By Prof. Richard Sakwa, Canadian Dimension, 1/11/24

Was a positive peace possible after the end of the Cold War in 1989? The Cold War had been characterized by a negative peace in Europe, the management of conflict rather than its resolution, whereas a positive peace is based on the cooperative resolution of common problems, including those facing humanity as a whole. This is the question that has intrigued and puzzled observers in recent years, and with added force after the return to interstate war in Europe and the reimposition of an Iron Curtain across the continent. Why did all the promises of friendship, ‘strategic partnership’ and the like in the euphoria of those days between 1989 and 1991 end not just in failure but in a catastrophic reversion to a cold war, which in certain respects is far deeper and more intractable than the original version?

With the end of the ideological conflict between communism and capitalism, between the Soviet Union and the collective West, a more positive peace order appeared attainable. With Cold War divisions overcome, the vision of a more collaborative peace order was in prospect. The United Nations-based Charter international system established in 1945 could at last come into its own. Cooperation between the former adversaries in reversing the seizure of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, under the aegis of the UN, in 1990-91 appeared to be an augury of things to come. It did not quite work out that way, and divisions over the post-communist wars in Yugoslavia culminated in outright conflict over the West’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. However, this confrontation was a symptom rather than the cause of a broader failure.

The auguries of peace built on a long process that in the end transcended Cold War divisions. In the Soviet Union, the new political thinking that shaped Mikhail Gorbachev’s approach to transcending the Cold War had been taking shape in various institutions of the Soviet Academy of Sciences since at least the 1970s, accompanied by broader changes in societal attitudes. In the US, there was a long and hallowed tradition that understood the wastefulness of the Cold War arms race, beginning most eloquently with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ‘Chance for Peace’ speech of April 1953. He argued “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

The sentiment was reiterated by President John F. Kennedy in his still-evocative commencement address at the American University in June 1963. He talked of “peace as a process,” but “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace—the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living—the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” American leadership at the end of the Cold War was unable to rise to this level, but it was nevertheless ready to offer a vision of peace.

The option of a new kind of positive peace was fostered by what at the time became known as globalization. Time and space would be conquered by new communication technologies, a thickening web of personal and business contacts, and cheap air travel that would take citizens to the ends of the earth. The interdependence fostered by trade and financial ties would finally, as prematurely anticipated before the First World War, make war unthinkable—although not impossible. A global middle class based on similar patterns of consumption would put an end to the narrow nationalism of the past. Citizens would become consumers, glued to their screens rather than devoted to political screeds.

So, why was the peace lost? What was the missing ingredient that provoked failure? This is where the missing piece can begin to be inserted. The ideology of globalization implies a certain automaticity—processes that develop beyond the control of mere humans. This accelerated the already marked trend towards depoliticization, the view that certain developments are beyond human control, and indeed, should not controlled by humans. Above all, political actors should not interfere with the working of the market, let alone with the financialization that was beginning to shape post-industrial economies.

In turn, this neoliberalism was reflected in the non-negotiated character of the end of the Cold War. The period was accompanied by endless summits, conferences and declarations, but there was no holistic and integrated event, like a peace conference, that would have established the rules of the road for the new era. This is why in certain respects 1979 was a far more important date than 1989. The latter year saw the Berlin Wall dismantled, the Soviet bloc crumble, and the Cold War effectively brought to an end, but all of this represented little more than the culmination of processes begun in the 1970s.

There were plenty of events between 1989 and 1991, but in the end they did not amount to a transformative moment. The course of history certainly changed, but the logic underlying that history did not change. The endless crises in the end did not add up to a krisis in the Greek sense—a moment of reflection in the life of the community.

Instead, patterns established earlier were applied, adapted and modified for the new conditions. In the security sphere, the Helsinki Final Act of August 1975 was given new expression in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe of November 1990. The contradictory formulation of the earlier document was repeated and reinforced: ‘freedom of choice,’ for states to choose their own security, was accompanied by ringing declarations asserting the ‘indivisibility’ of security. Oceans of ink have been spilled defending one or other of these formulations, but tragically, very little on how to find mechanisms to render them compatible. The endless debate on what was or was not promised over NATO enlargement at the time of German unification in 1990 is secondary to this larger question. The debate does, however, demonstrate once again the effectively non-negotiated character of the end of the Cold War. Gorbachev failed to incorporate in treaty form the promises of his Western interlocutors.

In the sphere of geopolitics, the attempt to endow the end of the Cold War with a specifically European character failed dismally. Gorbachev’s idea of a common European home echoed Gaullist themes of an earlier era, of a Europe proudly standing for itself and acting as a third force in global affairs. Later, François Mitterrand (admittedly, half-heartedly, like so many French initiatives in the post-communist era) took up the idea in the form of a Confederation of Europe. Vladimir Putin, with not much greater consistency, reinterpreted the common European home idea in the form of proposals for a ‘greater Europe,’ but the details remained vague.

Instead, the idea of a “Europe whole and free” formulated by President George H.W. Bush in his speech in Mainz in May 1989 came to dominate. It was explicitly designed to repudiate the common European home idea, and thus to advance the American notion of a Europe whole and free under US tutelage—which by definition is neither whole nor free. Atlanticism triumphed over pan-continental Europeanism, thus structurally marginalizing Russia. Europe was once again divided, leading to consequences far worse than anything seen during the original Cold War.

The peace in Europe has been lost, decisively and for our generation almost certainly irrevocably. As always, a peace lost here has global consequences. Equally, there was nothing predetermined about its loss. It was the result of decisions and calculations that in the end undermined the underlying rationality. The outcome from every possible perspective was irrational, setting in motion processes that would engulf the continent in war, division, enmity and ruin. Only agendas centred on Europe, made by Europeans from across the continent, and implemented by all Europeans of good will, can insert the missing piece, and thus make the continent genuinely whole and free. Only in this way can the lost peace be regained.

By Ben Makuch, The Guardian, 1/11/24

Two years into the war in Ukraine, once a destination for American extremists, many within the underground far-right movement in the US are avidly disavowing it and advising followers to stay away. Extremists now see the upcoming election year as tailor-made for activism on the home front.

At the outset of the war, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an intelligence bulletin that far-right American extremists were heading to the conflict and could use it to hone terrorist skills to bring back stateside.

After an open call for international volunteers, the Ukrainian military attracted nearly 20,000 fighters from around the world. Within weeks, there were already so-called American “Boogaloo Bois” flying out.

In a November 2023 audio message on Telegram, the ex-Marine Christopher Pohlhaus – the leader of neo-Nazi network the Blood Tribe known for its racist and homophobic protests across the US – recently told followers he was not allowing his “guys” to join in the conflict.

“I will still continue to support the struggle of the people there,” said Pohlhaus before explaining how a disagreement with his personal ally and Russian militia leader fighting for Ukraine, Denis Nikitin (whom Pohlhaus infamously pledged allegiance to over the summer), caused the group to cut ties.

“I’m not going to allow our guys, my guys’ efforts and blood to go towards [the war],” he said.

According to him, though several of his members had been “super stoked and preparing to go to Ukraine”, they would pivot all of their money and resources to focusing on domestic activism, particularly their hate rallies, seeing no benefit to fighting in the war. In the same message, Pohlhaus, who confirmed the recording to the Guardian via text message, acknowledged that he was one of the last public-facing neo-Nazi leaders in the US to support the war in Ukraine.

For its part, the DHS did not respond to multiple emails from the Guardian on whether it was continuing to track rightwing extremists traveling to Ukraine.

Whether or not Pohlhaus was serious about the war is another question. Some within the broader US neo-Nazi movement have used the war in Ukraine as a sort of live-action role-playing scheme to build their militant credibility, even if tales of their exploits aren’t true. Kent McLellan, a Floridian who worked with Pohlhaus and is known by the alias “Boneface”, was outed for lying about his Ukraine war bonafides over the summer.

For its part, the Kremlin has been a relentless recruiter of neo-Nazis to its cause; the co-founder of the mercenary Wagner Group, Dmitry Utkin, not only named his organization after the Third Reich’s favorite composer but had the logo for the Waffen-SS tattooed on both sides of his neck.

The war is also at a crisis point for Ukraine as the mainstream Republican party blocks aid to Kyiv in Congress over demands to first reinforce the southern border with Mexico and make draconian changes to the US’s asylum system.

Within the wider web of neo-Nazi militancy, Ukraine chatter has all but evaporated with the conflict in Gaza and domestic issues outshining what was once a well-followed world event. Seeing no value in sending men to gain combat experience on the frontline, with too high a risk of death or arrest upon return, US rightwing extremists see Ukraine as a conflict with little upside.

In September, a prominent far-right publication, linked to the disbanded American neo-Nazi terror group Atomwaffen Division, boldly declared that the war not only “doesn’t matter anymore to us”, but it would “like to refocus” on American issues.

“Posting about a war half a world away while we have more pressing matters at home is frankly just not in our interests.”

It’s a sentiment that recalls statements from the Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – who have all characterized the war as a faraway problem.

But only five years ago, Ukraine was seen as a fertile training ground for far-right extremists.

Rinaldo Nazzaro, the Russia-based former Pentagon contractor turned founder of international neo-Nazi organization the Base, told his group in a secret meeting that he saw the war as an opportunity for a potential training pipeline. And one former member of the Base, Ryan Burchfield (a Marine Corps dropout), made the trip to Ukraine in 2019 looking to join an ultranationalist militia. Not long after his arrival, Ukrainian intelligence deported Burchfield and another American for terrorist activities.

In texts to the Guardian, Nazzaro explained his view of the conflict.

“I think our guys can find adequate training elsewhere without risking their lives in Ukraine,” he said, adding that the war wasn’t being led by forces that had “our best interests in mind”.

Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst of the extreme right for the Counter Extremism Project, has kept tabs on rightwing extremists and their fascination with Ukraine.

“Chatter among the American online extreme right regarding travel to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invasion has decreased in the last year,” he said, pointing out that in some cases talk about venturing to the war was “either never serious” or a blatant “attempt to raise money through crowdfunding, or was abandoned due to the brutal reality of the conflict or no longer seeing a goal for the American movement”.

The threat of law enforcement has also acted as a major deterrent to rightwing extremists trying to join the Ukrainian war effort.

“It’s also highly likely that efforts from both the US and Ukrainian governments made travel for these individuals more difficult,” he said.

For European neo-Nazis, on the other hand, the conflict is on their doorstep. Unchecked Russian imperialism is still regarded as very much a close proximity threat by nationalist movements all over the continent. They see Americans and English speakers within their movement as ignorant to the reality of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

“We do our best to be understanding of the fact that in the Anglosphere there is a different kind of echo chamber where mostly Kremlin propaganda dominates and that you have probably never even heard the truth,” said one prominent European neo-Nazi account on Telegram in March last year, already noticing the slide away from the conflict among English speakers.

“With that said, there is still a limit to how much ignorance we can tolerate,” the post continues. “Note that a lot of our guys have been on the frontlines themselves, and everybody here at least knows somebody who has.”

European right nationalists from Scandinavia, Poland, Belarus and Russia, among other places, have served on the frontlines. But for many American extremists, the actual prospect of joining the conflict carries practical and logistical difficulties as well as involving a large degree of risk to life and limb.

“We mistake fascination with the conflict or for certain units among the far right online with their actual presence in Ukraine fighting,” said Kacper Rekawek, a senior research fellow and programme lead at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism and an expert on foreign fighters in Ukraine.

Rekawek said one of the major inhibitors for Americans joining the war, versus Europeans, is distance and language.

“It’s far,” he said, “it’s in a very unknown language and it’s cold out there … It’s lonely out there.”

By VERONIKA MELKOZEROVA, Politico, 1/11/24

KYIV — Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday withdrew a mobilization bill that would supply more troops to the front, but which has come under ferocious attack for flaws in how it was drafted.

“Nothing will happen under the law on mobilization. Neither today nor tomorrow. Nor in the near future,” Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak of the pro-European opposition Voice party said on Telegram.

Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said the bill will be revamped and submitted for government approval in the near future.

“This law is necessary for the defense of our state and every soldier who is currently at the front. It needs to be approved as soon as possible,” he said in a Facebook post.

The bill — presented to parliament over Christmas — generated enormous controversy with its aims of cutting the draft age from 27 to 25, of limiting deferrals for men with slight disabilities, and of increasing penalties for draft-dodgers. But some parliamentarians claimed it wasn’t clearly formulated and included human rights violations.

The purpose of the bill is to send more soldiers to battle; the military has said it needs an additional half-million men this year. The extra troops would allow exhausted frontline soldiers who have been fighting for almost two years to rotate home, while also holding the line against the 617,000 Russians fighting in Ukraine. The latter figure was given by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is increasing the ranks of the Russian military by nearly 170,000 to a whopping 1.3 million.

Ukraine’s army now has some 850,000 troops, according to the country’s State Military Media Center and the Global Firepower Index.

The mobilization plan, however, is politically toxic.

In the early weeks of the war in February 2022, Ukrainians lined up at draft centers to join the army, while across Europe Ukrainian truck drivers, builders and waiters left their jobs to return home and fight.

But after months of bloody stalemate that continued to cost thousands of lives, that early enthusiasm has evaporated. Meanwhile, military corruption scandals and a sense of exhaustion both at home and among Ukraine’s allies have made joining up far less appealing.

The mobilization bill has been sent back to be reworked, with Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets saying some provisions could violate the constitution, and Anastasia Radina, head of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, predicting it could increase the risk of corruption.

“We can already say that there will be changes to the bill. There will be no mobilization of disabled people, no possibility for local authorities’ discretion on mobilization issues, and also no significant limitations of human rights,” Fedir Venislavsky, an MP and member of the parliament’s defense committee, told POLITICO.

Balancing act

The enormous strain the war has placed on Ukraine has been reflected in the conflict over the mobilization bill.

Over a fifth of Ukraine’s GDP — or about $46 billion out of an economy of $214 billion — is going toward the war effort, with about half used to pay troops and a quarter feeding the military industrial complex. Simply put, Ukraine’s entire government budget is being spent on the war, with billions in aid from the EU and the U.S. helping fund the rest of the economy.

But that aid is increasingly in question — stuck in Washington thanks to resistance from the Republican Party, and blocked in Brussels by Hungary. That has forced Kyiv to balance between finding enough new soldiers to continue to prosecute the war while also ensuring enough taxpayers and workers remain to keep the economy and war industries afloat.

“The mobilization of an additional 450,000 to 500,000 people will cost Ukraine 500 billion hryvnia (€12 billion) and I would like to know where the money will come from,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in December. “Considering that it takes six Ukrainian working civilians paying taxes to pay the salary of one soldier, I would need to get 3 million more working people somewhere to be able to pay for the additional troops.”

Speaking in Estonia on Thursday, Zelenskyy said: “If you are in Ukraine and you are not at the front, but you work and pay taxes, you also defend the state. And this is very necessary.” He added that Ukrainians who have fled the country and are neither fighting nor paying taxes face an ethical dilemma.

“If we want to save Ukraine, if we want to save Europe, then all of us must understand: Either we help Ukraine or we don’t. Either we are citizens who are at the front, or we are citizens who work and pay taxes,” he said.

Pavlo Kazarin, a Ukrainian journalist and soldier, broke the calculation down in a Facebook post.

“In order to wage war, a country needs money — it is what keeps the economy afloat. It needs weapons — without weapons it is impossible to talk about resistance. Also, we need soldiers. And if the first two resources can be provided to us by our allies, people capable of defending the country live in Ukraine,” he said.

Political danger

Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said the mobilization bill is very unpopular, so politicians are afraid to take ownership; even Zelenskyy prefers the legislation be proposed by the government rather than championing it himself. At the same time, it is broadly recognized that the mobilization process must improve and that the military’s needs must be met.

“The draft law on mobilization needs significant refinement and the search for an optimal balance of interests between the provision of military needs and the financial and economic capabilities and needs of the state; between the front and the rear; between the needs of the military and public sentiment,” Fesenko posted on Facebook.

A key concern is that pulling men from offices and factories and putting them in uniform will tank the economy, but that may be overblown, said Kazarin, the Ukrainian soldier.

“They forget only that in case of successful mobilization, all those hands that have been holding weapons for the past few years will be released from duty in a year,” he said. “Many of those who serve in the army today were quite successful businessmen, specialists, and IT professionals before the war. They held the front for two years, leaving the rear to you. And now it’s your turn.”

***

Russia Matters

January 11, 2024

Population Numbers Allow Ukrainian Military to Call Up 500,000, But Can It Afford to Keep Them?

By Simon Saradzhyan

https://www.russiamatters.org/blog/population-numbers-allow-ukrainian-military-call-500000-can-it-afford-keep-them

Since December, my colleagues at Russia Matters and I have been monitoring1 how Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and its commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi have sparred over who should assume prime responsibility for the plan to conscript up to 500,000 Ukrainians. As we watched the two employ what Sun Tzu would have described as “indirect methods” to avoid becoming the person publicly associated with the unpopular plan, we could not help wondering whether the Ukrainian authorities actually have the capacity to add (and keep) half a million to the fighting force, if the government and parliament eventually agree on a bill that would authorize such an addition.2 Here’s what I have found out in my effort to answer that question.

Ukraine’s Conscription Pool Is Deep Enough, but Russia’s Pool Is Deeper

Ukraine’s demographic resources do allow for recruiting 500,000 males3 to the fighting units of its armed forces. Ukraine had 9,307,315 men aged 25-59 in 2022, according to the World Bank’s latest data.4 However, Russia had 34,619,913 men aged 25-59 that year, according to one of the bank’s databases. Thus, if one doesn’t account for factors such as the number of Ukrainians and Russians who (a) were already serving in their countries’ armed forces; (b) had been killed or seriously injured in fighting since WB’s estimate; (c) were dodging the draft and/or had fled their countries;5 and (d) were unfit for service or eligible for other exemptions, then Russia in theory had 3.7 times more males in the 25-59 age cohort that it could draft than Ukraine could (so more than the 3:1 ratio generally required for offensives, ceteres parabuis). If one narrows the age range to 25-49, then one finds that Russia had 26,366,551 such males in 2022, while Ukraine had 6,846,754. (So, again, Russia had more than the 3:1 ratio generally required for offensives.)

If Ukraine Can Afford Maintaining the Additional Troops in Its Fighting Force Is an Open Question

Mobilized conscripts in Ukraine are to be paid 6,000 hryvnia ($157) per month in 2024. If they are deployed in the combat zone, but are not engaged in actual fighting, then they are to be paid 30,000 hryvnia ($784) a month. If they are involved in combat on the actual frontline, then they are to be paid 100,000 hryvnia ($2,616) a month, according to Ukrainian media. Thus, if all 500,000 additional conscripts are actually sent to fight, then Ukraine will have to spend $15.7 billion on salaries alone every year (unless casualties are not replaced). One also needs to keep in mind that Ukraine will also have to spend sizeable sums to train, equip and feed each of the conscripts once they have reported for duty, as well as provide treatment to those injured and compensation to families of those that are killed. Thus, Zelenskyy’s recent estimate that a mobilization of 500,000 could cost $13 billion is not unreasonable.6 In my view, a country counting on the West to plug this year’s projected budget deficit of $43 billion and which has a defense budget of $46 billion can hardly afford such a sum, unless its foreign donors decide to re-boost aid to Kyiv, perhaps, beyond 2023 levels, which is doubtful.7

Quality of Fighters Matters More Than Quantity

Obviously, a sheer correlation of personnel strengths of each side’s forces cannot serve as a reliable sole predictor of whether either side might prevail, whether they have been reinforced through additional mobilization or not. How well the newly conscripted soldiers are trained, armed and commanded matters as much, if not more. Their motivation matters a great deal as well, of course (although, past predictions that the Russian campaign in Ukraine will crumble due to the low morale of its fighting forces have not materialized, even if claims of demoralization in the Russian armed forces persist).8 The would-be Ukrainian recruits should be, at least in theory, more motivated than their Russian counterparts, given that the former defend their homeland, while the latter know they are fighting for the territory of another state, even if the Kremlin tells them this territory is all historic Russian land.

Associated Press, 1/27/24

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Officials in Ukraine said Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that Ukrainian forces shot down a military transport plane that Moscow says was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.

The Ukrainian agency that deals with prisoner exchanges said late Friday that Russian officials had “with great delay” provided it with a list of the 65 Ukrainians who Moscow said had died in the plane crash in Russia’s Belgorod region on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s Coordination Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said relatives of the named POWs were unable to identify their loved ones in crash site photos provided by Russian authorities. The agency’s update cited Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Lt. Col. Kyrylo Budanov, as saying that Kyiv had no verifiable information about who was on the plane.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that missiles fired from across the border brought down the transport plane that it said was taking the POWs back to Ukraine. Local authorities in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, said the crash killed all 74 people onboard, including six crew members and three Russian servicemen.

“We currently don’t have evidence that there could have been that many people onboard the aircraft. Russian propaganda’s claim that the IL-76 aircraft was transporting 65 Ukrainian POWs (heading) for a prisoner swap continues to raise a lot of questions,” Budanov said.

Social media users in the Belgorod region posted a video Wednesday that showed a plane falling from the sky in a snowy, rural area, and a huge ball of fire erupting where it apparently hit the ground.

Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed a Russian military transport plane that day, and Russia’s claim that the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn’t be independently verified. Earlier Friday, Mykola Oleshchuk, Ukraine’s air force commander, described Moscow’s assertion as “rampant Russian propaganda.”

Ukrainian officials earlier this week confirmed that a prisoner swap was due to happen Wednesday, but said it was called off. They said Moscow didn’t ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past prisoner exchanges.

An International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson in Ukraine urged Russia on Friday night to return the bodies of any POWs who might have died in the plane crash.

In a live interview with the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Red Cross Media Relations Officer Oleksandr Vlasenko also remarked that “very little time” had passed between the initial reports of the crash and Moscow declaring it was ready to return the bodies of the Ukrainian POWs.

While Ukraine and Russia regularly exchange the bodies of dead soldiers, each trade has required considerable preparation, Vlasenko said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for an international investigation into the crash. Russia has sole access to the crash site.

Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged Friday to make the findings of Moscow’s crash investigation public. In his first public remarks about the crash, Putin repeated previous comments by Russian officials that “everything was planned” for a prisoner exchange that day when the aircraft went down.

“Knowing (the POWs were aboard), they attacked this plane. I don’t know whether they did it on purpose or by mistake, through thoughtlessness,” Putin said of Ukraine at a meeting with students in St. Petersburg.

He offered no details to support the allegation that Kyiv was to blame, but said the plane’s flight recorders had been found.

“There are black boxes, everything will now be collected and shown,” Putin said…

Read full article here.

***

Kiev knew Ukrainian POWs were on plane it downed – Putin

RT, 1/26/24

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, knew there were prisoners of war aboard a Russian military transport plane shot down by Kiev’s forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. The full story of the shootdown will “become clear in a couple of days,” he added.

The IL-76 military transport plane was shot down over Russia’s Belgorod Region on Wednesday morning. Everyone on board – 65 prisoners, six crew members, and three Russian soldiers – died. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that the plane was brought down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles while en route to a prisoner exchange in the city of Belgorod, located near the Russia-Ukraine border.

The GUR was aware that Ukrainian prisoners were traveling on the plane, Putin said on Friday, according to RIA Novosti.

“The entire current Kiev regime is based on crimes committed daily, including against its own citizens,” Putin said. “The [GUR] knew that we were transporting 65 military personnel there … and knowing this, they struck the plane.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday night, the GUR did not deny that the jet was taken out by Ukrainian forces. Instead, the agency said that it was unsure whether the prisoners would be taken to the exchange point by air or other means, and that it “was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace” over the border region.

Putin said that material seized from the crash site suggests that an American or French air-defense missile was used to bring down the plane, and that exactly how the aircraft was shot down “will become clear in a couple of days.”

“The results of the investigation into the IL-76 case will be published so that the Ukrainian people know” what happened to their soldiers, he stated.

Russian State Duma Defense Committee chief Andrey Kartapolov has also alleged that Western weapons were used to target the flight, claiming that American Patriot or German Iris-T missiles were fired at the jet. A French military source told Radio France on Wednesday that a Patriot missile had struck the fatal blow.

“All currently available data points to a deliberate, premeditated crime,” Russia’s deputy representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday. “The Ukrainian leadership was well aware about the route and means by which [the Ukrainian] soldiers would have been transported to the agreed exchange point,” he claimed, alleging that “the regime in Kiev had decided this time to sabotage [the swap] in the most barbaric way.”

By Tony Kevin, Pearls & Irritations, 1/12/24

Tony Kevin is a former Australian ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, and a member of the Emeritus Faculty at Australian National University. The author of Return to Moscow (2017), he has independently visited Russia six times since 2016.

It is possible now that peace could come to Ukraine rather faster than most Western analysts are predicting, but this will only be only on terms acceptable to Russia.

Last month in Pearls and Irritations, I reviewed the stage reached in the Ukraine military conflict. I suggested that the conflict would continue until Russia was ready to end it on negotiated terms that will protect Russian national security in years ahead. I predicted that:

“Russia in my view has no alternative but to continue to fight this war using its present prudent reactive tactics all along the front, in the hope of Kiev coming to its senses; to go on mobilizing and improving its weapons advantages at home; and to continue to try to minimise civilian casualties and infrastructure losses on both sides. Russia has effectively won this tragic war. It must not let itself be fooled by a political change in Kiev manipulated by Washington and London, trying desperately to snatch some sort of diplomatic victory out of their military defeat in Ukraine. Russia has learned not to trust American false peace overtures.”

Developments over the past month are consistent with these predictions. In what is now a complex picture of Western truth, lies, and cynical shape-shifting, the US/NATO disinformation narrative slowly and reluctantly crawls towards reality. Within Ukraine itself, the political mood is shifting significantly. We are at a moment when basic questions are quietly being asked in Kiev and Washington about Ukraine’s future.

‘And what rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches towards Jerusalem to be born?’

That rough beast is looking more and more like the blunt and popular Ukrainian Army Commander in Chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhny.

President Zelensky is becoming more dispirited and irrelevant: he knows that the Washington imperium sees him as a spent figure and is losing interest in him. The charisma is gone, only the sulky resentment is left.

The Washington imperial elite is now urgently focussed on Middle East dangers and opportunities. The powerful Zionist lobby in the US appears bent on helping Netanyahu find ways to widen to war to Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, and is trying to wrongfoot Iran into looking like the aggressor. Washington is sick of the Ukraine war, knows it can go nowhere good for US now, and wants to wrap it up in a way that the US does not lose face.

Up to a point, Russia is prepared to ease Washington’s diplomatic path to peace.

The Economist – always a good reflection of US-UK strategic thinking for public consumption – tells us that both Ukraine and Russia are war-weary, having taken massive casualties of their best fighters, and both running out of essential munitions. The mood in both countries, says The Economist, is for defensive, life-preserving war. True in the case of Ukraine, but utterly false in the case of Russia where public morale is good, mobilisation and training is well ahead of what is currently militarily necessary, and the military production lines are humming along nicely.

Along the front, Ukraine is no longer mounting suicidal media-driven offensives. Zaluzhny has scaled back a militarily pointless lodgement at Krynki, on the Dnieper east bank near Kherson. Zaluzhny is clearly trying to husband the lives of fit Ukrainian fighting men who are increasingly scarce. He is retrenching towards defensive positions along the long front. Russia is advancing where it is economical of life (on both sides) and Russian weapons to do so. The front remains essentially stable and there are no signs that Russia is preparing for major costly offensives. This is being masked by a steady diet of announcements of small territorial gains, and of Ukrainian desertions, defeatist talk, etc.

In recent days Russia mounted a major air missile attack on key military and infrastructure targets in Kiev and other large Ukrainian cities. Casualties were low. It has led to midwinter power cuts and blackouts. It was a reminder of what Russia can do to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian war party in Kiev – intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov would be a key figure still – continues with Western agency help to mount audacious attacks using missiles, drones and saboteurs on civilian targets deep inside Russia (as far as Chelyabinsk in Siberia). Severe loss of civilian life was caused in Donetsk and in Belgorod. The Economist politely commends this as ‘guerilla warfare’. Moscow condemns it as terrorism.

I surmise that peace precursor discussions through mediators in neutral sites e.g Turkey are already informally underway. Russia’s red lines are being tested and reaffirmed; no rump Ukraine NATO membership or protective affiliation under any circumstances, political neutrality for rump Ukraine (but EU membership would be acceptable to Russia), language rights for Russians in Ukraine, denazification of the worst Banderist elements in Ukrainian politics, restored good-neighbourly relations with Russia and Belarus, final abandonment of Ukrainian claims to Crimea and the four annexed provinces. Russia can expect tacit Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Slovakian acceptance of such an outcome.

Russia will be negotiating from strength. But it will still be a complex and challenging diplomatic negotiation both at the Moscow-Washington and Moscow-Kiev levels.

Russia wants the US and its NATO satraps finally to butt out of Ukraine but is prepared to ease their path diplomatically. On this basis I suggest Moscow will be prepared to help Kiev to negotiate a post-1945 Finlandisation model of sovereign neutrality and retention of a citizen army, but with acceptance of substantial loss of former territory (as Finland then lost in Karelia).

There will be an obvious tradeoff between how cooperative Ukraine will be in such peace negotiations, and how much territory Ukraine will be forced permanently to sacrifice. Will the final Russia-Ukraine border remain on the present frontline, or will it extend to the province capital cities of Zaporizhie and Kherson, now still part of Ukraine? Will it even extend to the provinces of Odessa and Kharkov? Nobody yet knows.

My sense is that Russia would settle for the four prewar provinces in full, as long as the postwar relationship of the two countries is set fair for stability. Russia wants a friendly postwar Ukraine more than it wants to acquire Odessa and Kharkov, however tempting those territories might be. To the extent that Russia continues to face an unfriendly postwar Ukrainian rump state, annexation of Odessa and Kharkov will be more strategically attractive and may be deemed essential to future Russian security.

Everything now depends on what happens in Kiev in coming weeks, and on how helpful or unhelpful a role Washington and its key NATO /EU lieutenants (especially Stoltenberg, Von der Leyen, and Borrell) choose to play in helping, hindering or simply standing aside from any political transition in Kiev.

There are realist politicians in Kiev who could provide core elements of a new more pragmatic regime: I would include as examples Zaluzhny himself – still a popular and trusted figure despite Ukraine’s military reverses, Arestovich, and the Klitschko brothers. Some form of transfer of power away from Zelensky and diehard Russophobe fanatics like Oleksiy Danilov and Kyrylo Budanov would be necessary. The transfer could be bloody or bloodless. Much depends on Washington.

The mood in realist political circles in Ukraine now is fatalistic and despondent. Anti-Russian fanatics are falling silent. There is no enthusiasm left for prosecuting this suicidal war against Russia. Realistic Ukrainians know in their hearts that their war on behalf of the US has been lost, and they now want simply to save what they can of the national patrimony. They are coming to despise how their present political leaders let their countrymen be used as cannon fodder by the US. The Middle East strategic flashpoint around Gaza that is preoccupying Washington is their opportunity.

Peace, when it comes, may come quickly. Meanwhile, expect both sides to continue to talk big publicly of their being ready for a long war. In Russia’s case, it is true.