Interview with Volodymyr Ishchenko, The Bullet, 12/4/24

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a Ukrainian sociologist who was politically active and took part in several left-wing initiatives in Ukraine before moving to Germany in 2019. Ishchenko currently works at the Freie Universität in Berlin and continues his research on the Ukrainian “revolutions,” the left, and the political violence of the extreme right, which he has been studying for 20 years. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, he has also written extensively in several international media outlets on different aspects of the conflict. He was interviewed by Philippe Alcoy and Sasha Yaropolskaya for the journal Révolution Permanente.

Philippe Alcoy, Sasha Yaropolskaya (PA-SY): Here in the West, there is much reporting of the enthusiasm of Ukrainians to defend their country. Yet today, we see images of young men deserting or refusing to serve in the army. Can you tell us how the Ukrainian population currently feels about the situation of the war with Russia?

Volodymyr Ishchenko (VI): There is no enthusiasm, or at least, this enthusiasm is limited to a much smaller group of people than in 2022. At that time, the enthusiasm was caused not only as a reaction to the Russian invasion but also by the fact that Russia’s initial invasion plan failed in a matter of days. There was not only outrage that Russia had attacked our country but also immense hopes for victory in that spring, and even more so after the Ukrainian counter-offensive in September 2022, with expectations of a greater success of the counter-offensive in 2023.

As we now know, last year’s Ukrainian campaign failed to achieve any of its objectives. We witnessed, instead, the relatively successful advance of Russian forces. This has consequences for how people feel about war. In public opinion, in particular, there are clear trends: when the situation on the front line was good for Ukraine and with chances of improvement, support for negotiations was very low. But when the situation deteriorated and hopes that Ukraine could win the war diminished, support for negotiations increased, while support for, and trust in, Zelensky decreased.

Much indicates that the enthusiasm of 2022 was quite fragile. And this is not the first time that we have seen this kind of dynamic. After the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 and the “EuroMaidan Revolution” of 2014, people had high expectations that quickly yielded to disappointment. A similar dynamic occurred after the election of Zelensky in 2019, and again in 2022. One line of interpretation was that these events were the manifestation of the rise of the Ukrainian nation with a quasi-theological dynamic, as the ultimate outcome of a national liberation struggle.

You mentioned desertion. The number of people trying to escape across the border is high. An even more telling statistic is that of the majority of men subject to military service and aged 18 to 60 who have not updated their data with the military recruitment office. This requirement had been introduced in order to make Ukrainian conscription a little more effective and to avoid resorting to the rather brutal method of grabbing people off the street but rather to try to collect data on all potential conscripts and then to start mobilizing them more effectively. If people do not update the data, they are punished with a large fine, and if they don’t pay it, they invite even more complications in their work and life.

So, it is a very serious matter. Yet despite everything, the majority of Ukrainian men have not obeyed this requirement. And as for Ukrainian men abroad, according to estimates, only a few have updated their data, although everyone was required to do so. This means that the real desire to sacrifice oneself for the state is very low.

Military conscription is becoming increasingly brutal. Videos have emerged of arrests of military conscripts in public and of clashes between police and military personnel on one side, and citizens present at the scene.

PA-SY: Is there a parallel to the situation in Russia on the issue of military conscription? And is there a fear on the part of the state that pushing for a larger conscription could lead to social discontent as in Russia, where for years there was a movement of conscripts’ families, especially wives and mothers, who mobilized to support their husbands and sons?

VI: In Russia, the regime was afraid of launching a large-scale conscription effort. It has tried to find different ways to avoid large waves of military conscription. But I feel that Ukraine, especially when supplies from the United States were low, had no choice, and so it lowered the conscription age. This was accompanied by great brutality on the part of the police.

PA-SY: Are there potential social protests that could arise from this situation?

VI: There is much one can say about this. Unlike Russia, conscription has always existed in Ukraine. So, this is not a single wave of conscription, like the one Putin announced in September 2022 in response to the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Ukrainian army obtains its soldiers mainly through conscription. Volunteers do not constitute the majority of the Ukrainian army, and their number has become negligible since 2022. All the brutal methods of mobilization are the result of a weak desire to volunteer for the army.

PA-SY: Why is it so weak?

VI: The most generous explanation for the Ukrainian state, and also the one that is repeated in some circles, is that this is simply because the United States did not supply enough weapons. This argument implies a very specific idea of ​​how the war could be won. But it is far from certain that, even if all the weapons and supplies had been delivered in 2022, a decisive victory over Russia could have been won. I won’t speculate about this. But I don’t think that there is a consensus among military experts.

The other side of the coin is that the shipment of weapons to Ukraine is conditional on the effectiveness of Ukrainian mobilization. And so, amendment of the law on conscription this year was linked to the shipment of weapons by the United States. This is confirmed by many Ukrainian politicians. The United States expected Ukraine to make conscription more effective.

Today, the most urgent issue is to reduce the conscription age. It has already been reduced from 27 to 25, and now there is strong pressure to lower it even further, to 22, or even to 18.

There’s a strong argument against this. That is the most fertile demographic cohort of the Ukrainian population, and it is also one of the smallest. In fact, if you send these young people to be massacred, the ability of the Ukrainian population to regenerate its numbers after the war will diminish even further. According to the latest UN projections for the Ukrainian population, by the end of the century it will number only 15 million, compared to 52 million in 1992, right after the disintegration of the USSR.

And this is not even the worst-case scenario. It’s based on the rather optimistic assumption that the war will end next year and that millions of refugees, especially fertile women, will return and be able to contribute to the reproduction of the Ukrainian population, which is not certain, to say the least.

This is an impossible choice. Throughout history, many nations have fought long wars against imperial conquests. And not necessarily only against imperial conquests, by the way. Take revolutionary France. After 1789, France was able to defeat the coalition of the greatest European powers until 1812, when Napoleon was defeated in Russia. For two decades, France defeated all of Europe. Such was the power of revolution. After 1917, revolutionary Russia was able to defeat the coalition of the strongest imperialist powers that all intervened because of the power of its revolution and its ability to build an effective, large, and victorious Red Army. In the Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese defeated France and the United States over a period of decades. Afghanistan defeated the USSR and the United States in a war that lasted from 1979 to 2021. Theoretically, one might think that a small nation could defeat a much larger enemy. But that requires a different social stature and politics than those of Ukraine.

All of these wars were fought by countries that had large peasant populations that could mobilize in large-scale revolutionary or guerrilla wars. In Vietnam, the demographics held up over the decades, despite the genocide that the United States committed, and even though the balance of forces was so lopsided. Such is the power of revolution.

Post-Soviet Ukraine is a very different country. Its demographic structure is very different from Vietnam’s, Afghanistan’s, and even Ukraine’s of a hundred years ago, when it was a largely peasant country with multiple revolutionary armies – the Red Army, Makhno’s anarchist army, armies of the various nationalist warlords – all of whom benefited from the demographics of the peasantry. Today’s Ukraine is a modernized urban society with a declining demographic. It’s not going to be able to wage war for decades.

And there are no revolutionary changes in today’s Ukraine. The three Ukrainian “revolutions” – 1990, 2004, and 2014 – did not create a strong revolutionary state capable of establishing an effective apparatus that could mobilize an army and the economy. The idea behind these “revolutions” was that Ukraine should integrate into the US-led world order as a kind of periphery. This type of integration would benefit only a narrow middle class, some opportunistic oligarchs, and transnational capital.

In Ukraine, the regime is still discussing a rather moderate tax increase – that after two and a half years of war. That says a lot about how much Ukrainians trust the state and about their willingness to defend that state. The question of social class was very important because the conscripts came mainly from the lower classes. These are mainly poor people who could not bribe the recruitment officers to let them go and people who could not find a way to flee the country.

PA-SY: Zaluzhnyi, head of the Ukrainian armed forces, and Kuleba, the foreign minister, were dismissed this year. Could you talk of the political struggles within the Ukrainian bourgeoisie?

VI: Zaluzhny is a potential political opponent of Zelensky. It was dangerous for Zelensky to see a popular general become a politician. This was one of Zelensky’s motives in sending him to the UK as ambassador. As for Kuleba, there was also a problem of trust.

We can analyze this as building a vertical power structure, an informal way of consolidating the elite and of governing the country using both formal institutions, such as the democratic Constitution and the Parliament, but also informal mechanisms. All Ukrainian presidents have tried to build this informal power. Zelensky’s power vertical started to be built before the invasion. But the war offered more opportunities, and his chief of staff, Andrei Yermak, is considered the second most powerful person in the country, with enormous informal power and the ability to build an effective informal structure that consolidates power around the presidential office.

The dynamics of these conflicts, that sometimes break out into public view, remain mostly hidden. They are mainly related to the results at the front and to military developments. In case of bad developments for the Ukrainian army, these conflicts would intensify, and some radical nationalists, even some oligarchs, could raise their heads, and so forth.

A lot depends on the position of the US and the EU and the strategy that Trump will choose. Zelensky has to end this war in a way that could be presented to the Ukrainian public as a victory, for example, by obtaining EU or NATO membership or some generous funding programs for Ukraine, even if it loses territory. With an outcome perceived as a defeat, Zelensky would probably not have much future.

PA-SY: What is the role of the far right in Ukraine?

VI: This topic has been widely discussed in Western media throughout the war. Some liberal media outlets try to portray the Ukrainian far right as less dangerous than the Western far right, because it is fighting on the right side of history against a Russia that is the more important enemy. The Zelensky regime has tried to appeal to these sectors of the far right by holding official ceremonies for the Azov Battalion or celebrating the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the extreme nationalist and Nazi sympathizer. It is difficult to follow from France how this dynamic is evolving as the war progresses.

PA-SY: Is the far right a small but powerful segment due to its presence in the military. Or is it gaining popularity outside of traditional sectors of the far right? Does the far right play a significant role in the Ukrainian political landscape, or is its influence being exaggerated by the media?

VI: When people in the West discuss the Ukrainian far right, I think they are using the wrong point of comparison. For example, in France, the far right, mainly the Rassemblement national, Le Pen’s party, is much less extreme than the movements that we are talking about in Ukraine. Le Pen’s party probably does not use Nazi symbols and has a more sophisticated attitude toward the Vichy collaboration during World War II. They are trying to clean themselves.

But such is not the case in Ukraine. You mentioned Stepan Bandera, who is openly glorified, and even more so the Waffen-SS, especially by members of the Azov Battalion. The degree of extremism of the Ukrainian far right is much greater than that of the West’s far right.

Recently, an international conference, “Nation Europa,” was held in Lviv, the largest city of Western Ukraine, to which groups such as Dritte Weg from Germany, CasaPound from Italy, and similar neo-Nazi groups from many European countries were invited. All major far-right organizations of Ukraine participated, including the Svoboda party and prominent members of Azov/National Corps. These Ukrainian parties, organizations, and military units are generally referred to as the “far-right,” but they have international relations with Western groups that are much more extreme and violent than the mainstream far-right parties. Incidentally, most of the Ukrainian military units that participated in this conference have ties to the Ukrainian military intelligence service, the GUR.

The ideologically sanctioned capacity for political violence of the Ukrainian far right is much greater than that of the dominant far-right parties in the West. They have much more weaponry and many paramilitary movements built around official military units that are capable of political violence. Unlike mainstream Western far-right parties seeking parliamentary status, the power of the Ukrainian far right has always rested on its ability to mobilize in the streets and to threaten violence. They have not been able to get elected, with the exception of the elections of 2012, when the far-right Svoboda party won over 10% of the vote. (But the far right was able to gain much more significant representation and to form the largest factions in many local councils in Western Ukraine.)

Their main source of power comes from their ability to mobilize outside parliament, unlike parties formed by oligarchs (big capital) or by the weak liberals. Ukrainian nationalists can draw on a political tradition that goes back to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was part of a family of fascist movements in interwar Europe. And post-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists have often drawn their inspiration directly from the OUN. This tradition has been upheld in the Ukrainian diaspora, particularly in North America. The Canadian public is only now discovering the number of Ukrainian fascists that its government welcomed after World War II. Other post-Soviet Ukrainian political currents don’t have this advantage of a preserved political tradition.

The members of the Azov battalion have today become very legitimate as war heroes. They enjoy extraordinary media attention and present themselves as an élite unit, a claim that the media uphold. Many Azov speakers have become celebrities. They have also benefited from a certain whitewashing in Western media, which before 2022 referred to them as neo-Nazis. Today, they easily forget this part of history.

And finally, we must think not only about the far right itself but also about the complicity of Ukrainian and Western elites in whitewashing the Ukrainian far right and ethno-nationalism. Not only in Ukraine but also in the West, discussing this topic today can immediately lead to ostracization. For example, Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian historian who moved to the United States, continues to write critical articles about Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian ethno-nationalist politics, the Ukrainian far right, and she receives thousands of threats, death threats, rape threats.

PA-SY: Is Azov, in your view, the main force of the Ukrainian far right? Wasn’t it greatly weakened in the battles of Mariupol and Bakhmut? Do you think that it will still play an important role in the future, in the recomposition of the far right?

VI: On the contrary, Azov has grown, now forming two brigades – the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Azov Brigade of the National Guard. This is in addition to a special unit, the Kraken, which are subordinate to the GUR (military intelligence). Their political appeal and publicity in the media have grown considerably. Their legitimacy has also grown. So, they are not weakened, but strengthened. And contrary to popular myth, they have not become depoliticized.

PA-SY: Are you afraid that after the war, the extreme right, and in particular those that had fought at the front, will be the only force to have a sufficiently coherent ideological project for post-war Ukraine, given the absence of ideology of the neoliberal project for Ukraine and the weakness of the left?

VI: That depends entirely on the outcome of the war. And the range of possible outcomes is still very large. A nuclear war is a possible outcome, although one hopes that it is not the most likely one. In that case, everything we are discussing today will no longer matter. A lasting ceasefire is also possible, but unlikely.

The radicalization of the Ukrainian far right will depend on the stability of Zelensky’s government and the stability of the Ukrainian economy. In the event of the disintegration of state institutions and a failing economy, the nationalists will have a good chance of consolidating their power because they are a very legitimate, very well-known, and militarized political force.

PA-SY: What is the situation of the labour movement? There have been some minor strikes in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, especially in the health sector. But it is difficult to know what the real situation is. What is the situation and the capacity of the working class to organize and perhaps play a role, at least to counterbalance the rise of the extreme right in the country?

VI: The working class cannot play any role in the current situation. The labour movement in Ukraine was weak long before the war. The last really massive political strike was in 1993 among the miners of Donbass. They demanded autonomy for Donbass and closer relations with Russia, ironically. But even that strike was linked to the interests of the “red directors” of former Soviet enterprises who had a lot of power in the immediate post-Soviet years. They used the strike to obtain some concessions from the government. Eventually, the strike led to early elections and a change of government. But since then, there has been no large-scale strike.

For three decades, we have seen only small-scale strikes, usually limited to individual companies, at best to certain segments of the economy, and very rarely politicized. Moreover, it was precisely the inability to launch a political strike during the EuroMaidan of 2014 that led to the escalation of violence because that protest movement was unable to put sufficient pressure on a government that was unwilling to make concessions. This gave the radical nationalists the opportunity to promote their violent strategy of protest.

And so yes, since the current large-scale invasion, strikes are banned. The strikes that have taken place are probably informal strikes.

What will happen after the war still depends a lot on how it ends. But from what we understand, the empowerment of the labour movement would require some economic growth so that workers are not laid off. This requires a successful reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy.

In some very optimistic – but not necessarily likely – scenarios, Ukrainian soldiers returning to the Ukrainian economy could demand more from the government. That has indeed happened after some wars, particularly after World War I. But that remains speculative today. Much darker scenarios now seem more likely…

PA-SY: As concerns the situation and the positions of the Ukrainian left, at the beginning of the war, many articles and texts presented the point of view of Ukrainian left activists and explained how blind some of the Western left is for not supporting NATO arms deliveries more. In your articles, you try to present a more nuanced point of view on the war.

How have the positions of the Ukrainian left, the organized left, but also intellectuals, changed since the two years after the invasion? Is the left adopting a more critical position toward the Ukrainian government and NATO’s role in the conflict?

VI: The Ukrainian left has always been very diverse.

Ironically, the largest left party in Ukraine, the Communist Party of Ukraine, supported the Russian invasion. The Communist Party of Ukraine was a very important party… until EuroMaidan. It was the most popular party in the country in the 1990s. The Communist Party candidate won 37% of the vote in the 1999 presidential elections. Even on the eve of EuroMaidan, the Communist Party won 13% of the vote. Although its support had declined, it had significant representation in parliament and effectively supported the government of Viktor Yanukovych. After EuroMaidan, it lost its electoral stronghold in Donbass and Crimea, as these territories were cut off from Kiev. The party also suffered repression due to the government’s “decommunization” policies – the party was suspended, and in 2022, it was permanently banned, as were a number of other so-called pro-Russian parties.

Petro Simonenko, the leader of the party since 1993, fled to Belarus in March 2022. From Belarus, he supported the Russian invasion as an anti-fascist operation against the “Kiev regime.” The communist organizations in the areas occupied by Russia have merged with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and participated in the local elections organized by Russia in 2023, even entering some local councils. The same merger occurred with the soviet-type Ukrainian trade unions in the occupied areas. Such is the lion’s share of what was called the left in Ukraine.

At the same time, there were much smaller and younger left groups. They were always critical of the communists and integrated better with the democratic socialists and the liberal left in the West. They also had a very different social base than the communists – closer to the pro-Western NGO-ized “civil society” of the middle class in Ukraine. After the invasion began, they were able to communicate their position much more effectively to the West through a kind of identity politics: “We are the Ukrainian left. The stupid and arrogant Western left does not understand anything about what is happening in the country.”

Of course, this position was very problematic, to say the least, from the very beginning. For comparison, the Communist Party had 100,000 card-carrying members in 2014. The young left milieu had no more than 1,000 activists and sympathizers in the whole country, even in the best years of its development, and their numbers have been declining since then, after Euromaidan. Among that left, most supported Ukraine, many volunteered for the army, but they were not able to create a left-wing military unit comparable to the extreme right units, even on a much smaller scale. Many also participated in humanitarian initiatives.

Today, some of them are tending to revise their positions on the war, especially in response to the brutal conscription. It is really difficult to claim that the war is still some kind of “people’s war” when the majority of Ukrainians do not want to fight. The extent to which they are willing to express this revised position also depends on their fear of repression. It is difficult to speak critically of the war in the Ukrainian public sphere. That kind of criticism exists mostly in private conversations, in “friends only” Facebook accounts and so on, and is articulated only very cautiously in publications.

There is also criticism of the ethno-nationalism coming from this left environment because it has become too difficult to ignore how Ukraine has changed in two years, with the spread of discrimination against Russian speakers and the regime’s ethnic assimilation policies. For example, Russian is no longer taught in Ukrainian schools, even as an option, even in massively Russian-speaking cities like Odessa, where probably 80-90% of even ethnic Ukrainian children speak Russian with their parents. A recently introduced bill could ban speaking any Russian in schools, not only in class with teachers, but also during breaks, in private conversations of students among themselves. The bill has already been approved by the Minister of Education.

The third segment of the Ukrainian left is Marxist-Leninist, and is part of what I call the “neo-Soviet revival” that is happening in many post-Soviet countries. They are usually organized in kruzhki – literally ‘circles’. These are proto-political organizations, something more than just Marxist-Leninist reading groups. They are much more popular in Russia, where they are able to create YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In Russia, Belarus and Central Asia, kruzhki can involve thousands of young people who have not lived a single day in the USSR, but who are critical of the social and political reality of their country and who find in orthodox Marxist Leninism instruments to deal with this reality. They exist and have even developed in Ukraine as well, despite decommunization and the rise of anti-Russian nationalism and anti-communist attitudes.

Almost from the very beginning, these groups opposed their governments and adopted a revolutionary defeatist position. One can wonder whether a social revolution is even possible, as it was a hundred years ago in Ukraine in the collapsing Russian Empire. Nevertheless, from the very beginning, these groups criticized forced conscription, called for internationalism, and did not try to legitimize the actions of the Ukrainian state. •

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a political activist in Ukraine and editor of the review Spiln’ya. He is a research associate at the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.

By Brian McDonald, Twitter, 12/15/24

The fall of Assad and the “loss” of Syria isn’t actually that critical for Russia. Historically, the Soviet Union endured much larger setbacks in the Middle East. For example: Egypt’s sudden shift from a Soviet ally to a US partner in the 1970s.

Despite investing heavily in Egypt through military aid and infrastructure projects like the Aswan Dam, Moscow was blindsided when Anwar Sadat aligned with Washington. Yet, the USSR eventually restored much of its influence in the region through alliances with other Arab states.

This precedent makes a key point: Russia’s geopolitical fortunes in the Middle East aren’t tied to a single leader or country. The region’s fluid power dynamics mean that today’s setback can be tomorrow’s opportunity.

Russia’s approach to Syria, therefore, should be viewed through this broader historical lens. Strategic losses are part of a long game where influence can quickly be regained.

Plus, the rebel leaders have already said they are open to a deal with Moscow. And Russia has quite a bit to offer them. For instance, lots of cheap grain.

***

Interpreting Putin’s Remarks On Syria, Israel, And Turkiye

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 12/20/24

Putin commented on Syria’s regime change during his annual Q&A session on Thursday. According to him, Russia’s military intervention succeeded in its goal of preventing the creation of an Afghan-like terrorist enclave. The groups that just seized power there, including terrorist-designated and -affiliated ones, have apparently changed their views over the years. That’s why the West wants to establish relations with them. The regime change therefore can’t be seen as a defeat for Russia.

Putin then defended his armed forces’ conduct during recent events by claiming that Russia no longer had any ground troops in Syria. Moreover, the estimated 30,000 Syrian and “pro-Iranian units” that were defending Aleppo surrendered the city to just 350 militants, after which they gave up the rest of the country to them too with few exceptions. He also revealed that Russia evacuated 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran while other allied units fled to Lebanon (a reference to Hezbollah) and Iraq without a fight.

As for the future of Russian influence in Syria, Putin claimed that “The overwhelming majority of [the groups that control the situation there] tell us that they would be interested in our military bases remaining”. He then proposed that they could be used to deliver humanitarian aid. The main beneficiary of the latest events is Israel, in his opinion, since they’ve practically demilitarized Syria and expanded their occupation zone in the country. He condemned those moves and hoped that they’d leave someday.

Putin also took the opportunity to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine as well as its ongoing military operation in Gaza. These are all consistent Russian positions and nothing new. Observers might have been surprised though that he didn’t also condemn Turkiye. Instead, he explained that “Turkey is doing everything to ensure its security on its southern borders as the situation in Syria develops”, which he said is aimed at returning refugees and “push[ing] back Kurdish formations on the border.”

In connection with that second imperative, Putin expressed hope that there won’t be an aggravation of the situation like some have reported that Turkiye is planning. He also said that “we need to solve the Kurdish problem. Within the framework of Syria under President Assad, this had to be solved, now we need to solve it with the authorities that control the territory of Syria, and Turkey needs to somehow ensure its security. We understand all this.” This basically amounts to giving Turkiye a free pass in Syria.

Putin’s apparent double standard towards the similar issues of Turkish and Israeli military involvement in post-Assad Syria can be explained by Russia’s complex interdependence with the former. They’re closely tied together through nuclear energy cooperation, air defense systems (S-400s), natural gas, trade, and Istanbul’s prior role in mediating between Moscow and Kiev. By contrast, although Israel hasn’t armed Ukraine nor sanctioned Russia, there’s much less trade and no military-technical cooperation.

There are also optics to consider as well. Although Syria is still politically divided and Turkiye does indeed back the UN-designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, there’s no denying that many Syrians support Ankara as do many other Muslims in the region. The same can’t be said for Israel, which is universally reviled in Syria, except among some of the Druze that welcomed the self-professed Jewish State’s forces, and fiercely hated by most Muslims in the region.

It’s therefore better for Russia’s soft power interests to criticize Israel for occupying part of Syria while remaining silent about Turkiye doing the same thing. Likewise, considering the domestic and regional mood, it also makes sense for Putin to remind everyone about the pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in giving up cities without a fight and then fleeing abroad. After all, “Russia Dodged A Bullet By Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With The Now-Defeated Resistance Axis”, so it has no reason to sugarcoat what they did.

Altogether, Putin’s remarks on Syria, Israel, and Turkiye show that Russia eschews responsibility for what just happened in Syria, condemns Israel for its ongoing invasion there, and downplays Turkiye’s own. This is a coldly realist and ultra-pragmatic approach to the latest developments that fully aligns with Russia’s national interests as Putin sincerely understands them to be. It also contradicts the expectations that many members of the diverse non-Mainstream Media community had of him condemning Turkiye.

As can be seen, Putin doesn’t really care that Turkiye is a NATO member nor that it patronizes terrorist-designated HTS since he’s always insisted that the most important factor in their contemporary ties is the excellent working relationship that he has with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russian leader sang his praises in October 2022 while speaking at the Valdai Club’s annual meeting when he was asked about whether his views on him had changed over the past two years. Here’s what he said:

“He is a competent and strong leader who is guided above all, and possibly exclusively, by the interests of Turkiye, its people and its economy…President Erdogan never lets anyone get a free ride or acts in the interests of third countries…But there is a desire on both sides to reach agreements, and we usually do it. In this sense, President Erdogan is a consistent and reliable partner. This is probably his most important trait, that he is a reliable partner.”

Putin wasn’t playing “5D chess to psyche out Turkiye” like some members of the diverse non-Maisntream Media community imagined at the time but was candidly sharing his views about Erdogan. Those who took his words seriously therefore knew better than to expect him to condemn Turkiye for its actions in Syria. Putin’s responsibility is to ensure Russia’s national interests, not conform to his online supporters’ fantasies about him spewing this or that talking point, which requires maximum flexibility.

“Non-Russian Pro-Russians” and even some Russians might be disappointed with his position towards recent events in Syria, but they should at least understand the reasons behind it. Russia couldn’t stop what just happened, which was the result of the Syrian Arab Army’s and pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in the face of the foreign-backed terrorist-driven blitz, and it won’t go to war with Turkiye over this either. By adapting to this new reality, Putin now has the best possible chance of advancing Russian interests.

It doesn’t mean that he’ll succeed, but there’s no guarantee of failure as would have been the case had he criticized Turkiye after being unable to stop it and unwilling to go to war with it afterwards. Even if things don’t work out like he envisages, Russia’s mutually beneficial bilateral ties with Turkiye won’t be jeopardized, nor will his country’s soft power be damaged since it’s not opposed to the outcome that the domestic and regional majority support. Putin’s pragmatic hedging therefore preserves Russian interests.

***

Putin Thinks Al-Qaeda in Syria Is Reformed Too

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 12/20/24

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia’s goal to defeat jihadism in Syria had actually succeeded because the rebranded al-Qaeda force that seized power on Dec. 8 has put its extremist past behind it. 

Putin said this in answer to a Western journalist at a Moscow news conference (video) on Thursday:

“Those who pay your salary would like to present the current developments in Syria as Russia’s defeat. I assure you that this is not the case, and here is why. We came to Syria ten years ago to prevent the creation of a terrorist enclave there, like the one that we saw in some other countries, for example, Afghanistan. We have achieved that goal, by and large.

Even the groups that were fighting against the Assad regime and the government forces back then have undergone internal changes. It is not surprising that many European countries and the United States are trying to develop relations with them now. Would they be doing this if they were terrorist organisations? This means that they have changed, doesn’t it? So, our goal has been achieved, to a certain degree.”

The remark aligns Putin with Western nations who claim that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — which was al-Nusra Front and before that al-Qaeda in Syria — is no longer a terrorist group and is fit to rule Syria. 

This conclusion, after less than 10 days of HTS in power, puts a spin on events that seeks to benefit both Russia and the West.  Both sides now need to portray the militants as reformed extremists.   

Putin is right to say that at least one of Moscow’s goals in Syria in 2015 was “to prevent the creation of a terrorist enclave there.”

(Other goals appeared to have been to save Russia’s Mediterranean bases in Syria, which they may still do, and to protect gas sales to Europe at the time — now lost to sanctions —  against a rival pipeline project through Syria to Europe led by Qatar, which necessitated overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, who opposed it.) 

Putin told the U.N. General Assembly from the podium in New York on Sept. 28, 2015 — days before Russia intervened in Syria at the governments’ invitation — that Moscow’s aim was to defeat jihadism there lest it spread, threatening regional and Russian security. 

Russia had to that point already fought Western-backed jihadists in a 30-year struggle against encroachment into its sphere of influence by militant Islamism.

The support the U.S. and Gulf Arab nations gave these terrorist groups opened a three-decade Western rift with Russia that began in Afghanistan and ran across the Northern Caucasus to the Balkans and then into Syria.

Russia was opposed to regime change in Syria not only on principle, analysts and diplomats at the U.N. told me in June 2012, but because the likely new regime would be headed by an Islamist government inimical to Russian interests.

In his 2015 U.N. speech, Putin appealed to the U.S. to join Russia in a military campaign against the common enemy of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other jihadists, the way the U.S. and the Soviet Union had fought together against Nazism.

The Obama administration arrogantly rejected the proposal out of hand with some American commentators calling it “Russian imperialism.” But it would be odd to invite your adversary to join your imperial adventure. 

In fact the United States was in alliance with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups trying to overthrow al-Assad and did not want to fight them. Putin understood that the U.S. had long supported Islamist extremists.

He pointed this out at the U.N. in 2015:

“The situation is extremely dangerous. In these circumstances, it is hypocritical and irresponsible to make declarations about the threat of terrorism and at the same time turn a blind eye to the channels used to finance and support terrorists, including revenues from drug trafficking, the illegal oil trade and the arms trade. 

It is equally irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them. … the people you are dealing with are cruel but they are not dumb. They are as smart as you are. So, it’s a big question: who’s playing who here? … 

Relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism. Similar to the anti-Hitler coalition, it could unite a broad range of parties willing to stand firm against those who, just like the Nazis, sow evil and hatred of humankind.”  [Emphasis added.]  

So the question is, has the HTS and lesser extremist groups in Syria really changed their stripes? Have they really transformed from Jihad to Jefferson?

The U.S., the U.K. and the EU are in the process of dropping HTS’ terrorist designation and the U.S. in lifting the $10 million bounty on its leader’s head.

But it seems too early for Putin to say that the HTS — in nominal charge in Damascus — are no longer terrorists because the West would not be “developing relations” with them “if they were terrorist organisations.”  It belies what he knows to be true, that the U.S. has had relationships for decades with some of the most notorious terrorists on the globe to achieve short-term strategic objectives.

Putin may be saying they aren’t terrorists anymore as a way to get out of admitting Russia likely failed in Syria to prevent terrorists from taking over. He did not cite Russian intelligence saying these are reformed killers, but said they must be reformed because otherwise the West would have nothing to do with them, when he knows full well the West has had plenty to do with them when they were openly terrorists. 

This may just be Putin trying to find a creative way out of the fact that Assad’s overthrow appears to have been a Russian defeat unless the HTS are truly reformed. And if they are reformed, still very much uncertain, the U.S. and Turkey would have been behind it, not Russia.   

A commenter on this article on X suggested Putin was just making fun of the journalist. Perhaps he was employing sarcasm but it was on the record and people take Putin seriously. 

What happens in Syria over the coming months will tell the rest of this story. Will Alawis, Christians and other minorities be left alone to live as they please?

Or will the HTS reanimate as terrorists to go after are these vulnerable peoples? Will the HTS serve the interests of stability in Syria and the region as Putin seems to think?

Or will they revert to what they have long been, especially now that they have power?

By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, 12/9/24

There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.

In December of 2021, Putin presented the U.S. and NATO with a proposal on security guarantees. Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine.”

The U.S. was not then, nor are they yet, willing to offer NATO membership to Ukraine. Ukraine was then willing to abandon its pursuit of NATO membership, as signaled by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and by his advisors. According to polls, only 24%-39% of Ukrainians even wanted NATO membership. But the U.S. said no.

That “no,” that could have brought peace to Ukraine, instead brought the “military-technical” response that Putin promised a “no” would bring.

The U.S. sacrificed Ukraine for the principal that NATO had the right to enlarge wherever it wanted to go: even up to Russia’s border. But still, in the first days after Russia’s invasion, peace was still possible.

In the days after the invasion, Russia and Ukraine were engaged in direct bilateral negotiations that led to an initialed draft agreement. Even then, Ukraine could have maintained its prewar territory and, perhaps, even more in a return to the idea of an autonomous Donbas still as part of Ukraine.

Once again, Ukraine could have lost few lives and little land. But the United States, Britain, Poland and their NATO partners said no. Instead of encouraging and nurturing the talks and the diplomatic path that could have quickly saved Ukrainians from the horrors of the war that were to come, the West dissuaded Ukraine from pursuing that path and pushed them down the path of war with promises of whatever they need for as long as they need it.

Twice, once in the weeks before the start of the war and once in the days after the start of the war, the U.S. declined the opportunity to negotiate a peace for the people of Ukraine, prioritizing its own foreign policy objectives over the goals and interests of Ukraine. Russia is surely to blame for starting the war with Ukraine. But from the moment the U.S. and Britain blocked the promising peace talks, they shared responsibility for the suffering of Ukrainians that was to come.

As the possibility of negotiations and a diplomatic settlement faded into the past and the full horror of war came to Ukraine, U.S. officials would, once again, make decisions and encourage policies and strategies that they knew would bring suffering and loss of life to Ukraine.

Perhaps the turning point in the war was the failed Ukrainian counteroffensive of the summer of 2023. The last best hope for stopping Russia from winning the war was a devastating failure for Ukraine. It gained them no land and cost them many lives.

The U.S. encouraged and pushed Ukraine to launch the counteroffensive. They told Ukraine and the world that the Ukrainian armed forces could win. U.S. Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin told a Senate Armed Services Committee that Ukraine now had a “significant advantage” over Russian forces that had suffered “significant losses” and that had “depleted their armoured vehicles in a way that no one could have ever imagined.” He told them that “Ukraine will have a very good chance for success” in the coming counteroffensive.

That’s what he said. It’s not what he knew. Privately, military officials knew that Ukraine was ill prepared to take on Russia in a counteroffensive. According to reporting in The Wall Street Journal, “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons – from shells to warplanes – that it needed to dislodge Russian forces.” Incredibly, military officials were prepared to count on “Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness.”

The Ukrainian soldiers were courageous and resourceful. But courage is no shield against Russian weapons and troops when you lack training and weapons of your own.

At the start of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine off the path of peace and diplomacy and onto the path of war. In the middle of the war, they pushed them to launch a counteroffensive that they knew they lacked the training and weapons for. Both times, the U.S. used Ukrainian soldiers to pursue its own foreign policy interests, and hundreds of thousands of those Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded.

And now, the U.S. wants Ukraine to throw even more soldiers into a war they know Ukraine has lost.

The war has not gone well for Ukraine. Already a year ago, on November 1, 2023, a close aid to Zelensky had complained that, even if Ukraine had all the weapons they needed, they “don’t have the men to use them.” One year, and thousands of deaths, injuries, amputations and desertions later, the manpower situation is much worse.

At the end of November, the Biden administration began to pressure Kiev to lower the draft age from 25 to 18. “The pure math,” one senior Biden official said, is that Ukraine needs to draft more soldiers to replace its battlefield losses. The U.S. may can send more weapons, but now “manpower is the most vital need,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary. Right now, 18- to 25-year olds are not in the fight.” And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “In fact, we believe manpower is the most vital need they have. So, we’re also ready to ramp up our training capacity if they take appropriate steps to fill out their ranks.”

Asking Ukraine to throw more soldiers into a losing war is a lot. Asking them to send 18-25 year old soldiers is a lot more. Through death and emigration, the war has decimated Ukraine’s population. But there is a special problem with asking Kiev to send in 18-25 year olds.

Ukraine is in a precarious position that it does not have enough of that generation. That means both that there isn’t a sufficient pool of 18-25 year olds to draw on and that losing large numbers of them on the battlefield will leave a void in the workforce and create a challenge to the future population of the country. The U.S. wants Kiev to throw young people at the Russians to win the war and risk losing Ukraine: and the former, they know, is hopeless. As The New York Times puts it, “Ukraine must balance the need to counter a relentless Russian offensive by adding more troops against the risk of hollowing out an entire generation.”

At the collapse of the Soviet empire, economic hardships led to plummeting birth rates in the newly independent Ukraine. Birth rates dropped from 1.9 per woman to 1.1 in the first year. The small number of children born then are the 18-25 year old cohort now. And many of them are either serving already, have been killed or injured, have left Ukraine or are exempt, making the small pool even smaller.

The looming population threat created by the lack of a generation has already been made worse by the war. In addition to the millions who have died or left Ukraine, the birth rate had dropped by nearly half by 2023 compared to the year before the war.

At the start of the war, the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from negotiating a diplomatic settlement, ushering in a war that has cost Ukraine so much in land and lives. In the middle of the war, the U.S. pushed Ukraine into a counteroffensive it new it was ill prepared and under armed to fight, leading to the loss of tens of thousands more lives. And now, at the end of the war, with no living chance of victory, the U.S. is pressing Zelensky to send its anemic generation of young people to prolong the war in service of the wishful thinking that it will preserve the current lines for the inevitable negotiations. Of course, the current lines could be preserved by just starting talks currently.

One day, when after all the death and debility, Ukraine negotiates a peace with Russia that it could have negotiated in the first days of the war minus all the vast land it has lost since then, Ukrainians may come to hate the States for blocking the peace, pushing the counteroffensive and sacrificing a generation of young people.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.

Russia Matters, 12/20/24

1. “I would like to emphasize from the very beginning that the outgoing year has been crucial in achieving the goals of the special military operation,” Vladimir Putin told an expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board on Dec. 16. He then claimed during his annual call-in show on Dec. 19 that Russian forces were moving toward achieving their “priority goals.” Russia is yet to establish full control over the four Ukrainian regions it has annexed since the beginning of its re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,¹ but Vladimir Putin is already seeking to shape the narrative so that he can present his gains in Ukraine as a victory next year, while his planning horizon for the five Ukrainian regions Russia has already claimed as its own stretch as far as 2030.*
2. “He [Zelenskyy] should be prepared to make a deal. That’s all,” Donald Trump asserted on Dec. 16 at his first post-election victory press conference. Trump is already planning to send his special envoy for the Ukraine war Keith Kellogg to Kyiv, along with London, Paris and Rome after his inauguration, and Kellogg, a retired general, is also open to visiting Moscow, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Putin is sending conflicting signals on whether he would agree to a ceasefire instead of pursuing a peace deal. “I didn’t reject it,” Putin said during his Dec. 19 call-in show with regard to Viktor Orban’s proposal for a Christmas truce, according to Meduza. At the same time, however, Putin told the annual call-in-show that “we don’t need a truce; we need peace.” When asked during the call-in show about Russia’s conditions for negotiations with Ukraine, Putin reiterated that negotiations can begin without preliminary conditions, but at the same time they must be based on what he has described as “agreements in Istanbul” that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed during the early weeks of the war, and negotiations must also take into account “the realities that are taking shape on the ground today.” He added that any treaty could only be signed with a “legitimate government.” In his turn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected a return to the Istanbul agreements because he claimed that there were none. At least one of the drafts of the agreement Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed in Spring 2022 would have designated Ukraine as a “neutral” state that would not join NATO, but could join the EU and could seek security guarantees from other countries. On top of that, Putin—who insists Zelenskyy’s presidential powers have expired—continues to demand regime change in Kyiv by stressing that he can only negotiate with a legitimate government of Ukraine. 
3. In the past month, Russian force have made a net gain of 204 square miles (an area roughly equivalent to 1/3rd of the total area of London), according to RM staff’s estimate that was published in the Dec. 18 issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card, and that is based on data provided for that period by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). One sign of how worried the Ukrainian leadership has become about Russian advances in this eastern province of Ukraine, where Russian troops have reached the outskirts of the key town of Pokrovsk this week, is the replacement of the commander of the Ukrainian forces there less than a month after replacing the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. As NYT has observed, “On the battlefield, the situation has not looked this desperate for Ukrainian troops since the start of the invasion.”
4. The commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) Defense Forces Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov has been killed in an bomb blast, which was allegedly set up by an Uzbek national on the orders of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The SBU claimed the Russian military’s NBC chief—whom it had accused of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops—was a legitimate target, but even inside Ukraine some questioned the wisdom of the assassination. Joe Biden’s NSA Jake Sullivan disapproved of the hit, arguing that “we do support and enable Ukraine to defend itself and to take the fight to Russian forces on the battlefield, but not operations like this,” while Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s nominee for special envoy for the conflict, called the assassination “not a very good idea.” Moreover, Ukraine’s forces are steadily losing ground on the battlefield and assassination won’t improve their war effort, analysts and Western officials told NYT. The Russians will find a replacement for that general, a Ukrainian special forces officer told NYT, predicting that as a condition of any peace settlement, Russia would insist not only on a cessation of military operations, but also of secret operations that kill their generals. As for the Russian reaction, it went beyond threats of retaliation, with Vladimir Putin offering a rare criticism of his special services. “Our security services allowed a serious terrorist act to happen. Such grave failures cannot be tolerated,” Putin said during his call-in show one day before it was revealed that the head of the FSB’s Military Counterintelligence Department Nikolai Yuryev resigned. Such a public criticism of Russia’s secret services by Putin, an ex-KGB officer and former head of the FSB himself, occurs rarely and could be a sign of what Russians call “organizational conclusions.”
5. Vladimir Putin flaunted Russia’s nuclear forces during his Dec. 16 address to the expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Board yet again. “The army and navy are being re-equipped with up-to-date weapons and equipment at an accelerated pace. For example, the share of such weapons in the strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95%. Meanwhile, we have specified the fundamental principles for the use of nuclear weapons envisaged in the updated Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. Let me stress once again, so that no one accuses us of trying to scare everyone with nuclear weapons: this is a policy of nuclear deterrence,” he said. He also flaunted the purported capabilities of the Oreshnik MRBM yet again both in the Dec. 16 address to the MoD board and during his Dec. 19 annual call-in show. During the latter, he proposed a “21st-century high-tech duel,” in which Russia would field the Oreshnik and the West deployed a system in Ukraine that Western experts think can intercept that MRBM. This week also saw Putin threaten to stop complying with the INF Treaty, which he claims to be complying with in spite of the legal death of that treaty, while also having the chief of his Strategic Missile Forces Sergei Karakayev participate in nuclear saber-rattling, including a claim that Russia may automate nuclear retaliation. In his interview to the RF MoD’s Red Star this week, Karakayev also implied Russia may have disclosed to the U.S. the area the Oreshnik was to target in Ukraine prior to the Nov. 21 launch of this MRBM.
6. On Dec. 16, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told an expanded meeting of his agency’s board that one of the priorities for the Russian armed forces is “ensuring full readiness for a possible military conflict with NATO in the next decade… The first among the priority areas is victory in the special military operation,” he said.
7. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria has conceded that it will probably allow Russia to keep some or all of its bases, and it is likely to respect Russia’s lease at Tartus port, according to The Economist.

By Geoffrey Roberts, Brave New Europe, 12/8/24

1. What do you think of Trump’s nomination of General Keith Kellogg as Ukraine special envoy and his plan for ending the war?

Trump’s nomination of General Kellogg shows he is serious about achieving peace in Ukraine. Kellogg has made an effort to understand the Russian perspective on the war and has identified ending the Ukraine conflict as a key American interest. Kellogg may be tempted to use hardball negotiating tactics to force Putin to accept an early ceasefire, but the US has leverage over the Ukrainians, not the Russians. By the time Trump becomes President again, Russian forces may well have conquered all, or nearly all, of Donets, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe – the four provinces that Putin incorporated into the Russian Federation in October 2022. In those circumstances the key issue to resolve before agreement on a ceasefire would be Putin’s demand that Ukraine becomes a neutral state. Kellogg has suggested a long-term moratorium on Ukraine’s membership of NATO. That is a good starting point for negotiations and there may be room for a compromise between Kellogg’s proposal and Putin’s demand for a declaration from Kiev that Ukraine will not join NATO, providing Putin can be satisfied that Russia’s future security is protected from further NATO threats and encroachments.

2. What should we expect from Moscow? Is Putin planning escalation or the opposite? Will he sit at the negotiating table? What will be his conditions for ending the war? Where will his territorial claims in Ukraine stop?

 The Biden Administration’s final gambit seems to be to provoke Putin into an escalation of the war that will make it difficult for Trump to pursue peace in Ukraine. But Russia is winning the war decisively. Putin has no reason to snatch defeat from the jaws of the Russian army’s many victories on the battlefield. His actions in response to Western and Ukrainian provocations will be moderate and restrained.

Putin’s terms for peace were spelt out last June: Ukraine’s neutrality and concession of Crimea and the four provinces – Donets, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe – that have already been formally annexed by Russia. In addition, he will demand protections for the millions of pro-Russian Ukrainians that will remain under Kiev’s control, and a deal with the West about the return of its frozen foreign assets and the ending of Western sanctions against Russia.

However, if the war drags on, Putin may feel impelled to grab an even bigger chunk of Ukrainian territory as part of his military strategy and to enlarge the buffer zone between Russia and NATO. 

       3.      Will negotiations and the end of the war be an indirect defeat by Russia of Ukraine and the West?

 Peace negotiations will only begin when there is an armistice i.e. a ceasefire based on prior concession of Putin’s demands for Ukrainian territory and neutrality. Such an armistice would be a terrible defeat for Ukraine and for NATO’s proxy war with Russia. But continuation of the war can only lead to even greater disaster.  The war has been a catastrophe for Ukraine. An imposed neutrality will restrict its sovereignty but it can survive as a free and independent state, much like Finland did after World War II.

Russia’s defeat of Ukraine and the West will be no great victory for Putin. It has been a costly and highly dangerous war for Russia. The damage done to Russia’s relations with the West has been huge. Russia has reoriented to developing partnerships with global South countries but, in the end, Russia’s prosperity and security requires good relations with the West, especially its European neighbours, as well as with China, India and other members of BRICS. The war has not changed the facts of geography and history or the reality that culturally and identity-wise Russia is a European country.

         4.       Which are the prospects for Ukraine once Donald Trump takes office?

 Much better than they are at present, assuming Trump can help broker a peace deal for Ukraine. The slaughter of Ukraine’s people will stop and its economy and society can begin to recover from the ravages of war. Defeat by Russia will be a very bitter pill to swallow but most Ukrainians now believe that even a bad peace will be better than the continuation of a disastrous losing war.

         5.      What will be Europe’s role in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and for the country’s future?

 The main external role in the negotiations will be played by the Americans. Europe may exercise a degree of influence but the Russians have lost all respect for most European political leaders. Europe’s role in Ukraine’s recovery from the war is, potentially, far greater. Frankly, Europe has a moral obligation to do all it can to aid Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction, given its role in encouraging Ukraine to fight on  rather than accept the relatively benign peace deal offered  by Russia in Istanbul two and half years ago.

 I’m not very optimistic about Ukraine’s prospects for entry into the EU. Putin has signalled he has no in -principle objection to Ukraine joining the European Union, though, as the Russians point out, the EU is increasingly a military-political organisation as well an economic union, but when the war is over, the fine words spoken by the EU’s leaders will dissipate and negotiations about Ukraine’s membership will inevitable bog down in years of technical discussions. 

       6. Who will protect European soil in a future attack? NATO? EU defence alliance? Can Moscow be a future threat?

 There is no such danger or threat from Russia. NATO will continue and the United States will stay involved in Europe, even under Trump. 

 Putin’s ambitions are limited to Ukraine. The is no evidence, he will threaten or attack any other country, with the possible exception of the Baltic States and Moldova, should Moscow see the Russian minorities in those states being persecuted even more than at present. The only country that will require additional security after the war is Ukraine. Agreement on an international security guarantee for a neutral and disarmed Ukraine will be central to any final settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. Putin has indicated he is amenable to such a guarantee. It’s not impossible that NATO could be a partner of that guarantee, but Putin won’t risk any deal that could provide cover for Ukraine, with Western help, to rebuild its military power.

       7.    What about Trump and Russia?

Trump says he wants a good relationship with Putin and competitively he is focussed on China. But the same was true during his first presidency and in practice relations with Russia deteriorated even further, not least because the United States built up Ukraine’s military. True, Trump was dogged by the Russiagate controversy and influenced by the many Neocons in his administration. His second presidency be may well turn out differently because it will contain fewer Neocons and more America First Trump Loyalists, people like Kellogg. In any event, loyalty to Trump will be the defining characteristic of the members of his second administration and he will call all the shots in relation to Ukraine.

 Putin will remain sceptical of Trump but open to an improvement in Russia’s relations with the US, especially if the Ukraine war comes to a suitable conclusion.

       8.    One  more question: what is Putin’s goal for the position of Russia in the world after the Ukraine war?

Putin is a visionary whose overarching goal  is to end American global hegemony and usher in a new, post-Western system of international relations – a multipolar system of sovereign states based on diversity, equality and common security. It is not an empire that Putin is seeking to build, but a new world order that will safeguard the long-term security of Russia and its civilisational values. Defeating Ukraine and winning Russia’s proxy war with NATO are necessary preconditions, but Putin has his eye on an even bigger prize and he needs a stable peace to realise his historic ambitions to transform global politics.

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