By Vladimir Golstein, Facebook, 12/4/23

My review of Gary Saul Morson’s book, Wonder Confronts Certainty, has just came out in Claremont Review of Books, a fascinating publication whose authors are doing ungrateful job of swimming against the current.

Below are some of my observations from this essay. I guess one has to be a subscriber to read the whole thing. But you’ll catch the drift from these paragraphs. The link to the essay (is in the comments):

What is there in great Russian novels that provokes such a strong sense of attachment and identification? Morson, a prolific literary and cultural critic whose insights into Russian literature have benefited generations of readers, is abundantly qualified to answer that question.

Claremont Review of Books

Fall 2023

A Happy Guest in Russia’s Pages

The great Russian novels provoke a strong sense of attachment and identification.

by Vladimir Golstein

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/a-happy-guest-in-russias-pages/

Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter

By Gary Saul Morson

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Confronts-Certainty-Timeless-Questions/dp/0674971809

This volume is vintage Morson. It addresses serious subjects with the gravity they deserve, conveying the sense of wonder one experiences when reading great fiction. The study also exposes the follies and abuses perpetrated by the Commissars of Certainty—the radical intelligentsia (from the Russian intelligents) willing to die or kill for some scheme of universal happiness. The plea that resounds again and again throughout Russian novels is to avoid abstract utopias and focus on the goodness and beauty of everyday life. It is as timely a message now as it was in the 19th century— or even more so, since technological advances make it easier for today’s Grand Inquisitors to forcibly impose their idea of human bliss on the world stage. The petty tyrant of medieval Seville, whom Fyodor Dostoevsky depicts subjugating city-dwellers and interrogating Christ in The Brothers Karamazov, couldn’t even imagine all the means of control and manipulation available to today’s self-appointed saviors of mankind.

Russia’s peculiar historical development furnished the intelligentsia with plenty of means, motives, and opportunities to articulate, and more importantly to implement, their radical theories. Over the course of the last 150 years, these theories and practices have shaped the trajectory of Russia’s intellectual and material history. Morson’s book frames an opposition between the literary artists who attempted to make sense of themselves and their world, and the ideologues who fancied they had already explained the world and so wanted, à la Karl Marx, to change it…

The book explores intense culture wars waged between the artists (call them “Team Wonder”) and the radical critics (“Team Certainty”). These groups embodied not just two different cultural traditions but two rather fundamental aspects of human nature—perhaps distinguished by the two sides of our brains, or simply two different approaches to the universe and its mysteries.

Morson compares “certaintists” to the hedgehog, and their opponents to the fox of the fable popularized by Isaiah Berlin: “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” While foxes thrive on dialogue, on switching perspectives, and on looking at themselves from outside so as to learn and adapt, “for hedgehogs, dialogue can make no further discoveries because there is nothing left to discover.” The road to hell is paved with certainties.

Since we do see through a glass darkly in the affairs of this world, it remains reasonable to avoid fake clarity and abstract formulas that can’t possibly do justice to life’s complexity and unpredictability. It was these demonic certainties of the intelligentsia that great Russian authors exposed—convincingly, to many, though not to the intelligentsia itself. The intelligents, despite the inadequacies of their outlook, persisted in becoming more self-righteous, intolerant, and violent. They embraced first anti-tsarist terrorism, then the 1917 revolution with its stated goal of constructing a socialist utopia. Morson’s comparisons between the insights of novelists and the follies of the intelligentsia justify the harsh judgment pronounced in 1909 by the essayist Mikhail Gershenzon: “In Russia an almost infallible gauge of the strength of an artist’s genius is the extent of his hatred for the intelligentsia.”

A book like this, which argues for the relevance of thousands of small things and resists sweeping pronouncements of certainty, can’t be reduced to one message. Morson eschews grand theories about “what must be done” (the obsession of Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Vladimir Lenin). Instead he focuses on negative examples of what must be avoided: dogmatism, myopia, and what Mikhail Bakhtin called “theoretism,” i.e., “the belief that abstractions are more real than experience.” The book’s main argument is presented in chapters with revealing titles: “What Is Not to be Done?” “Who Is Not to Blame?” “What Don’t We Appreciate?” “What Doesn’t it all Mean?” Reading through Morson’s lively narrative, an attentive reader is bound to acquire a wisdom that prefers not to blame, not to imagine that it knows what to do, not to reduce complex life experience to abstractions, and not to suffocate with certainty what should remain a subject of wonder….

Novels rarely offer recipes for universal salvation. They capture small discoveries and might prompt slight adjustments in a few hearts, which nevertheless can be a great boon to humanity at large. Along with other great novelists, Leo Tolstoy prompted his readers to reorient their vision and re-calibrate their system of values: What matters is the person suffering here and now, rather than some distant scheme. In War and Peace, Tolstoy’s Pierre is transformed when he realizes that “everything near and commonplace” once seemed “insignificant and limited” because he “had equipped himself with a mental telescope

and gazed into the distance” so that “things seemed to him great and infinite only because they were not clearly visible.” It is this need to replace our mental telescope with the microscope, clarity with wonder, that Russian novelists articulate so forcefully.

Writing when the microscope and telescope were both new discoveries, John Milton made a similar plea. In Paradise Lost (VIII.172-4), the archangel Raphael admonishes Adam against trying to decipher all God’s “wondrous Works”: “Heav’n is for thee too high / To know what passes there; be lowlie wise: / Think onely what concernes thee and thy being.”

In Landmarks, the philosopher Semen Frank highlighted the dangers of the “telescopic” way of approaching the world: “The abstract ideal of absolute happiness in the remote future destroys the…vital sensation of love for one’s neighbor…. Great love for future humanity engenders great hatred for people.”

But such appeals, writes Morson, “ran counter to the prevailing Russian ethos.” The intelligentsia’s telescopic myopia was as disturbing as its intolerance of criticism and opposing points of view. “Nothing in Marxism is subject to revision,” Lenin declared. “There is only one answer to revisionism: smash its face in.” This attitude, which Morson calls “willful non-knowing,” is the zeal of a neophyte who views disagreement as religious apostasy, meriting destruction or, in current parlance, “cancellation.” Still today, certainty can lead quite naturally to absolutism.

Intellinews, 12/3/23

According to the latest polls from the Levada Centre, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating rose three percentage points in November to 85%, and disapproval slid down two points to 13%.

Separately, another poll conducted by the state-controlled Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) reported a small decline in Russians’ trust of Putin: 78.5% of participants expressed their trust in President Putin, marking a minimal decrease of 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous poll. Additionally, the approval rating for President Putin’s job performance showed a slight dip, with 75.2% of respondents indicating their approval, representing a 0.2 percentage point decrease.

Putin is benefiting from the failure of Ukraine to make any progress with its counter-offensive this summer and rising incomes in both nominal and real terms thanks to a tight labour market.

At the same time, the heavy state spending on defence has given the economy a shot in the arm, which is running well ahead of potential.

These positive results are also seen in things such as retail turnover, which is also up in November, and the PMI manufacturing index is still in expansion mode, well above the 50 no-change mark, while unemployment is at a historic low of 3%.

The good news is also reflected in the “is the country going in the right/wrong direction” question, where “right” ticked up 3 percentage points as well to 67%, while “wrong” remained flat at 21%, as more people shifted from “don’t know” to “right”.

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has also seen his credibility rise to 72% in November from 68%, while his disapproval rating remains flat at 21%.

Mishustin has made steady gains since he took office in 2017 with an approval rating of 53% that rapidly fell to a low of 31% in the summer of 2018 and remained under 40% for the next year. But after a four-year recession ended that year and since the start of the war, Mishustin has shown himself to be a competent administrator and has increasingly won over the population for maintaining the standard of living in Russia.

The government has also seen its approval tick up two points to 69%, which is not much of a difference from where it has been for the last year. Even the Duma, one of the most disliked institutions in Russia, has seen its approval rise to 61% with a 33% disapproval rating. The approval/disapproval of the Duma is usually balanced, and often with disapproval outweighing the two.

Regional governors retain their relative popularity with a 72% approval rating, down by two points from October. The governors have seen their approval rise from last year, when their polling numbers were mostly under 60%, but they have not managed to climb to the point where they were challenging Putin’s own popularity a few years ago.

Finally, the share of respondents who think that protests are possible with political demands remains a low 19% in September, well below the 29% recent peak in February on the eve of the start of the Ukrainian war. However, interestingly the figure for those that said they would participate in the demonstrations should they occur was 18% in September, on a par with every other poll for the last few years, suggesting there is a hard-core community of Russians that remain politically committed to opposition to the government, but which is relatively small in size.

The same poll asking whether there would be protests with economic demands, and if the respondent would participate should they happen, came in at 14% and 13% respectively, suggesting Russians are much less dissatisfied with the standard of living than their political freedoms.

VTsIOM also gauged public sentiment towards the Russian government and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Approximately 49.7% of those polled approved of the government’s execution of its functions, experiencing a 1.1 percentage point decline. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mishustin’s job performance maintained steady support, with 52.3% of respondents approving.

However, trust in Prime Minister Mishustin experienced a minor drop of 0.5 percentage points, with 61.1% of participants expressing their trust.

In terms of party leaders represented in Parliament, the results were as follows:

Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) leader Gennady Zyuganov garnered the trust of 32.1% of respondents, marking a 1.7 percentage point increase.

A Just Russia-For Truth party leader Sergey Mironov enjoyed the trust of 29.4% of those polled, experiencing a 0.6 percentage point rise.

Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) head Leonid Slutsky received the trust of 17% of participants, encountering a minor decline of 0.2 percentage points.

New People party chairman Alexey Nechayev secured the trust of 7.8% of respondents, noting a 1 percentage point drop.

In terms of political party support:

The ruling United Russia party saw its popularity rise by 1.1 percentage points to 40.9%.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) experienced a 0.7 percentage point decrease, with its support standing at 9.2%.

The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) saw a 0.4 percentage point increase, with its support also at 9.2%.

A Just Russia-For Truth party witnessed a 0.5 percentage point decline in its popular support, reaching 4.4%.

Support for the New People party decreased by 0.4 percentage points, landing at 4.4%.

Intellinews, 11/30/23

Corruption case against Ukraine oligarch Kolomoisky to be dropped. Another big fish looks like he will escape justice as the fraud case against top Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky looks like it will be dropped following a court ruling on November 29, the Kyiv Independent reports.

Kolomoisky was arrested on September 2 by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and charged with money laundering and fraud. He was subsequently accused of embezzling $250mn from his bank PrivatBank by National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on September 8 in the most high profile corruption case in years.

PrivatBank, Ukraine’s biggest commercial bank, had to be nationalised and bailed out in 2016 after a bne IntelliNews cover story Privat Investigation exposed a fake loans scam at the bank, where the owners lent money to shell companies under their control leaving a $5.5bn hole in the balance sheet, resulting in the biggest bailout in Ukraine’s banking history.

Kolomoisky is also under investigation in the US, where he syphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars through shell companies in Cleveland, and is also being prosecuted in both London and Cyprus by the now state-owned PrivatBank in an effort to recover the money. A London court has frozen some $2bn of his assets as part of these cases in a case which is expected to go on for years.

Kolomoisky’s arrest in September came as an landmark event, as he is the second big fish NABU has attempted to jail. Previously NABU arrested Roman Nasirov, the government’s financial controller and former President Petro Poroshenko’s right-hand man, and charged him with embezzling millions of dollars in March 2017. However, Nasirov walked free after his wife came up with over $1mn bail in cash and the case was eventually dropped. Seen as a litmus test of the anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine at the time under the Western-leading EuroMaidan government, Nasirov’s case was judged as a failure.

Now it looks like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s efforts to rejuvenate the anti-corruption drive are going to suffer a similar humiliation. Ukraine has a corruption problem that will stymie any effort to raise private sector investment to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, as was laid out at the Recovery conference held in London in June last year.

Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center reports that on November 28, the High Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber ruled that NABU had failed to meet a May deadline for completing its investigation in the case against Kolomoisky.

This ruling may invalidate the charges brought against Kolomoisky, the only charges brought against him in the PrivatBank case, despite the blatant nature of the schemes. A forensic audit of PrivatBank following its nationalisation found that 99% of the loans made by the bank to shell companies were fake.

The High Anti-Corruption Court has only been recently reactivated and its ruling means either the prosecutors or a court could close the case down, according to Vadym Valko, a lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Action Centre as cited by Kyiv Independent, although such a decision would be subject to appeal.

In a parallel decision the High Anti-Corruption Court, which is a related anti-corruption body set up at Western insistence, rejected motions to freeze Kolomoisky’s assets and impose bail and travel restrictions on them.

Charges were brought against Kolomoisky, along with several alleged accomplices, including Oleksandr Dubilet, Lyudmila Shmalchenko, Yaroslav Luhovoy, Tetiana Yakymenko and Nadiya Konopkina.

NABU’s investigation claims that Kolomoisky orchestrated a scheme in 2015 to funnel funds from PrivatBank to an offshore company and increase his share in the bank’s capital. This involved a payment of over $250mn to the offshore company under the pretext of repurchasing its bonds at an inflated cost. A portion of these funds, totalling $12mn, was then channelled to five legal entities before ultimately ending up in Kolomoisky’s personal account, according to NABU.

The NABU case against Kolomoisky is separate from the original charges brought by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) that were used to arrest him in September. The SBU is under the direct control of the president and was widely seen as an attempt by Zelenskiy to crack down on Ukraine’s oligarchs. Ukraine’s Economic Security Bureau (BEB) also cooperated in the SBU case that has similar allegations of fraud and money laundering of UAH500mn ($13.5mn) in 2019-2020. Kolomoisky has been held in pre-trial detention since September and refused to post bail. A court this week extended his detention into the New Year.

The court’s decision and the potential closure of the NABU case are linked to the controversial “Lozovy amendments,” Kyiv Independent reports, which imposed strict deadlines for investigations and limited the terms for sending cases to trial. The Rada passed several laws this week that undermine the judiciary and its ability to vet and bar corrupt judges from office.

Anti-corruption activists argue that these amendments aimed to protect corrupt officials by hindering investigations against them. Despite calls from activists, Parliament has yet to repeal these amendments.

The ruling on the Kolomoisky case highlights different interpretations of the Lozovy amendments, with prosecutors and some courts contending that they do not apply when multiple cases are merged, and one was opened before the amendments. The Kyiv Independent reports. The Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber disagreed with this interpretation.

As the case hangs in the balance, the future of Ukraine’s efforts to prosecute Kolomoisky remains uncertain, prompting concerns about the state of anti-corruption efforts in the country.

The Kolomoisky case comes as Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts are spluttering following a failure to reform the judiciary and bar corrupt judges from office. Zelenskiy has been trying to reform the High Commission and the Anti-corruption Court but is running into stiff institution resistance to any changes.

By Prof. Tarik Cyril Amar, RT, 12/4/23

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian and expert on international politics. He has a BA in Modern History from Oxford University, an MS in International History from the LSE, and a PhD in History from Princeton University. He has held scholarships at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and directed the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine. Originally from Germany, he has lived in the UK, Ukraine, Poland, the USA, and Turkey. His book ‘The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists’ was published by Cornell University Press in 2015.

Toward the end of World War II (in Europe), Germans often shared a dark joke, reflecting their well-deserved dread at the prospect of defeat: “Enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible.” Of course, despite the worst efforts of the Ukrainian far right to damage both the politics and the image of their country, no objective observer would equate Ukraine with Nazi Germany.

Nevertheless, that old German piece of gallows humor points to a question that is now pertinent for Ukraine. Even the militantly anti-Russian Economist is spotting “war fatigue” in both the US and the EU. The Western funding on which Kiev depends is in danger of drying up; and current promises of more cash are not reliable.

When and how will the war end?

Bloomberg reports a “sense of gloom” in Ukraine and the Wall Street Journal admits that “Moscow holds the advantage on the military, political and economic fronts.” The prominent American military commentator Michael Kofman, often treading a fine line between professional analysis and pro-Western bias, is close to facing reality. Still insisting that “it’s inaccurate to suggest that Russia is winning the war,” he acknowledges that “if the right choices are not made next year on Ukraine’s approach and Western resourcing, then Ukraine’s prospects for success look dim.” He also suggests that Kiev should shift to the defensive. Frankly, it has already, and it had no choice.

Yet a defensive strategy cannot achieve Ukraine’s official war aims, because they include retaking territory from Russia. For Ukraine, Kofman’s “right choices” imply giving up on that. Former war monger and Zelensky adviser – and now foe – Aleksey Arestovich, for one, has correctly spotted that fact. Such an outcome is called “losing.” Redefining it as a form of “success” – a shifting of goalposts popular in the West now – comes across as a clumsy attempt to rationalize and sell a defeat.

Regarding “right choices” for the West, despite desperate clarion calls by the Cold War re-enactor and Ukraine proxy war booster Tim Snyder and the US grand strategy maitre penseur Walter Russell Mead, the West may continue some funding of Ukraine, but it is unlikely to once again up the ante. Why would it, when all its previous strategies – economic, military, diplomatic, and by information war – have failed at great cost? What is happening instead is an American attempt to shift more of the burden of the proxy war onto the EU.

The Jews and Boris Johnson: Zelensky’s top political ally looks for scapegoats as Ukrainian elites begin to accept the war is lost

Read more The Jews and Boris Johnson: Zelensky’s top political ally looks for scapegoats as Ukrainian elites begin to accept the war is lost

If Donald Trump wins the US elections in less than a year, then that trend is certain to accelerate, as even British state broadcaster BBC has long recognized. Western observers who think that this is a reason for Russia to be in no hurry to make peace before November 2024 are probably right.

But what if the West and Ukraine suddenly come up with a whole new suite of brilliant, game-changing strategies? After the “miracle weapons” have crashed, perhaps we’ll see “miracle ideas”? We won’t. Because if Western elites could have them, they would have utilized them already.

Concerning Ukraine, Maryana Bezuglaya, a member of parliament, has just caused a stir by accusing the military of failing to produce any genuine plan for 2024. Clearly, this attack is part of a power struggle – and blame game – between President Vladimir Zelensky and commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny. But Bezuglaya is not lying, just exploiting facts.

Regarding the West, after initial Russian blunders, it has not only been out-fought but also been out-thought by Moscow. Keeping alive the persistently unsophisticated Western tradition of stereotyping Russia at great cost, NATO think-tankers like Constanze Stelzenmüller at the Brookings Institution may go on underestimating Moscow as “not that strategic and not that intelligent” but merely very “determined.” On that assumption, Westerners – including think tankers – stymied by what they insist on imagining as not-so-smart Moscow, must conclude they are even less bright.

But if nothing succeeds like success, the opposite is also true – nothing fails like failure: Ukraine’s and the West’s setbacks are a self-reinforcing trend already. Hence, the pertinent question now is: when the current war ends, most likely with a Ukrainian (and Western) defeat, what will come after it? It’s a question that is both timely and difficult to answer.

For one thing, there are still all too many, in Ukraine and the West, who believe – or pretend to believe? – that the war should and can continue, perhaps for years. German chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, has just claimed that the EU must go on supporting Ukraine because it is essential for the bloc that Russia must not win. Such intransigent positions – or rhetoric – betray an unrealistic assessment of Ukrainian, Western, and Russian capacities. They also imply sacrificing more Ukrainian lives in the EU’s interests.

Scholz, for one, is speaking from an almost touchingly perfect position of weakness. His personal approval ratings have just hit a record low; the coalition government he is trying to lead is not doing much better. No wonder: the International Monetary Fund is now expecting Germany to end up as the world’s worst-performing major economy this year, while the government’s unconstitutional financial trickery has triggered a severe budget crisis that will cause painful cuts in public spending.

Scholz may, of course, be lying. There also are unconfirmed reports – or leaks? – that Berlin plans to join Washington in forcing Ukraine to come to terms.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba may still boldly deny feeling any pressure from his country’s Western sponsors.

In reality, multiple signals point in another direction: Western leaders are at least considering the option of cutting their losses by making Ukraine give up territory.

Conversely, Western stay-the-course talk on the war in Ukraine has an ever-hollower ring to it. It is ironic that only a few months ago – but before the predictable failure of Ukraine’s summer offensive turned into an undeniable fact – Foreign Policy surmised that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine policy was falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy. By now it is clear that it is the West that is experiencing a feckless gambler’s reluctance to give up before incurring even greater losses. Cynicism, the will to squeeze the last bit of blood from Ukraine, and an obstinate refusal to acknowledge past errors are certain to also play a role.

Yet it should be noted that even some observers who are not suffering from such Western biases are pessimistic about a quick end to the war. That’s because they believe that ultimately Washington will keep fueling its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, whoever is or seems to be in charge in the White House. For Ukraine and Ukrainians, such a strategy would still mean defeat, but after even more losses and suffering.

On the other hand, given the dire state of Ukraine’s manpower and other resources, a sudden change in the situation on the ground cannot be ruled out. The war could enter a new phase marked by (initially) local breakdowns of Ukrainian forces and such significant Russian breakthroughs that Kiev would have to accept defeat in one form or another, whether under the Zelensky regime or a successor.

The fear of some Western officials that Ukraine could “unravel” as early as this winter is not baseless. In that scenario, fighting would be over comparatively soon, i.e. at the latest at some point next year, even if it might take much longer (compare the Korean case) to replace a formal state of war with peace in the full sense of the term. As John Mearsheimer has warned, a genuine or inherently stable peace may well be impossible, but a de facto cessation of hostilities – call it a frozen conflict, if you wish – can precede it. It may not be pretty, but it would make a big difference, nonetheless.

All of the above entails a paradox. We cannot yet tell if the end of the war is close, but it is not too early to think about the post-war period. The unknowns of the current situation also complicate the question of what exact shape that post-war era will take.

The fate of Ukraine’s military and NATO ambitions

Let’s assume the following: first, while a formal state of war may continue, the more important question is what it will take to end the actual fighting. Kiev would lose territory and, in general, would have to make additional concessions to Russia. The one that is easiest to predict is Ukraine reverting to neutrality and, in particular, giving up on its NATO ambitions (and, of course, its current de facto integration in the alliance). The second outcome that Russia is bound to pursue is capping Kiev’s military potential. The third result that Moscow will not let go off is to either completely neutralize (probably impossible) or strongly diminish the influence of Ukraine’s far right.

Thus, post-war Ukraine will be smaller, neutral, militarily weak, and its official politics and institutions (especially those with arms, such as the police and army) will have to let go of far-right personnel and influence, at least on the surface. No more ‘Black Suns’ on display, except maybe at private parties. If these conditions are not met, fighting may still temporarily cease, but not for long.

Regarding NATO (that is, the US), the fundamental question here is whether Russia will even seek a grand settlement again, a principal reset, but this time from a position of increased strength or, instead, leverage its advantage to achieve the more limited aim of pursuing its security interest by shaping “only” the settlement in and about Ukraine.

Russia may or may not want – or be able to – also make NATO explicitly give up on Ukraine and, more broadly, its misconceived strategy of expansion. Moreover, Moscow may or may not try to insist once more on a fundamental revision of Europe’s security architecture and its relationship with the US and NATO, as in its prewar proposals of late 2021.

What is certain is that once Moscow has created facts on the ground in Ukraine and Kiev has to revert to neutrality (in word and deed), NATO’s posturing will lose much of its relevance. There are unofficial signals that the bloc may be considering admitting only a part of Ukraine (neither Kiev nor its Western backers will recognize Crimea or other Moscow-controlled territories as Russian and will probably refer to them as ‘occupied’). If such a Plan B is serious, despite the fact that it would break NATO tradition and be foolish, Ukraine is rejecting it. And again, any signs of its implementation would be likely to restart the fighting quickly. It is true that some smart observers have speculated that Moscow may be willing to live with a reduced Ukraine being part of NATO. But on this, they are likely to be wrong.

Whatever approach Russia chooses, the key point is that it now has the initiative. That, dear NATO, is what happens when you lose a war: The agenda won’t be the West’s to set.

The future of Kiev’s EU membership bid

What about the EU? After all, one key cause of the current war and preceding crisis was a regime change in Kiev in 2014, which was triggered by a conflict over Ukraine entering into a special association with the bloc. At this point, the EU shows no intention to change this course. Indeed, it seems to be about to open a formal process leading to full membership. There is resistance from some member states, however. Open pushback is coming from Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban is threatening to block this policy as well as more money for Kiev. Where Orban is sticking out his neck, he may not be alone in having misgivings about integrating a large, poor, very corrupt, devastated, and revolution-prone new member state with a security issue from hell.

In any case, let’s assume that, for now, the EU elite gets its way – for instance by releasing more frozen funds for Hungary – and Ukraine enters into official membership talks. As has long been pointed out, starting accession talks is not the same as getting membership. At least years, possibly decades, can separate one point from the other, and the process can also get stuck in the mud. Moreover, as the recent electoral successes of Slovakia’s Robert Fico and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders have once again demonstrated, the ground is also shifting inside the EU. Add the AfD’s surge in Germany, and the EU’s own ability to stick to the plan is very much in doubt.

Post-war Ukraine will probably not be a full member of the European Union. Either for a long time or maybe forever.

Will Zelensky’s regime survive?

What about Ukraine at home? It is hard to imagine the political survival of the current President Vladimir Zelensky in a post-defeat Ukraine. Even now, internal Ukrainian government polling quoted by The Economist shows a drastic decline in his approval ratings. What is worse, while Zelensky is down to 32%, commander-in-chief Zaluzhny still scores 70%, and the especially sinister head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, who proudly runs assassination programs, has a solid 45%.

And, of course, The Economist publishing such figures is yet another sign that Zelensky is also losing Western support. The initially intense personality cult Zelensky enjoyed in the West as an almost miraculous leader may have fooled him into a false sense of security and irreplaceability. In reality, it now makes him the perfect scapegoat. As we know from classical tragedy, with great elevation, comes the potential for a deep fall.

What would come after the Zelensky regime? This is where it’s time to stash away the crystal ball because things become simply too opaque. One thing that true friends of Ukraine should hope for is that whatever is next will actually still be some form of coherent and minimally effective government. Those with ill-conceived fantasies of a “South Korean miracle” in what will be left of Ukraine, may want to refocus on more elementary, Hobbesian issues: In a country full of disappointed citizens and veterans and awash in arms, with a far right second to none in the world, things could turn very ugly indeed.

By Dave Decamp, Antiwar.com, 12/4/23

The White House has sent a letter to congressional leaders warning that it’s running out of money to fund the proxy war in Ukraine and pleading for Congress to authorize more spending.

“I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from US military stocks,” wrote Shalanda D. Young, the head of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. “There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money — and nearly out of time.”

According to Young, Congress has authorized $111 billion to spend on the war since the Russian invasion, but the vast majority of the funding has been used up.

“As of mid-November, DOD has used 97 percent of the $62.3 billion it received, and State has used 100 percent of the $4.7 billion in military assistance it received. Approximately $27.2 billion, or 24 percent, has been used for economic assistance and civilian security assistance (such as demining) to Ukraine, which is just as essential to Ukraine’s survival as military assistance. State and USAID have used 100 percent of this amount,” she said.

Based on recent comments from Pentagon officials, the Biden administration still has a few billion to ship weapons to Ukraine directly from US military stockpiles, part of $6 billion that became available due to a so-called “accounting error” that overvalued earlier arms shipments. But Young said the US has had to limit the weapons packages it’s been sending Ukraine.

“Already, our packages of security assistance have become smaller and the deliveries of aid have become more limited. If our assistance stops, it will cause significant issues for Ukraine. While our allies around the world have stepped up to do more, US support is critical and cannot be replicated by others,” she said.

The administration has been arguing that funding the war in Ukraine is beneficial to the US “Defense Industrial Base,” which Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) pointed out is another term for the Military Industrial Complex.

“The President’s most recent national security supplemental request will build on our successful efforts to date and will direct over $50 billion into our nation’s DIB, which builds on the funding that has already been invested in manufacturing lines across 35 states,” Young wrote in the letter.

President Biden has asked Congress to authorize about $61 billion in additional funding for Ukraine as part of a massive $106 billion spending bill, which also includes military aid for Israel and Taiwan and spending on border security. Biden requested the funds in October, but Congress has yet to approve it as Republicans are looking to separate aid to Israel and want more concessions on border issues.

The idea of the $61 billion is to fund the proxy war for another year despite it being clear that Ukraine has no chance of winning the war or driving Russia out of the Ukrainian territory it has captured.