President Joe Biden dispatched his CIA Director to Kiev with a proposal to end the war in Ukraine last month, according to the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The peace plan was offered at the same time the White House was preparing significant escalations in military support for Kiev, including announcing that it will send Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
The report cites high-level sources in Berlin who claim William Burns, the head of America’s spy agency, traveled to Kiev in mid-January to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. On January 19, the Washington Post reported that Burns recently traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky. During that trip, Burns is said to have offered a deal to Zelensky wherein Ukraine would cede about 20% of its territory to Russia in exchange for Moscow ending its war in Ukraine.
NZZ’s sources claim that both Kiev and Moscow rejected the proposal. In a statement to Newsweek, the CIA denied Burns delivered the proposal. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed the NZZ report labeling it a “canard.”
According to the German sources, the peace proposal reflects a growing rift within the White House on how to handle the war in Ukraine. “Security adviser Jake Sullivan and Burns [wanted] to end the war quickly so they could focus on China.” The report continued, “on the other side would be Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. They did not want to let Russia get away with destroying the rules-based peace order and called for massive military support for Ukraine.”
After Burns failed to sway Kiev and Moscow to agree with Washington’s plan, Blinken and Austin were able to sway the president to authorize the transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
NZZ reports the decision for the US to send main battle tanks to Ukraine caught German leader Olaf Scholz off guard. The Union in the German Bundestag issued a statement saying, “Scholz did not want to deliver until the very end because he firmly assumed that the Americans would not send battle tanks either.”
Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow have stalled for nearly a year. Last March, Turkish diplomats facilitated talks that nearly ended the war with Russian forces withdrawing from Ukrainian territory captured after the start of the invasion. However, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and told Zelensky that Ukraine’s Western backers were not prepared to allow the war to end.
The European Union’s attitude to the Russian-Ukrainian war is a key priority area of the Community’s foreign policy. The intensity of the fighting is constantly increasing and, in addition to the warring parties, the burdens on Europe placed by the sanctions are also increasing. Despite this, the intention of bringing those affected to the negotiating table is not pronounced in Brussels’ efforts. However, based on the results of the research conducted by Századvég, Europeans would expect their leaders to work towards a peace agreement as soon as possible and a quick end to the war.
Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, the Western political elite, both in its communications and in its proposals, has placed more emphasis on punishing Russia than on facilitating peace talks. Much of Brussels’ sanctions and foreign policy efforts have pushed the chances of an agreement between the parties and a quick end to the war further away. In the framework of the Project Europe Research of Századvég, it examined the attitude of Europeans to war and peace negotiations.
Two-thirds of Europeans are worried about war
Looking at the average of the European Union, 68 percent of those surveyed are concerned about the war, and more than a third find the conflict very worrisome. The highest rates are found in Hungary (very worrisome: 62 percent, rather worrisome: 31 percent) and in Germany (very worrisome: 51 percent, rather worrisome: 30 percent). Based on the results, the differences between the Member States are primarily influenced by historical background and trade relations with Russia. Presumably, the former is responsible for the fact that the population of the Baltic states and the latter is responsible for the fact that the population of the southern Member States involved in oil supply are more worried about the conflict.
The only Member State with a majority of those who do not consider the war to be of concern is Slovakia, where a total of 48 percent marked the answers of very and rather worrisome (18 and 30 percent, respectively), and the highest proportion (41 percent) marked the answer of rather not worrisome. The division of the respondents is surprising, since Slovakia is a neighbour of Ukraine and, moreover, has trade relations with Russia in several areas. One possible explanation for the results is that the attention of the Slovak population is being captured by other, internal problems.
An overwhelming majority in Europe is pro-peace
Across the EU, 82 percent of respondents agree that Russia and Ukraine should be forced into peace talks in order to end the war. The differences between the results in the Member States reveal a clash between the pro-sanctions approach aimed at punishing Russia and the sanction-critical attitude of urging to make peace as soon as possible. The southern Member States (91 percent in Cyprus, 89 percent in Portugal and Greece) which have not accepted many of Brussels’ previous proposals for sanctions packages are the most likely to agree with the forcing of the negotiations. In Hungary, which is also critical of sanctions, 88 percent of the population is pro-peace.
Although in all the countries examined there is a majority of those who call for negotiations as soon as possible, in the pro-sanctions Member States this proportion is lower. The issue mostly devides the Baltic countries and Poland: 42 percent of Estonians, 36 percent of Latvians, 31 percent of Poles, and 29 percent of Lithuanians disagree that peace talks should be forced to end the war as soon as possible.
The Project Europe Research
In the first half of 2016, the Századvég Foundation conducted a public opinion poll survey covering all 28 European Union Member States, with the aim to analyse the opinions of EU citizens regarding the issues that most affect the future of the EU. In a unique way, Project 28 conducted the widest possible survey of 1,000, that is a total of 28,000 randomly selected adults in each country. Gaining an understanding of society’s sense of prosperity and mapping the population’s attitudes towards the performance of the European Union, the migration crisis and the increasing terrorism were among the most important goals of the analysis. Following the surveys in 2017, 2018 and 2019, on behalf of the government, the Századvég Foundation has been conducting the research under the name of Project Europe since 2020, which continued to reflect on the topics that most dominated the European political and social discourse.
In 2022, the aim of the survey is again to map the population’s attitude towards the most important public issues affecting our continent. In addition to society’s sense of prosperity, the performance of the European Union, the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, and the perception of the migration crisis, in line with the latest challenges affecting Europe, the dominant theme of this year’s poll has been the Russian-Ukrainian war, the energy crisis, energy supply, and family policy. In addition to the European Union Member States, the 2022 research covered the United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Moldova, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and surveyed a total of 38,000 randomly selected adults using the CATI method between 13 October and 7 December.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.
On March 4, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.
Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort. For the Russian side, he said they dropped “denazification” as a requirement for a ceasefire. Bennett defined “denazification” as the removal of Zelensky. During his meeting in Moscow with Putin, Bennett said the Russian leader guaranteed that he wouldn’t try to kill Zelensky.
The other concession Russia made, according to Bennett, is that it wouldn’t seek the disarmament of Ukraine. For the Ukrainian side, Zelensky “renounced” that he would seek NATO membership, which Bennett said was the “reason” for Russia’s invasion.
Reports at the time reflect Bennet’s comments and said Russia and Ukraine were softening their positions. Citing Israeli officials, Axios reported on March 8 that Putin’s “proposal is difficult for Zelensky to accept but not as extreme as they anticipated. They said the proposal doesn’t include regime change in Kyiv and allows Ukraine to keep its sovereignty.”
Discussing how Western leaders felt about his mediation efforts, Bennett said then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took an “aggressive line” while French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were more “pragmatic.” Bennett said President Biden adopted “both” positions.
But ultimately, the Western leaders opposed Bennet’s efforts. “I’ll say this in the broad sense. I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin and not [negotiate],” Bennett said.
When asked if the Western powers “blocked” the mediation efforts, Bennet said, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.”
Explaining his decision to mediate, Bennett said that it was in Israel’s national interest not to pick a side in the war, citing Israel’s frequent airstrikes in Syria. Bennett said Russia has S-300 air defenses in Syria and that if “they press the button, Israeli pilots will fall.”
Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine didn’t stop with Bennett’s efforts. Later in March, Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul, Turkey, and followed up with virtual consultations. According to the account of former US officials speaking to Foreign Affairs, the two sides agreed on the framework for a tentative deal. Russian officials, including Putin, have said publicly that a deal was close following the Istanbul talks.
But the negotiations ultimately failed after more Western pressure. Boris Johnson visited Kyiv in April 2022, urging Zelensky not to negotiate with Russia. According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda, he said even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, Kyiv’s Western backers were not.
Later in April, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said there were some NATO countries that wanted to prolong the war in Ukraine. “After the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long … But, following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, it was the impression that… there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine,” Cavusoglu said.
A few days after Cavusoglu’s comments, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin admitted that one of the US’s goals in supporting Ukraine is to see Russia “weakened.”
Finland’s prime minister Sanna Marin recently went on record saying that the Ukraine war might only end with Russia completely out of the country. “The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine,” she stated. “That’s the way out of the conflict.” The video ended with a smug nod towards the obsequious press gaggle.
Marin is, needless to mention, not the only one. Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, recently wrote, in an essay full of Wikipedia-level references to Churchill, Reagan, and FDR, that “as the prime minister of Estonia, a frontline NATO country that endured half a century of Soviet occupation, I know what peace on Russia’s terms really means. Russian peace would not mean the end of suffering but rather more atrocities. The only path to peace is to push Russia out of Ukraine.”
“Although the Soviet Union eventually collapsed, its imperialist ideology did not,” Kallas went on, adding that “in Estonia, our history books were rewritten after the end of Soviet rule, but the same did not happen in Russia.” One minor detail was missing from the admitted revisionism. Kallas is the daughter of Slim Kallas, the former deputy chief editor of the Communist Party of Estonia and the member of the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union—practically Soviet royalty.
Per Plato, a functioning republican polity depends on linguistic clarity. We must therefore untangle the euphemisms “peace on Russian terms” and “pushing Russia out” as we deliberate American foreign policy. The former phrase implies any concession or acknowledgment of a status quo in a situation where either side is unable to fully conquer or reconquer per the post-Soviet boundaries. Given the unlimited flow of Western weapons and cash, Ukrainian war aims continue to shift, from defending Kiev, to reconquering the Donbas, to marching on to Crimea. The latter euphemism is relatively simpler, it denotes pushing Russia out of all of Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donbas, by any means necessary.
Ukrainians and their lobbyists have already started to lay the rhetorical groundwork of persuading Anglo-Americans to take the war to Crimea. For example, former Ukrainian defence minister and current Atlantic Council fellow Andriy P. Zagorodnyuk recently argued,
Kiev and its allies must press on, battling until it can make Moscow hand over Crimea via negotiations or until Ukraine has forcibly pried the peninsula from Moscow’s grasp. Doing so is the only way to inflict the kind of major defeat Russia must experience if it is to abandon its imperial ambitions and start abiding by international norms and laws. The United States and Europe should understand that they, too, will benefit from a total Ukrainian victory. It could mark the permanent end of Russian aggression, breathing new life into the liberal world order.
But what about Russia’s nuclear redlines regarding Crimea? Zagorodnyuk: “The world can never rule out the chance that Russia will use nuclear weapons, especially when it is governed by Putin…other concerns about Ukraine’s ability to retake the peninsula and nuclear attacks are all at least somewhat overblown. After consecutive months of battlefield success, it is clear that Ukraine has the capacity to liberate Crimea.” Ah.
That idea suffers from a minor but notable disadvantage. It is insane. The war isn’t over, and Ukraine isn’t winning. The country cannot run a day without being supported by foreign backers, so much so that its government and pension fund are paid for by American taxpayers. Ukraine and Russia both desire to press on. Only one side of the two is, however, completely dependent on foreign generosity, thereby transferring escalation leverage to its great power donors. To translate that into non-academic international relations speak: Those who pay control the play.
At the time of writing, Ukraine and Russia are stuck in a meat-grinder of a town known as Bakhmut, with Russia aiming—so far as can be inferred without process tracing—to end the Ukrainian fighting male population, regardless of the cost. Russian military doctrine has reverted back to norm, and Russian strategic elite, in other words, are Russianing: throwing bodies to the pile. Muzzle-to-muzzle conflict is a disadvantage for Ukraine, simply because while Ukraine can have as much money and weaponry as it wants, for now there is no Western cavalry coming over the hill.
The Russians are already preparing another three hundred thousand conscripts, and if they decide to go for one more round of partial mobilization, they will end up having a million men in arms around the time for spring and summer offensives. British analysts are already concerned about weapons stockpiles, and Americans are concerned about flawed Ukrainian toe-to-toe strategy. And given that, despite repeated attempts of chain-ganging, Europe or America will not directly commit to the war, the long-term attrition rate in this case favors those with more men, i.e., Russia.
That simple cost-benefit analysis is, however, considered to be risky “around the corner for European and trans-Atlantic unity” by Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome. Jessica Berlin, another European analyst, channeled her inner Sanna Marin to a concern of a larger NATO–Russia nuclear war by adding “Yes, war between NATO & Russia would be a doomsday scenario—for RUSSIA. That’s why the Kremlin wants to avoid it at all costs. When their hyperventilating TV propagandists threaten to nuke Piccadilly Circus it’s to scare western voters into appeasement. Shame it works on you [shrug emoji]”
It escapes a normal mind what part of mutually assured destruction allows a shrug. Being deterred from a nuclear war isn’t appeasement. Deterrence goes both ways. The entire Cold War was predicated on mutual deterrence. Ukraine’s interest is to defend Ukraine, and, in order to do that, attempt to maximize Western involvement. Western interest is to avoid nuclear war, insolvency and overstretch, while bleeding Russia. Those interests are fundamentally incompatible, and at some point they will come into play in opposition to each other. That point is approaching soon. One doesn’t need to be pro-Moscow to claim that not all wars in peripheral theaters deserve a forward involvement. At the risk of innuendo, the effort to speak loudly and carry someone else’s big stick by figures such as Marin and Kallas is intolerable. It is a grating combination of sanctimony, arrogance, historical ignorance, philosophical ineptitude, and ceaseless demand. An astute analyst once referred to this phenomenon as Girl-Boss militarism, a combination of revolutionary globalism, feminism, and neo-conservatism, added to empty, catchphrase-filled “mic-drop” politics. It is toxic when Hillary Clinton does it. It is insufferable when done by leaders of American protectorates mimicking an overzealous but dependent foederati, often far more fanatical than Rome herself.
_(cropped).jpg){kind=link}