Strana.ru, 11/25/23 (Translation by Prof. Geoffrey Roberts)

Yesterday’s statement by David Arakhamiya [leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People fraction in Ukraine’s parliament] that the war could have ended in spring 2022 if Ukraine had agreed to neutral status and signed a peace treaty on this basis raises a great many questions.

Based on information from the media and other sources, it seems Russia was ready to leave, without a fight, all the territories it had captured after February 24, 2022, in exchange for Ukraine’s neutral status (i.e. its refusal to join NATO). Moreover, if German Chancellor Schröder is to be believed, Russia was ready to return the entire Donbass to Ukraine on terms of broad autonomy modelled on South Tyrol in Italy.

Ukraine would have liberated almost all of its territories (except Crimea) virtually without a fight. The many thousands of civilians and military personnel who died after April 2022 would still be alive. Ukraine, without losing a single soldier, would have regained regions the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried – with heavy losses and without much success – to liberate during this year’s counteroffensive. As for NATO, Ukraine still has no guarantee of joining the Alliance.

Why did the Ukrainian authorities refuse such a profitable agreement in spring 2022?

Arakhamiya makes two arguments: firstly, it would have been necessary to change the Constitution, and, secondly, there was no trust the Russians would fulfil the agreement.

Both arguments are, to put it mildly, problematic. Yes, it is forbidden to change the Constitution during martial law, but if desired, a way out could have been found to a technical problem by the necessary political will (and since the Ukrainian authorities were negotiating about this at all, they must have seen some options). As for trust, this is an even stranger thesis, since according to the agreement, it was not Ukraine that had to withdraw troops, but Russia. Iin exchange, moreover, only for a decision on a neutral status, which could have been revisited at any time. The issue of trust – whether to “jump or not” – was primarily Moscow’s problem, not Kiev’s.

Subsequently, the Ukrainian authorities named another reason for the refusal – the tragedy in Bucha. However, if we recall Zelensky’s statements at that time, immediately after the tragedy he said that negotiations with the Russian Federation still needed to be conducted.

“Every such tragedy, every such Bucha, will hit you on the wrist in one or another negotiation. But we must find opportunities for such steps,” Zelensky said on 5 April 2022. It was only later that his statements became more categorical.

Hence the president’s main motive for refusing to conclude an agreement with Putin in 2022, is said to be that (perhaps under the influence of the arguments and promises of Western allies) he came to the conclusion that Russia was not ready for a big war and that Ukraine with Western help could completely defeat the Russian army and dictate to Moscow its peace terms, which would include the withdrawal of Russian troops to the 1991 borders, the payment of reparations, etc.

That is, figuratively speaking, Zelensky chose a pie in the sky instead of the bird in his hand.

At the same time, for those who remember the situation at the beginning of April 2022, it is difficult to believe the Ukrainian authorities could have felt so optimistic. The Russian army, having withdrawn troops from the north of Ukraine, launched an offensive in the east – in the Kharkov, Donetsk and Lugansk regions, and the advance of Russian troops continued in the completely surrounded Mariupol. The Ukrainian army experienced a growing hunger for shells. The first deliveries of Western howitzers and shells for them began only in mid-April. And “Hymars” appeared only in June. At that time, no one spoke about the supply of Western tanks and long-range missiles. The United States even blocked the supply of Soviet-style aircraft. In Russia itself there were still no signs of internal unrest. On the contrary, it became clear that its economy had not collapsed under the sanctions, that it had withstood the main blow.

In such conditions, it seems almost incredible that Zelensky could have refuses the extremely attractive “blue tit” of Russia’s withdrawal from almost all occupied territories of Ukraine without a fight, believing in the possibility of getting the “crane” in the form of Moscow’s surrender (which, as we know, hasn’t happened yet).

There must have been some compelling circumstance for Kyiv to reject such favourable conditions for ending the war in spring 2022.

What kind of circumstance became clear from the same interview with Arakhamiya.

He reported that the then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, came to Kyiv and said that “we won’t sign anything with them at all, let’s just fight.”

The question arises: what exactly did Johnson mean by “we won’t sign anything with them?” There can be only one answer: Western countries refused to give joint guarantees with Russia about the security of Ukraine, which must have been attached to the peace treaty and the neutral status agreement.

Actually, Arakhamiya directly said this: “We were advised by Western allies not to agree to ephemeral security guarantees, which at that time were impossible to give at all.”

Let us recall that according to the then plan, security guarantees were to be given by Russia, leading Western countries and a number of other major world powers. But if NATO countries refused to give guarantees and only the Russian Federation and, possibly, China and Turkey gave them, this would, in fact, mean a complete break in Ukraine’s relations with the Western world. Which Zelensky, naturally, could not do.

In other words, it was the position of the Western allies – “let’s just fight” – that had a decisive influence on the decision of the Ukrainian authorities to abandon any agreement with the Russian Federation in spring 2022.

In this regard, one of the key questions concerning further developments is whether the Western position has changed. Recently, one can constantly find reports in the media that the leaders of the United States and the EU are actively pushing the Ukrainian authorities to negotiate with Russia. However, there is no official confirmation of this – only information with reference to certain sources. Publicly, both the Ukrainian authorities and the authorities of Western countries emphasise that they are not prepared to compromise with the Russian Federation and continue to demand the withdrawal of troops to the 1991 borders.

How things stand in reality will largely become clear from the military and financial assistance provided by Ukraine’s allies – if it is indeed significantly limited (as a number of media outlets predict), it would signal the West’s concept has changed compared to spring 2022.

In his interview, Arakhamiya reiterated Kyiv’s position on negotiations, saying they are not profitable at the moment, since “our negotiating position is very bad.”

But on whose side is time working? If in 2022 it was possible to end the war by liberating almost the entire territory of the country without a fight in exchange for neutral status, now there are no such options. And the alternative is completely different – a long war with all its victims and risks, or peace/truce along the front line with the actual consolidation of Russian control over the occupied territories (and, it is possible, this will also be accompanied by additional demands in the form of the same neutral status, for example).

The main thing is what the conditions and negotiating positions will be in the future, and whether Ukraine’s authorities understand that these may turn out to be even worse than they are now.

By Prof. John Mearsheimer, Substack, 11/26/23

There is a growing body of compelling evidence showing that Russia and Ukraine were involved in serious negotiations to end the war in Ukraine right after it started on 24 February 2022 (see below). These talks were facilitated by Turkish President Recep Erdogan and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and featured detailed and candid discussions on the terms of a possible settlement.

By all accounts, these negotiations, which took place in March-April 2022, were making real progress when Britain and the US told Ukrainian President Zelensky to abandon them, which he did.

Coverage of these events has focused on how foolish and irresponsible it was for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put an end to these negotiations, given all the death and destruction that Ukraine has suffered since then – in a war that Kyiv is likely to lose.

Yet an especially important aspect of this story regarding the causes of the Ukraine war has received little attention. The well-entrenched conventional wisdom in the West is that President Putin invaded Ukraine to conquer that country and make it part of a Greater Russia. Then, he would move on and conquer other countries in eastern Europe. The counter-argument, which enjoys little support in the West, is that Putin was mainly motivated to invade by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO and becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. For him and other Russian elites, Ukraine in NATO was an existential threat.

The negotiations in March-April 2022 make it clear that the conventional wisdom on the war’s causes is wrong, and the counter-argument is right, for two main reasons. First, the talks were directly focused on satisfying Russia’s demand that Ukraine not become part of NATO and instead become a neutral state. Everyone involved in the negotiations understood that Ukraine’s relationship with NATO was Russia’s core concern. Second, if Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine, he would not have agreed to these talks, as their very essence contradicted any possibility of Russia conquering all of Ukraine. One might argue that he participated in these negotiations and talked a lot about neutrality to mask his larger ambitions. There is no evidence, however, to support this line of argument, not to mention that: 1) Russia’s small invasion force was not capable of conquering and occupying all of Ukraine; and 2) it would have made no sense to delay a larger offensive, as it would afford Ukraine time to build up its defenses.

In short, Putin launched a limited attack into Ukraine for the purpose of coercing Zelensky into abandoning Kyiv’s policy of aligning with the West and eventually bringing Ukraine into NATO. Had Britain and the West not intervened to scotch the negotiations, there is good reason to think Putin would have achieved this limited objective and agreed to end the war.

It is also worth remembering that Russia did not annex the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia until September 2022, well after the talks had ended. Had a deal been reached, Ukraine would almost certainly control a far greater share of its original territory than it does now.

It is becoming increasingly clear that in the case of Ukraine, the level of foolishness and dishonesty among Western elites and the mainstream Western media is stunning.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 11/21/23

The West’s liberal-globalist elite weaponizes identity politics at home and abroad in advance of their New Cold War bloc’s strategic interests, with there being no principle except for the pursuit of power over their domestic and foreign rivals.

Two statements from leading Ukrainian officials this month about their country’s Russian minority should have raised eyebrows among Westerners but regrettably went unnoticed despite them being deemed unacceptable by that bloc if someone within them said the same about their own minorities. Deputy Prime Minister for European integration Olga Stefanishina claimed that no such minority exists anymore, while Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said their rights deserve to be infringed.

The first told a press conference on 9 November that “There is no Russian minority in Ukraine. It does not exist. There is not a single judicially defined community identifying itself as a Russian minority.” As for the second, he told state-controlled TV on Monday that “There are no Russian ethnic minorities in Ukraine as of now and there can be none…If a people do not show respect but commit aggression against Ukraine, their rights should be infringed upon in this field.”

Both comments followed the European Commission recommending in early November that Ukraine begin talks on joining the EU, and the bloc didn’t chastise either of those two officials for what they said about their country’s Russian minority, both of whom claimed that the EU supports their stance. Their comments are counterfactual as proven by the US government’s own official statistics per the CIA World Factbook, which reports that 17% of the Ukrainian population is comprised of ethnic Russians.

This is more than the percentage of African Americans in the US and slightly less than the rate of Hispanic Americans so Kiev’s policy towards its Russian minority would be the same as if Washington denied that either of those two exist on subjective administrative and moral grounds. That former Soviet Republic’s “de-Russification” and “Ukrainization” policies created the aforesaid administrative conditions for precisely that purpose, which in turn provoked an uproar that led to the latter faux moral one.

It’s understandable that any people would protest the state’s aggressive persecution of their ethnicity, language, and even religion like post-“Maidan” Ukraine has done to its Russian minority, and it’s within their UN-enshrined rights to peacefully demonstrate against this. Nevertheless, as all objective observers already know by now, the West only arbitrarily upholds the implementation of international law whenever its policymakers expect to derive some strategic benefit from doing so.

In this case, the West in general and the EU in particular turn a blind eye towards Ukraine’s persecution of its Russian minority, its administrative elimination of them from national legal existence, and its official’s justification of the preceding internationally illegal policies as part of their proxy war on Russia. This selective approach embodies the so-called “rules-based order” as was explained above, the specific standard of which in this example would be deemed unacceptable if applied within the West itself.

This insight shows that the West’s liberal-globalist elite weaponizes identity politics at home and abroad in advance of their New Cold War bloc’s strategic interests, with there being no principle except for the pursuit of power over their domestic and foreign rivals. It’s undeniable that Ukraine’s Russian minority is treated much worse than the US’ African American or Hispanic American ones, yet the US won’t say a word since it agrees with Stefanchuk that Russians deserve to have their rights infringed.

By Armchair Warlord, Twitter (X), 11/25/23

With news breaking that the Ukrainians are moving towards a final, total mobilization against Russia – and me regretting I didn’t post about it yesterday when I had a hunch on the matter – something occurred to me. I’ve underestimated the Russians before. What if I still am?

The Russians, after all, could quite easily attack and seize huge swathes of Ukraine via high-speed maneuver. The Ukrainians have a thousand kilometers of lightly-defended and barely-fortified left flank running from Kharkov to Lvov. The Russians could crash through it quite easily if they actually wanted to and they’ve always had forces in reserve that could do it – these days a huge mass of them. As things currently stand Russian special forces roam at will in Sumy and Chernigov, preying on the thinly-stretched garrisons.

But, no, the Russians have consolidated their position in Ukraine into a convenient stretch of highly defensible terrain in the country’s east and then just sat there, for over a year now, killing Ukrainian soldiers at horrifyingly lopsided ratios. When they can defend, they defend. When they must attack to keep the pressure on, they find some Ukrainian salient and turn it into a shooting gallery. Where they don’t want to push the front up, they just mow the lawn and pull back – they have to have taken the same line of strongholds east of Kupyansk a dozen times by now, each time pulling back and letting the AFU flood the same old trenches with new recruits again.

Ukrainian casualties have been so astronomical they’re now deep into desperate measures trying to keep soldiers in the ranks, drafting women and looking at emptying out the small pool of privileged young students to feed the front. When the war is over, Ukraine will be a broken society in which most of the people willing to fight for an independent Ukrainian state – and a Western-oriented Ukrainian national identity separate from Russia – will be dead.

What if that’s the point? Objectively speaking, if the Russian plan was simply to kill as many Ukrainian combatants as possible, as efficiently as possible, with as little risk to themselves as possible, then they’re doing it. The Russians know full well that the current iteration of Ukrainian national identity is implacably hostile to Russia and they cannot coexist with it – and they’re very coldly killing anyone and everyone willing and able (or coercible) to bear arms in its defense on the battlefield. In their manic drive to expel the Russians and fight for every inch of their land, the Ukrainian leadership is facilitating this.

Is this genocide? No. The Russians are fighting armed combatants. It’s no violation of the law of war to inflict horrific casualties on the enemy, and any comparison with the ongoing war in Gaza will show that the Russians have been meticulous to avoid civilian casualties. Will it have the effect of breaking the Ukrainian nation at the end of the war? Yes.

Is it an ugly thought that the Russians may very well have planned it this way? Very.

By Fred Weir, Facebook, 11/25/23

From Ivan Katchanovski, of the University of Ottawa, on the peace deal that was all but signed and delivered back in April, 2022. The interview, which I am posting in an English-dubbed version, shows David Arakhamia, head of Zelensky’s parliamentary faction, admitting pretty much what Putin, Gerhard Schröder, Naftali Bennet, and others have claimed: that there was a deal, already initialed, but scuttled after Boris Johnson made a sudden visit to Kyiv. The main Russian demand was Ukrainian neutrality, plus language protections for the Russian-speakers in east Ukraine. A month after the war started, Putin would have settled for that! Well, there it is.

Ivan Katchanovski:

Wow! In his interview, the head of the Zelensky party faction in the Ukrainian parliament & the head of the Ukrainian delegation in the Ukraine-Russia talks confirms that a peace deal could have been reached in spring 2022 if Ukraine agreed to neutrality. He said that Russia was ready to end the war in such case & that Ukrainian neutrality/no NATO membership was the key Russian condition, which also included “denazification,” “Russian language rights,” etc. He also confirmed that Western countries knew everything concerning peace talks and told Zelensky not to sign peace deal and that British PM Johnson during his visit told them to continue fighting. P.S. Subtitles can be automatically translated. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5hrJNGZxYE&t=1s]

Translation of interview by Davyd Arakhamiia, head of Zelensky faction in Ukraine parliament & head of Ukrainian delegation at peace talks with Russia: “They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.

In fact, this was the key point. Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning’ about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah…

Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.”

Arakhamiia added that Western partners knew about the negotiations and saw drafts of documents, but did not attempt to make a decision for Ukraine, but rather gave advice.

“They actually advised us not to go into ephemeral security guarantees [with the Russians – ed.], which could not have been given at that time at all,” said Arakhamiia, who headed the negotiating delegation.”