All posts by natyliesb

‘Forever Unusable’: 15 Things We Know About The Mysterious “Explosions” That Severely Damaged The Nord Stream 1 And 2 Pipelines

Gas pipeline marker - detail
Gas pipeline marker – detail by Evelyn Simak is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

By Michael Snyder, End of the American Dream Blog, Reprinted by ZeroHedge, 9/27/22

Something really strange just happened.  On Monday, large underwater “explosions” were detected in the precise areas of the sea where the Nord Stream pipeline system is now leaking.  In fact, the explosions were so large that they actually registered on the Richter scale.  If someone wanted to purposely damage the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, very large explosions would be needed because those pipelines are extremely thick.  So it appears that this was a deliberate act of sabotage, and that is what many European officials are now alleging.  But if that is the case, who was behind it?

At this point we just don’t know.

But there are certain facts that we do have.  The following are 15 things we know about the “mysterious explosions” that severely damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines…

#1 We are being told that the sections where the pipelines were damaged are “70-90 meters below sea level” So someone would need to go down pretty deep to get to them.

#2 It is extremely unlikely that these pipelines could have been ruptured by accident because they are extremely thick

The steel pipe itself has a wall of 4.1 cm (1.6 inches) and is coated with steel-reinforced concrete up to 11cm thick. Each section of the pipe weighs 11 tonnes, which goes to 24-25 tonnes after the concrete is applied.

#3 It is being reported that explosions “were heard” in the areas where gas is now leaking out of the pipelines…

Explosions were heard near the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipes where gas is now leaking into the Baltic from three holes, scientists have confirmed, while chronic safety concerns have led to a five-mile exclusion zone being imposed around the affected area.

#4 The Swedish National Seismic Network detected one explosion that registered 1.9 on the Richter scale and another one that registered 2.3 on the Richter scale

Two powerful underwater explosions were detected on Monday in the same area of sea as the Nord Stream gas leaks, according to the Swedish National Seismic Network.

The monitoring network said the first explosion occurred on Monday at 2:03 a.m. Swedish time with a magnitude of 1.9 on the Richter scale, followed by a second at 7:04 p.m. on the same day with a magnitude of 2.3.

#5 The largest leak is reportedly “spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter”

It comes after shocking footage released earlier today by the Danish military from a flyover of the affected region showed huge swathes of the sea near the Danish island of Bornholm churning as the gas bubbled to the surface.

A military statement claimed that the largest leak ‘is spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter. The smallest is creating a circle about 200 metres (656 feet) in diameter’, while the head of Denmark’s Energy Agency said it could take up to a week for gas to stop draining into the sea.

#6 German officials are claiming that this was a deliberate act of sabotage

Germany is reportedly far less hesitant, however, with officials believing sabotage is virtually the only plausible cause for the leaks.

“We can’t imagine a scenario that isn’t a targeted attack. Everything speaks against a coincidence,” a government official reportedly told German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

#6a NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday attributed the leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines to acts of sabotage and said he had discussed the protection of critical infrastructure in NATO countries with the Danish defense minister.

#7 Interestingly, this incident took place just one day after thousands of German protesters took to the streets and demanded the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the northeastern German seaside town of Lubmin on Sunday, urging officials to put into service the halted Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that was designed to transport fuel from Russia to Germany.

Germany had stalled the launch of the ambitious energy project for months before putting it on the back burner in the wake of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which is now in its eighth month.

#8 The prime minister of Denmark also believes that this was a deliberate act of sabotage

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said her government believes the leaks were caused by ‘deliberate actions’, adding that the gas supply pipeline will be out of action for around a week.

She said this evening: ‘It is now the clear assessment by authorities that these are deliberate actions. It was not an accident. There is no information yet to indicate who may be behind this action.’

#9 The Ukrainians are blaming the Russians for the explosions…

It comes after Kyiv’s presidential advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter: ‘The large-scale gas leak is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU.’

Podolyak accused Russia of seeking to ‘destabilise the economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic’.

#10 It is being reported that the CIA recently warned Germany about a potential attack on the pipelines…

German magazine Spiegel said the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently warned Berlin about the increasing signs of a possible planned attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system.

Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources, that the CIA tipped off Berlin in the summer about possible attacks on NS1 and NS2.

#11 A Polish member of the European Parliament seems absolutely convinced that the United States was behind the attack…

former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

#12 Joe Biden previously threatened to “end” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine“If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

#13 Victoria Nuland has also previously threatened the Nord Stream 2 pipeline: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

#14 Meanwhile, European officials just gathered for a ceremony “to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe”

Leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark have attended a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe, a key stage in the drive to wean Poland and Europe off Russian gas.

The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to Poland. It is the centrepiece of a Polish strategy to diversify away from Russia that began years before Moscow’s February invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis.

The flows from Norway along with supplies via liquefied gas terminals are central to Poland’s plan. The country was cut off from Russian gas supplies in April, allegedly for refusing to pay in roubles.

#15 Germany’s Tagesspiegel reports that German security authorities assume that the three tubes of the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1 and 2 will be forever unusable after alleged acts of sabotage.

If they are not repaired quickly, a lot of salt water will run in and corrode the pipelines, the Tagesspiegel learned from government circles.

So what does all of this mean?

I don’t know.

But this certainly is not going to be good for the rapidly growing energy crisis in Europe.

It is going to be a bitterly cold winter all over the continent, and there will be a lot of anger.

As I keep warning, the comfortable lifestyles that we are all currently enjoying will soon be rudely interrupted.

Everything is changing, and a lot of pain is on the horizon.

So I would encourage you to monitor global events very, very closely in the months ahead, because they are going to have very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

Gordon Hahn: ESCALATION PATHS FROM THE NATO-RUSSIAN WAR TO REGIONAL OR WORLD WAR

Nuclear explosion

By Gordon Hahn, reprinted from Russian and Eurasian Politics Blog, 9/19/22

The August sun leads a political analyst’s fancy to projections about the future informed by the past. August, through Barbara Tuchman’s famous The Guns of August, remains a kind of ‘meme’ symbolizing the road to World War I, a war born in circumstances with some commonalities with those we live in today: rising powers, declining powers, ill-advised alliances, contested Slavic territories, and naked human ambitions for expansion and empire. August also has a special meaning for rusologists as a month of momentous political events. For them, August has brought watershed moments like the 1991 August coup, the Kursk submarine sinking, and the 2008 Georgian-Ossetiyan-Russian ‘August War’. Given the slow-escalating global confrontation surrounding the Russo-Ukrainian war or war for NATO expansion, it seems a good time to think about how this multi-layered set of crises might escalate so that we might better understand the need to end the crisis through statesmanship, diplomacy, and compromise rather than by military means (kinetic or otherwise). There are just too many ways for the present war crisis to escalate and for things to ‘go south’ even further.

Russia’s invasion in February almost immediately escalated from a Russo-Ukrainian war sparked by NATO expansion and the Western-backed February 2014 Maidan revolt to the level of a NATO-Russian war. We might date 26 April 2022 the beginning of the end of the first almost entirely Ukrainian phase of Russo-Ukrainian War. Since that date when NATO convened a summit to discuss weapons supplies and other forms of assistance to Ukraine and approximately timed with the West’s urging Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy to reject the Istanbul agreement that both sides had been inclined to accept, the Russ0_Ukrainian War has been transitioning through a proxy war stage to a NATO-Russian War; one largely driven by the question of whether or not NATO can expand and otherwise do what it likes in what Russian sees as its sphere of influence. With the transitional proxy war stage, Ukraine functioned as a de facto NATO member bearing the brunt of the war burden to the detriment of its people and economy and potentially the destruction of its statehood, which serves as a useful buffer between Russia and the West/NATO. This next escalatory stage is not be to a NATO proxy-Russian war but a full-on NATO-Russian war in which Ukrainian forces will play less of a combat role and equipped, guided, and effectively commanded and led by NATO. This larger NATO war effort is intended to roll back Russia’s gains in Ukraine’s east and south and bring the war to Russia perhaps not with ground troops per se, but with aerial attacks and the deployment into Russian of sabotage and terrorist forces, organized by NATO special forces in order to fuel a Russian insurgency against the Putin regime. In the interim, this perhaps will lead to a second Crimean War that will be more global than the first version of 1850-1854.

The recent Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive (and the wise Russian withdrawal to concentrate focus on the east and south as originally intended) was not nearly so much a Ukrainian counteroffensive as it was a NATO counteroffensive. Russia’s withdrawal was a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin never having considered occupation as a goal of the ‘special military operation — no less all of Ukraine as Western propagandists and agitated analysts contend. The Kharkiv advance was organized on the basis of: NATO training of tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces; massive Western weapons supplies to Kiev (e.g., see https://www.ustranscom.mil/cmd/usp.cfm); the NATO Central Command’s and Western intelligence’s deep embeddedness into the Ukrainian forces; NATO-designed counteroffensive tactics, strategy, and plan; large numbers of former Western soldiers and officers participating in the operation; possible participation of Polish officers and troops brought in under the new Ukrainian law allowing Polish citizens nearly equal status as that of Ukrainian citizens; and possible participation of Western special forces advisors if not units.

The new character of the war — a Russo-NATO war with only Ukrainian bodies being used to carry out the war — is a major escalation. It is essentially now a stealth world war, with NATO and especially the United States functioning de facto and perhaps even de jure as combatants. This is likely to be met with a series of Russian escalations. There can be a crossing of a threshold between NATO’s stealth combatant role and an official NATO intervention that could be triggered by a NATO member’s unilateral action prompting a Russian attack on that NATO member, a Russian attack or Western- or Ukrainian-claimed Russian attack in response to which NATO can do no other than enter the war officially, or any number of unforeseeable ‘blacks swans.’

Once NATO enters the war officially, supplying troops, there is likely to be a next stage beyond the NATO-Russian war proper. It is likely to involve limited involvement of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), China, and the Sino-Russian-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) even if there is no breakout of war around Taiwan – a de facto World War III. With a war for Taiwan or a NATO invasion of Russian territory, World War III will become full-blown and likely go nuclear.

The Russo-Ukrainian War or the Stealth War for NATO Expansion

Russia’s invasion in February almost immediately escalated from a Russo-Ukrainian war sparked by NATO expansion and the Western-backed February 2014 Maidan revolt to the level of a NATO-Russian war. Since NATO member-states, including the U.S., are already deeply involved in the war, there is little to prevent the war from escalating into a full-fledged NATO-Russian war, with all the grave risks such a development would entail. Ukraine is functioning as a de facto NATO member, as it was becoming before the war, bearing the brunt of the war burden to the detriment of its people and potentially the destruction of its statehood, which serves as a useful buffer between Russia and the West/NATO. NATO weapons are put in the hands of Ukraine’s military and paramilitary neofascist-dominated groups. We also know that NATO leader, the U.S., and NATO are performing key military functions in the war. Intelligence from NATO members satellites and other sources are choosing or at least approving targets for Ukrainian forces to attack, including civilian targets and Russian territory (https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fworld-news%2F2022%2F08%2F01%2Fbritain-helps-ukraine-hunt-russian-spies-eyeing-western-military%2F). Retired former U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor has asserted that NATO officers form a military staff that is directing much of the Ukrainian war strategy and tactics. NATO member-countries’ citizens, usually retired servicemen, and likely active servicemen are fighting alongside the Ukrainians as volunteers as well as training and advising Ukrainian forces. Britain and other NATO members have been training 10,000s of new Ukrainian soldiers per month. The Ukrainian military is now three times the size of Russia’s, whose forces could never have occupied all of Ukraine and were never intended to do so. NATO soldiers are likely to become more prevalent in the war and more Polish.

Poles are even more anxious to see Russia defeated militarily than perhaps even Washington or their Lithuanian coinhabitants of the ancient commonwealth that carried out the first hybrid invasion on Slavic territory four centuries ago. It is important to note that Polish messianism and Russophobia drives its forward stance against Moscow, and Warsaw has growing ambitions to not just lead Eastern Europe but all of Europe. The Ukrainian war next door offers a good opportunity for Poland to seize the leadership from Russia-dependent and Russia-receptive Germany. A Ukrainian law recently signed by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy gives Polish citizens the rights similar to those of Ukrainian citizens. This could serve as legal cover for thousands of Polish soldiers to enter Ukraine, don Ukrainian uniforms, and using NATO-supplied Western equipment begin fighting against Russia’s forces. When proof of any such gambit emerges – as it inevitably will – Russia could decide to hit Polish targets in response, bringing NATO into the war more directly in one form or another.

There are other places where tensions could lead to a Russian and/or NATO escalation and expansion of the war. For example, perhaps at the request of the West or perhaps without, Azerbaijan could open up a second front for Russia in Armenia. Russia is a guarantor of the shaky ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh War, and it would be forced to intervene to protect Armenia if a major escalation by Azerbaijan appeared on the verge of inflicting a major defeat on Moscow’s historical ally. Similarly, instability in Moldova/Transdniestria or one of the Baltic states prompting an attack on Russian forces in Transdniestr, a renewal of the Kaliningrad blockade, or a Russian incursion in one of the Baltic states. But Crimea is likely to be the fulcrum around which World War III will evolve. The West (e.g., through Turkey) could ‘encourage’ Baku or machinate in Moldova in order to provoke a crisis. One in the former could spark a CSTO response. In both cases, Russia could be faced with a second front, complicating its Ukraine op but further internationalizing the Russo-Western war.

Clandestine NATO functions will become transparent once the NATO-led nature becomes manifest and public. Ukrainian forces gradually will take a back seat and be integrated into a larger NATO forces and war effort, declared under an Article 5-worthy Russian attack, will be designed to roll back Russia’s gains in Ukraine’s east and south. Any success on the mainland will open a path to Crimea backed by naval operations in the Black Sea, leading to a second Crimean war. The first Crimean War in the 1850s was in fact the first world war. The region is the southern cleft in the Black-to-Baltic Sea ‘intermarium’ that forms the divide between the Western and the Russian-Eurasian civilizations.

A Second Crimean War would certainly become more global than the first, which included some Western operations in the Baltic (White) Sea and even in Russia’s Far North and Far East. On the Russian side, Belarus will almost certainly be forced to enter the war willingly or not, and Russia will likely seek and at least partially succeed in bringing some other members of its own military alliance, the CSTO, into the war effort. China may assist in mobilizing at least some token participation of the CSTO’s other members (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) especially the Central Asian members. China and some other SCO members (India, Pakistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; candidate members – Belarus, Iran, Mongolia, and Afghanistan) will likely assist in providing equipment and perhaps limited numbers of troops, and this will escalate into World War III.

Turkey, as well Hungary and India, could be pivotal swing states, whose alignment with either the rest (‘East’) or the West could tip the balance in the regional wars or overall global conflict. Turkey’s role will be pivotal in this war and may decide whether the nascent global war stops at this phase or escalates to full-scale world war. Turkey could defect from NATO and side with Russia and China in the emerging alternative global system and alliance to those of the West and NATO. Turkey’s control over the Bosporous Straits can help to deny or limit NATO naval forces’ access to the Black Sea, which will be crucial for seizing Crimea away from Russia. Failure to take Crimea and increasing assistance to Russia from ‘the rest’ can help Russia defeat the West in this Crimean War.

In connection with or autonomously from events in Ukraine, a larger war could also be sparked by a decision by Moldova to integrate into Romania or put down unrest by Russian, Ukrainian, and or Turkish (Gagauz) minorities. This could be sparked by fears in Tiraspol resulting from a Russian move against Odessa, indicating a drive to Moldova’s breakaway region of Transdniestria. Any such Romanian-Moldovan scenario would force the breakaway republic of Transdniestria and the Gagauz Autonomous Republic to assert independence and perhaps integration with Russia, sparking a Russo-Romanian war. Turkey, another important swing state in any res-West WW III, also would likely respond to events in the Black Sea or Moldova, separate from or connected with the second Crimean war or expanding world war.

Another risk is that a coalition of post-Soviet elements will create a de facto or de jure coalition of partisan, volunteer forces and/or states opposed to Russia or, organized by Russia under the CSTO, against Ukraine and other pro-Western former Soviet republics. For example, some Ukrainians are encouraging Georgia to open a ‘second front’ against Russia. This will encourage Georgian volunteers to head to Ukraine or could eventually be taken up by a nationalist Georgian government under certain circumstances.

Becoming wholly manifest over time, World War III would then see Sino-Russian alliance members expand the war to parts of Asia by attempting to settle their own regional scores or achieve their own regional ambitions in ways that counter NATO or NATO members’ moves in Ukraine or elsewhere. For the alliance’s leaders – China and Russia – that means Taiwan and former Soviet republics-become or -would-be NATO members (that is Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Transdniestr, the Baltic states), respectively. Under circumstances — such as a threat to Kaliningrad as developed two months ago when Lithuania attempted to halt Russian transportation to the exclave — Russia could try to move into additional former republics beyond Ukraine once NATO forces entered Ukraine or Russian territory– first of all the Baltic states. China might seek to establish its full sovereignty over Taiwan and perhaps seek territorial gains in contested territories with India, which would likely attempt and could indeed remain neutral.

India is the premier swing state that could sway the outcome of a East-West or rest-West world war. It is a kind of cleft state, with one foot in the republican West as a viable federative republic regime and another foot among the ‘rest’ as a member of SCO, a co-member of BRICS with China and Russia, a historical victim of Western colonialism, and arguably the Eurasian landmass’s second foremost power. However, SCO is still not yet a primarily military bloc. Indian neutrality could serve as a pretext to justify within SCO’s internal politics a Chinese move against SCO-member India’s Ladakh region. Japanese neutrality is unlikely, meaning likely Sino-Japanese conflict.

Russia and the U.S. will still be on opposite sides through proxies in the Syrian civil war, with Moscow’s forces supporting the Assad regime and U.S. forces and supplies backing a broad if weak anti-Assad coalition of mostly Mulsim Brotherhood, Al Qa`ida, and ISIS types. The West is supporting some Kurdish forces against Damascus; Russia is doing the same to a lesser degree against Turkey. If Iran is already a SCO member and perhaps even if it is not, it could invade Iraq and link up with Syria in our world war scenario and perhaps challenge Israel in war. It might also step up actions against the Saudis, for example, in Yemen.

Any Western-backed Azerbaijan move to re-start or continue its war for Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia could play into either Iranian or Turkish hands, with Istanbul and Teheran becoming key protagonists in the war. Should Turkey defect from NATO, Sino-Russian diplomacy could produce a modus vivendi in which Iran and Turkey sign a Mideastern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dividing areas in the Levant and South Caucasus for conquest and or de-sovereignization and heightened influence.

In addition to the local political-military tensions and conflicts mentioned above, obviously there is an underlying global economic confrontation between the West and the rest, which is aggravating tensions further.

In sum, there a host of ways in which the current Ukrainian (and Syrian) conflict can ignite or escalate into regional wars or more global by dint of other conflicts, many of them with a Russo-Western subplot. From there escalation might have no limits.

Nuclear War

World War III becomes an existential threat to one or more combatant parties and so goes nuclear.

A decade ago Ukraine was a tinderbox, and it has blown up. Now the region and the world are tinderboxes. How long before they blow up?

How the West Provoked War in Ukraine: Katie Halper & Aaron Mate Interview Ben Abelow

Link here.

Interview starts at about 13 and a half minutes in. Ben Abelow is the author of the book How the West Brought War to Ukraine, which I am currently reading and will be posting a review of soon. – Natylie

Patrick Lancaster: Referendums to Join Russia Start in Ukraine

Link here.

“We are on the ground in Kherson to show you what is really happening and we will be going to all 4 referendums making the most in-depth coverage available.” – Patrick Lancaster

Toal & Korostelina: We asked Ukrainians living on the front lines what was an acceptable peace – here’s what they told us

ukrainian flag waving in wind with clear sky in background
Photo by Nati on Pexels.com

By Gerard Toal and Karina Korostelina, The Conversation, 9/15/22

Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive success against Russian troops in the Kharkiv region has raised hopes that a larger rollback of occupying troops is at hand. But this remains a daunting task: Russia continues to occupy roughly one-fifth of the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it unilaterally incorporated into the Russian Federation in 2014.

Victory, not peace, is the priority for Ukraine’s leadership, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declaring Ukraine will not give up any of its territories to end the war. But a time will come when peace will have to be made. And any agreement will need to be accepted not only by the leaders but by the Ukrainian people if it is to hold. As such, it is important to know what terms of settlement are acceptable – and perhaps more importantly, unacceptable – to ordinary Ukrainians, especially those living in front-line areas or displaced by Russia’s invasion.

To understand what an acceptable peace looks like to significantly war-affected Ukrainians, we organized a face-to-face survey of over 1,800 Ukrainians. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology administered the survey for us in July 2022. Around half of respondents were local residents in three Ukrainian-controlled towns close to active front-line fighting: Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Poltava. The other half comprised people internally displaced by the war who were sheltering in these towns.

Here are three key takeaways from the survey:

1. Having a strong state that can defend territory is a top priority

Our survey asked respondents an open question about what their goals were for Ukraine after the war, with the responses organized by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology into categories unseen by respondents.

More than half indicated that creating a peaceful and prosperous state was a top priority. Many saw the means to achieve this through military strength, with a third stating that having Ukraine emerge as a strong state with a large military that could defend its territory was their postwar aspiration for their country.

Slightly fewer mentioned Ukraine being a sovereign state able to make its own independent decisions as important, while 28.3% included Ukraine having full control over all its territories among their responses. More than a quarter mentioned having a state free of corruption as an important goal.

Existing government policy aspirations attracted some support. Around 1 in 5 mentioned Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union, though only 13.1% mentioned NATO membership.

Even Ukraine being a democratic state fell lower down as a priority, with just 14.1% mentioning it as a top goal.

Our survey suggests that peace, state strength and territorial integrity rather than geopolitical status or democracy are on the minds of front-line Ukrainians today.

2. Ukrainians reject concessions on self-determination, territory

We also presented a series of potential war outcomes to respondents and asked them whether they found these acceptable if it meant peace. Most of these scenarios generated strong feelings, with the category “absolutely not acceptable” the most frequently used.

The scenario most vehemently rejected by respondents is one in which Ukraine loses its right to determine its future in return for an end of hostilities. Yet opinion is less emphatic when it comes to the hypothetical ending of Ukraine’s aspirations of joining Western organizations. An outcome where Ukraine ends its quest for NATO membership in return for peace is absolutely unacceptable to 46% of respondents. The figure for giving up on European Union membership is 55.9%. These figures are still high, of course.

And while we found solid majorities rejecting territorial concessions in return for peace, the front-line Ukrainians we surveyed were less vehement when it came to concessions over Crimea than the Donbas, with 58.4% and 67% of respondents finding it “absolutely unacceptable” to concede the regions, respectively.

When presented with hypothetical deals in which Russia offers financial compensation or a formal apology but keeps seized Ukrainian lands, more than 80% of respondents said that such an outcome was “absolutely unacceptable.”

In a different question, respondents overwhelmingly agreed that most Ukrainians see their national territory as sacred.

3. When it comes to negotiations, the messenger matters

As well as asking front-line Ukrainians what is acceptable or not acceptable in any peace settlement, we also wanted to see if their support for negotiations would be affected by who was advocating it.

So we ran an experiment to test the power of different potential endorsers of negotiations toward a complete ceasefire in the war.

The survey participants were randomly assigned to three groups. The first group was simply asked, “How much do you support negotiations with Russia on a complete ceasefire in this war?”

The second group was asked the same, but also exposed to a made-up statement in which Zelenskyy stressed the importance of negotiations to prevent further soldier and civilian deaths. A third group was shown a similar endorsement, but this time it came from the leaders of the EU and the U.S.

The group not shown any endorsement backed negotiations by 46%. This jumped to 54% support among respondents who were shown the fictional endorsement by Zelenskyy. Interestingly, there was a small decrease in the support of ceasefire negotiations – down to 42% – when the messengers were leaders of the EU and the U.S.

The results suggest that the support of the Ukrainian leadership for a ceasefire negotiation is much more important than international pressure. Indeed, our survey indicates that Western leaders publicly pushing negotiations might induce a backfire effect.

Taking on the voice of front-line Ukrainians

Although not nationally representative – our survey focused on those displaced by war and close to active front lines – the views presented by respondents provide insight into what is important and currently unacceptable to war-afflicted Ukrainians. Those more distant from the front lines and without direct experience of displacement may have even more emphatic views.

Ukraine’s leadership is in no mood to talk peace with Russia at the moment. But negotiations will be needed at some point. Paying close attention to the views of ordinary Ukrainians is vital, for any proposed peace settlement requires their general consent to have a chance of taking hold and enduring.