when former socialist countries joined NATO even before joining the European Union, as if it were necessary to become anti-Russian to be European. He understood that Europe had been vassalised by the United States. Then there was a real turning point in 2007 when he gave a speech in Munich accusing the Americans of preserving NATO structures that were no longer needed and wanting a unipolar world. However, in 2021, when he came to power, Joe Biden said exactly this when he declared “America will run the world again.”

Q: It seems that you would make the West and Russia equivalent in responsibility. But in this war, Russia is the aggressor…

I’m not making them equivalent. But I regret that European propaganda has become the mere reverse face of Russian propaganda. On the contrary, it is time for Europe to show its difference, to impose pluralistic journalism that opens the debate. When I was a child in Soviet Russia and there was only Pravda, I dreamed of France for freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the ability to read different opinions in different newspapers. War is a terrible blow to freedom of expression: in Russia, which is not surprising, but also in the West. It is said that “the first victim of war is always the truth.” That’s right, but I wish it hadn’t been the case in Europe, in France.

In my view, the closure of RT France by Ursula von der Leyen, unelected president of the European Commission, is a mistake that will inevitably be perceived by public opinion as censorship. How can we not be revolted by the deprogramming of the Bolshoi at the Royal Opera in London, the cancellation of a course dedicated to Dostoyevsky in Milan? How can we claim to defend democracy by censoring television channels, artists, books? This is the best way for Europeans to fuel Russian nationalism, to achieve a result opposite from the one expected. On the contrary, we should open up to Russia, especially through the Russians who live in Europe and who are obviously pro-European. As Dostoyevsky rightly said: “every stone in this Europe is dear to us.”

Q: Russian propaganda still seems delirious when Putin speaks of “denazification”…

The Azov battalion, which took over the city of Mariupol from the separatists in 2014, and has since been incorporated into the regular army, claims its neo-Nazi ideology and wears helmets and badges bearing the emblem of the SS symbol and the swastika. It is obvious that this presence remains marginal and that the Ukrainian state is not Nazi, and does not devote unconditional veneration to Stepan Bandera. But Western journalists should have seriously investigated this influence and Europe should have condemned the presence of Nazi emblems on Ukraine’s territory. It must be understood that this revives among the Russians the memory of the Second World War and of the Ukrainian commandoes who rallied to Hitler, and that it gives credit, in their eyes, to the Kremlin’s propaganda.

Q: Beyond the debate on the causes and responsibilities of everyone in the war, what do you think of the European response?

Bruno Le Maire has been criticized for talking about total war, but he has had the merit of telling the truth and nailing his colours to the mast, instead of the hypocrisy of those who send weapons and mercenaries and intend to ruin the Russian economy, but claim that they do not wage war. In truth, it is indeed a question of causing the collapse of Russia, the impoverishment of its people. It must be said clearly: the West is at war with Russia.

However, if there is a positive aspect for the possible democratization of Russia, it is that we will destroy the oligarchic structure, which has been a real tumour since the 1990s. I invite European leaders to expropriate predatory oligarchs, to confiscate these billion rubles stolen and invested in London and, rather than blocking them as we do today, to give them to the poor in Europe and Russia.

Q: What else can be done?

To stop hostilities, to give Ukraine a future, we always think that we must move forward; sometimes we must, on the contrary, go back. It must be said: “we were wrong.” In 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we had come to a fork in the road. We took the wrong way. I really thought then that there would be no more obstacles, that NATO would be dissolved because America no longer had an enemy, that we would form a great peaceful continent. But I also sensed that it was going to explode because there were already tensions: in the Caucasus, in Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh… At the time, I wrote a letter to François Mitterrand.

Q: What was the content of this letter?

I don’t know if he received it, but I was talking about building a Europe that had nothing to do with the bureaucratic monster represented today by Mrs. von der Leyen. I dreamed of a Europe that respects identities, like the Mitteleuropa of Zweig and Rilke. A Europe that is ultimately more powerful because it is more flexible, to which Ukraine, the Baltic States and why not Belarus could have been added. But a Europe without weapons, without military blocs, a Europe composed of sanctuaries of peace. The two guarantors of this architecture would have been France and Russia, two nuclear powers located at both ends of Europe, legally mandated by the UN to protect this whole.

Q: Is that realistic?

Mitteleuropa is not a utopia, it existed. I want to believe in it, and I will continue to stress the importance of this idea. A few years ago, I met Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, who shared this vision of a Europe from Paris to Saint Petersburg. But the Americans decided otherwise. This would have meant the end of NATO, the end of the militarization of Europe. A Europe supported by Russia and its wealth would have become too powerful and independent. Nevertheless, I hope that a new president will take over this idea. Europe is a sinking Titanic and from one crisis to another, we are fighting for survival.

This situation is so tragic, so chaotic, that we should propose a radical solution, that is to say, return to the 1992 bifurcation and recognize that we should not restart the arms race and instead resume a democratic and peaceful direction that could very well include Russia. This would stop in their tracks extremist tendencies in Russia. This would allow us to avoid the political and economic collapse that is affecting the entire planet. It would lead to an honourable outcome for everyone, and it would make it possible to build a Europe of peace, a Europe of intellectuals and of culture. Our continent is a living treasure, it must be protected. Unfortunately, we prefer to pursue the opposite of this proposal: to ban Dostoevsky and to wage war. This means guaranteed destruction, because there will be no winner.

Below are some excerpts, but I recommend reading the full article at the Edward Slavsquat Substack site. Note: Bolding is in original. – Natylie

By Marko Marjanović, Edward Slavsquat Substack, 4/1/22

….Russia pulling units from everywhere to make Donbass a by-the-books operation with a massively positive correlation of forces is not good news for Ukraine. It was far better for Ukraine when the enemy was spread out over numerous axes, none of them strong enough to deliver a decisive blow.

I wrote that the danger for the Russian side was that it would become a hostage of its almost-success at Kiev. Logic dictates that an operation that has stalled and where chances of success are low should be scaled down and cannibalized to beef up more promising operations. But its forces having advanced so far and having come so near, it wouldn’t be an easy decision to pull them back.

And yet that is exactly what the Russians have done. They have made the tough call.

It is the correct call but it surely wasn’t easy to make. To voluntarily relinquish territory your forces had bled to take — that can’t be easy, no matter how strategically justified.

I am in awe of the sheer ruthlessness of Russia’s withdrawals.

The Sumy ambition abandoned. The Nikolayev ambition abandoned. The Chernigov ambition abandoned. The Kiev ambition abandoned.

I have been writing for three weeks now that Russia’s effort was very cleary too diluted over too many axes and sectors. (I would have started even earlier but early on there were so many other things that were also wrong.) I wrote that single-minded focus on the Ukrainian military center of gravity (which happens to lie in the Donbass) offered the best chances of success. These radical adjustments are evidence that Russia’s generals thought the same….

….Everyone old enough to remember February 24 will remember that the war kicked off with the Russians fighting in kid gloves. Air strikes were nearly absent, there was no targeting of barracks with cruise missiles, and the units racing to Kiev were trying to avoid fighting wherever possible, bypassing resistance rather than confronting it. That the initial Russian effort, of which the drive on Kiev was the centerpiece (tying up as many Russian units as all the other efforts combined), was primarily concerned with degrading the Ukrainian military (the strongest grouping of which lay far away in Donbass) is nonsense. It was exactly the other way around. The initial plan was focused on testing if the Ukrainians state could be made to unravel without having to go after its military and killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen.

If MoD was truthful it would have said:

“We tried something (politicians/ideologues made us). It didn’t work. So now we’re going to make radical adjustments and try something else.”

But that wouldn’t have exactly pacified the homefront, would it?

….The unforced Russian withdrawal around Kiev has pro-Ukrainian Westerners seeing Russians “pushed back” and even a “Russian rout“. They will be surprised when Ukrainian gains in the north are not followed up by Ukrainian gains in the south but by Russian gains and forced Ukrainian retreats.

They do not seem to fully understand that what is happening is Russia switching from a fanciful non-military Plan A (which indeed failed), to a by-the-books Plan B, and that this demands radical redeployment of troops to correspond to the shift of focus from the political to the military center of gravity.

Meanwhile pro-Russian Westerners have similarly discredited themselves. It wasn’t so long ago that “former CIA” Larry C Johnson was telling us that “the Ukrainian army has already been defeated. What’s left is a mop-up.”

….No. Exactly wrong. The Ukrainian military has not been defeated. That is exactly why the Russian military is having to be recalled from Kiev for Donbass. To create a grouping of forces strong enough to decisively defeat the large Ukrainian military concentration there.

Johnson’s fellow fantasist Scott Ritter didn’t opt for blowing up Russian success beyond all proportion. Instead he moved the goalposts so far as to still be able to proclaim the failed Russian drive on Kiev a 5D success.

He spins a tale where “200,000 Russian attackers” faced “600,000 Ukrainian defenders” and therefore needed a Kiev “feint” to prevent the Ukrainians from moving their allegedly ginormous forces to where Russia didn’t want them.

First of all this is pure revisionism. Nobody in the first week of the war, when the Russians were clawing ever closer to Kiev and were making a point of calling Zelensky illegitimate, thought the Kiev operation was about anything other than Kiev. All this stuff about a “feint” only ever hit the light of day when the effort stalled and failed.

Secondly, it is dishonest arithmetic. It is comparing apples and oranges. You can’t take just the forces actually committed for one side but the theoretical total for the other. The 100,000 Ukrainian territorials do not venture outside the oblasts they are raised in. Likewise there are still plenty of Ukrainian brigades, active-duty and reserve, in western and central Ukraine that have not been committed. Moreover the reserve is supposedly over 200,000 strong but that is a paper strength and it is unclear how much of that can actually be constituted and in what timeframe. Zelensky only issued the order for the reserve to mobilize on February 23 so when the Russians rolled in precisely zero of that reserve was in the field. The Russians were absolutely not outnumbered 3 to 1. In the border areas where battles were taking place they were the more numerous ones.

Ritter claims the Russians needed the “feint” against Kiev to break out from Crimea and isolate Mariupol but that was accomplished in all of 5 days (before Ukraine could even stand up its reserves). Yet the Kiev “feint” continued for weeks after that. *Why?*  (You could make the claim it continued on to discourage Ukraine from reinforcing Donbass but then why is it being radically scaled-down now? The Donbass battle is still ongoing and the Ukrainian communication lines to Donbass are still open as their force there remains un-encircled. How does withdrawing from around Kiev *now*, and even telegraphing the reduced posture in advance, possibly square with the notion that sitting outside Kiev was absolutely vital to prevent “the more numerous” Ukrainians from reinforcing Donbass??)…

Read full article here.

By Serhiy Kudelia, Open Democracy, 3/28/22

In an article published in December last year, Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba dismissed neutrality as a policy that could “do nothing to abate Putin’s appetite”, but would rather feed it further. Kuleba also stressed that Ukraine would not abandon its stated ambition to join NATO, which has been enshrined in the country’s constitution since 2019, “no matter how much pressure we face from Russia”.

Three months later, faced with Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi has already acknowledged that Ukraine “would not be able to join” NATO and that this “needed to be recognised.”

Zelenskyi’s response has fuelled speculations that a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality would be the centrepiece of a possible diplomatic settlement with Russia. However, after years of official repudiation of the idea, the sudden embrace of a permanently neutral status may be harder for Kyiv than it might seem. It may now be up to NATO itself to open the path to a Russian-Ukrainian settlement.

Imposed neutrality

With Russia’s military offensive stalled on all fronts, Zelenskyi’s fiery rhetoric has been feeding public expectations of impending victory among Ukrainians. A recent opinion poll in Ukraine showed that at least half of respondents believed that the war would end in a matter of weeks. Ninety three percent of respondents were largely or fully confident that Ukraine would win.

By contrast, Foreign Minister Kuleba conceded in an interview on 18 March that a peace agreement is a more “realistic” scenario for the end of the war than a Ukrainian victory. This major gap between public expectations about how the war might end and the Ukrainian government’s own assessment of the likely outcome may be a serious impediment for the successful resolution of the talks.

After all, any settlement will require major concessions on Ukraine’s part. Compromise could be viewed by many in Ukraine as a reprise of the Minsk agreements, the ceasefire and political settlement signed under duress in 2014-2015 – and which have been criticised even by Zelenskyi.

A source of instability

Although neutrality was supported by at least a third of Ukrainians prior to the war, political elites and government officials have consistently dismissed the idea.

Days before Russia launched its military attack on 24 February, Ukraine’s former US Ambassador Valeriy Chaly, who is close to former president Petro Poroshenko, characterised neutrality as “the Kremlin’s plan.” In mid-February, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, claimed that Ukraine could consider its ambition for NATO membership to avoid war with Russia – but had to walk back his comments after a critical response from both the government and opposition parties. Zelenskyi’s party, Servant of the People, has a consistent record of parliamentary support for cooperation with NATO and late last year argued for the provision of a NATO Membership Action Plan. Even after softening its pro-NATO rhetoric since the start of the war, the party has still suggested that NATO membership is impossible only in the short-term.

A sudden about-face by the president’s faction and other NATO supporters in parliament, who would need to amend Ukraine’s constitution to remove the country’s commitment to NATO membership, would be an explicit acquiescence to one of Russia’s key demands. Similarly, a country-wide referendum on the issue of NATO membership is unlikely to produce a unified response, even if it was carried out quickly. The latest Ukrainian opinion poll shows that a record number – 72% of respondents – support NATO membership. And why should Ukrainians give up on NATO aspirations if they feel confident in their eventual victory?

Rather than a strategic choice made of Ukraine’s own accord, neutrality would become a policy imposed on Ukrainian society and its elites through the use of force. Indeed, the prospect of neutrality lacks deeper political legitimacy and is likely to be immediately contested. It would be at permanent risk of reversal by any of Zelenskyi’s successors. This would undermine the effectiveness of neutrality as a tool of international relations. Instead, it would likely become a permanent source of internal instability.

Security guarantees

Neutrality would also only be effective in ensuring the territorial integrity of a neutral state if it rests on the symmetry of security interests of all major powers. Once one of the powers suddenly finds it in its interests to violate the pledge, like Germany did with Belgium twice in the last century, neutrality status offers no effective mechanisms to prevent it.

Since Russia has engaged in repeated acts of aggression against Ukraine, it will have little incentive to abide by any future pledges of non-interference – unless its actions trigger confrontation with other major powers, or if it faces little prospects of success. Meanwhile, NATO’s pledge to bring Ukraine into an alliance could continue serving as a convenient pretext for renewed Russian aggression. From this standpoint, the prospect of Ukrainian neutrality could be secure only if it quickly builds up a strong defensive capacity or receives credible third-party security guarantees from key NATO members.

Neither of these two options, however, has a realistic path forward. Russia’s demand to demilitarise Ukraine and its sustained actions to degrade Ukraine’s military infrastructure indicate that Moscow would only accept a deal that severely restricts the size of the Ukrainian army and imposes arms limitations.

By contrast, if the US gave security guarantees to Ukraine similar to its defence treaties with South Korea or Japan, this could prove problematic in light of American public opinion’s aversion to any new foreign policy entanglements. Only about 35% of Americans (and 28% of Brits) support deploying their troops to protect Ukraine, given the risks of confronting a major nuclear power. Nor do Americans see the Russian-Ukrainian war as presenting the same urgent security challenge to the US as other threats, cyberterrorism or nuclear proliferation. Without public support and bipartisan approval, no US administration would be willing to extend tangible security guarantees to Ukraine.

Borders

The final, and most fundamental, obstacle to a Russia-Ukraine deal is the disagreement over Ukraine’s borders. At the very least, Moscow expects Kyiv to recognise Crimea as part of Russia and accept the independence of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “republics”.

Zelenskyi suggests approaching the issues of neutrality and the resolution of territorial disputes sequentially. For Ukraine, discussion of a territorial settlement can only start after a new security arrangement is reached. Russia, by contrast, has already linked progress in talks on the peace agreement to Kyiv’s recognition of Ukrainian territorial losses. For Moscow, the agreement on neutrality thus serves a dual purpose: advancing its security interests and satisfying its territorial claims.

Once Kyiv signs an agreement in which Russia’s neutrality pledge is limited to Ukraine’s territory excluding Crimea and Donbas, it would also signal acquiescence to the redrawing of its borders. Given Moscow’s experience with eight years of stalled Minsk talks over a similar sequencing dispute, another proposal to resolve differences through a sequence of steps is unlikely to be accepted. For Zelenskyi, however, an agreement would be even more difficult if it fulfils both Russia’s security wishes and its territorial demands. This substantially narrows the available bargaining range and raises the likelihood of a diplomatic stalemate.

A path forward?

Five or ten years ago, neutrality could have been a viable stand-alone security alternative for Ukraine. Now its effectiveness is in doubt and its implementation requires the types of additional concessions that none of Ukraine’s current leaders is willing to make. Zelenskyi, however, is also right in exposing NATO’s lack of resolve and inconsistency in its engagement over Ukraine. Despite its vocal pledges of support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, NATO leaders appear to be powerless now to stop Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukrainian statehood.

The one tangible contribution that NATO can still make, though, is to respond to Zelenskyi’s repeated calls and clarify its stance regarding Ukraine’s eventual membership. This would require scrapping its earlier promise to make Ukraine a member of the alliance issued during the 2008 Bucharest Summit (and reiterated, most recently, in the 2021 Brussels Summit Communique). Such a move would, at the very least, allow Zelenskyi to pivot from the need to justify abandoning NATO aspirations domestically to searching for a new security arrangement outside of existing alliances.

Neutrality would then no longer be viewed as a choice forced on Ukraine by Russia alone, but as an inevitable necessity. This decision could also change the broader context for ongoing talks with Russia and open the possibility for decoupling the discussion of Ukraine’s security status from the disputes over Donbas and Crimea.

Finally, it would allow key NATO members, such as the US and the UK, to engage more directly in the diplomatic efforts to stop the war without being viewed by Russia as spoilers interested in prolonging it. Although a successful peace settlement would require multiple adjustments both from Ukraine and Russia, the initial step should be reducing what the current CIA director William J. Burns once characterised as “the brightest of all red lines” for the Russian elite: Ukraine’s possible NATO membership.