High Stakes Showdown
Kremlin spells out conditions for talks and takes center stage abroad and at home where doves, want to end the fighting, and hawks, wish to punish Ukraine once and for all.
Take it, or leave it
The Western countries had made ready for the weekend with celebration of the president of Ukraine and had even invited his personal puppeteer, Yermak, to the party. It was meant to be a boost for the de facto legitimacy of Zelenskyy. His legalistic legitimacy has ended several months ago. The regime in Kiev is Martial Law, with all that follows of desperate attempts to mobilize young men using press gangs, half of GDP being channeled through the military, and ruling by presidential decree. Let’s just say, that Zelenskyy needed this boost, desperately, to steady his position and ability to channel money to the plutocratic elite, keeping the regime going and the war against Russia running. But on Friday afternoon, 14th of June 2024, the president of Russia, suddenly spells out the terms for commencing dialogue between the parties, so called ‘preconditions for cease fire and talks.’ It can be understood as ‘Istanbul plus,’ i.e., an elaboration on the agreement from the last meeting between the parties in Istanbul, april 2022, that was eventually not signed by Zelenskyy.
Neutrality for Kiev = No NATO membership and NATO forces out of Ukraine.
Dissolution and disbanding of specific battalions and general de-militarization.
Ukrainian withdrawal from the oblasts annexed into the constitution of The Russian Federation, including the cities of Zaporizhzha and Kherson.
No Odessa. Immediately, criticism arose, and quite loudly so, amongst the political elite in Moscow. For the Hawks the omission of Odessa from the proposal represented a knee fall, an intolerable gift to the aggressors, that Russia, given its position on the battlefield, should end hostilities without at least gaining the price of shutting Kiev out from the Black Sea.
Breathtaking hours
Many questions arose. Personally, I have been advocating that NATO should make itself ready to figure out what NATO can offer Russia to be able to accept Russian terms, since the summit at Vilnius juli, 2022. NATO and the leaders of the West where far from aligned to reality and now they get played. If they were smart, then they had accepted the ‘preconditions for cease fire and talks,’ that were released from the Kremlin on friday, on the spot, and made a huge victory celebration in Switzerland, instead of the staged event they had choreographed. Suddenly, it was all over: Jens Stoltenberg, the general secretary of NATO, went on the record, dismissed the suggestion by Putin as wishful thinking by him. Former president of Russia, the self declared hawk, Dmitri Medvedev and likeminded individuals, calmed down. The diplomatic charade around Zelenskyy proceeded in Switzerland and Ukraine was finally screwed. Eventually, that geopolitical observers and theoreticians combined find this to be so, is not the concern of the politicians in charge, who don’t seem to care about Ukraine and its future.
What about Ukraine?
The parties in the Ukraine war have entered an unholy alliance. Putin delivers another year of attrition passed election day, November 5th, in USA. Zelenskyy stays formally in power thus guaranteeing that there are no meaningful talks between the parties. Biden, Blinken and Sullivan buys time and channel more money to their campaign and the regime in Kiev. It all adds up. But. Ukraine is down to a dozen effective brigades. They simply had to surrender on the first given occasion. But didn’t. And this has left Kiev politically dead in the water: Why should Kremlin facilitate talks now? And with whom? Biden? August 11th 2024, the regime in Kiev is without any constitutional legitimacy; not even the parliament, The Rada, sustains tenure. The full blown sovereign dictatorship, i.e., that the regime rules on a constitution suspended in its entirety, will be kept alive by desperate Ukrainians, hoping that Zelenskyy will live up to their trust and stand as a symbol for their nationalist aspirations. But to the astute observer, there is not a chance that Zelenskyy and his elite will suddenly begin to care for Ukraine as something else than their favorite cash cow. The collapse of the whole country appears to be immanent. Not only the army. The country.
Intermezzo: International Law
One must understand, that the discourse coming out of Moscow is, that they are acting under International Law. Others may argue otherwise. That is how case law works. But in deeming Zelenskyy ilegitimate on the basis of his unconstitutional tenure, and propagandizing that all regions are free to leave Ukraine, since there is no constitutional bind, keeping them there, is going to be an issue moving forward. Cities in western Ukraine are empty of young men, terrified of the press gangs. And after the summer 2024 Mykolajiv or Kharkiv, or Odessa or even Dnipropetrovsk oblast could make a UN bid to vote themselves into Russian Federation under the pretext of the self-determination of peoples. That may be a wild idea, and separatist should be advised to keep a low profile until they are safe to voice opposition to Kiev, should such be manifest, but no one could prevent them from holding a referendum; no one but the Ukrainian Armed forces under Martial Law, of course. And the majority, there. But what would they actually prefer? Without Odessa there is no way Galicia & Transcarpathia or what it will be called, i.e., what is left of Ukraine will be able to form a coherent entity. We talk about survival, here. Shipping of grain and sunflower oil is crucial. Without it, there will be no outcome for the population, and Ukraine will be nothing but people looking for work and mafiosi. Intellectual elites in Lviv will soon find themselves surrounded, chanting their nationalistic slogans in candlelit cellars. Ukraine is in dire straits.
Will Kiev get a second chance?
The hawks in Moscow will not have NATO meddling in the Black Sea and Ukraine emerging as a garrison state armed to the teeth with weapons directed at Russia; they will crave Odessa and thus the landbridge to Transnistria for the sake of their security. That was clear from their reaction on Friday. But Putin is still in the saddle, and now, after the high stakes, the regime governing the Russian Federation holds all the trumps and even scored a public relations victory, spurring rising support in the rest of the world, not to talk about those in the West, who are beginning to get the smell of inherent malice surrounding the whole affair. Some of them voted in protest at the European parliamentary elections 6-9th of june, 2024. The deal offered by ‘preconditions for cease fire and talks,’ appears to be more than reasonable if one takes the point of departure in the situation on the ground. It resonates well with broad audiences. But that is part of the problem. The West and its leaders are paralyzed, squeezed into a corner, and still refuse to acknowledge reality and see no other option than to beat the war mongering drum, scaring their populations with a new story spun on the narrative of good vs. evil. And with the grip the governments around Europe and North America currently have on their respective mass media institutions, they might as well buy into the idea of prolonging the war.
Conclusion, to be continued
As Stoltenberg concluded yesterday on 18th june 2024: ‘The road to peace is paved with more weapons to Ukraine.’ Maybe it made sense to him, there and then. But I doubt it. All actors in the West seems to have subsumed their ability to act under the role they have taken on, without anybody being able to break free from their seemingly predetermined patterns of conduct. The situation is truly desperate for Kiev, Brussels, and Washington. How long can they keep up? My guts tell me, that either way it is over at Rasputitsa, autumn 2026, on the verge of a new winter without electricity and supplies. Why does it have to come that? The answer may lie in the above portrayed dynamic of war and the sense desperation, spreading amongst the losers, towards the end of hostilities.