Putin in Ukraine has too many illusions about Trump
Situations and perspectives of the conflict in Ukraine. The analysis of General Carlo Jean
After the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in September 2022, the front line remained virtually unchanged. The war has transformed from a maneuver into one of attrition. Both sides know that they will not be able to break through the opposing defenses and that, without negotiations with an outcome acceptable to both, the war will last a long time. Theoretically, in these types of conflicts, whoever has more resources sooner or later wins. But that's not always the case. Suffice it to recall Vietnam for the USA or Afghanistan for the USSR. The prolongation of wars – and their losses and costs – always leads to an erosion of internal consensus, starting from that of those who chose to start it. Slower is that of those who are attacked and fight for their survival. At a certain point, one of the two contenders decides that "the game is no longer worth the risk for him" and tries to gain or consolidate through negotiations what he cannot obtain or protect with weapons at acceptable costs and risks.
Ukrainian and Russian strategies, and even Western ones, are based on this logic. For Kiev it is a question of surviving in the future too, that is, with credible security guarantees. For the West, the objective is to force the Kremlin into a peace that Kiev is induced to accept, even with some territorial cessions, but placing what remains of Ukraine in conditions of security. This requires Moscow's acceptance of the existence of an independent Ukraine linked to the Western security system. The Kremlin should renounce its "holy war", aimed at de-Nazifying, demilitarizing and making Ukraine neutral, in the way envisaged by the "famous" peace plans propagated by Russia and taken for granted by numerous "fools" who sympathized with it or , however, critical of the West, especially the “Anglo-sphere”.
I think that the Kremlin has given up on the "holy war" aimed at occupying a rebellious Ukraine, the control of which would be very costly, and that it now wants to limit itself to saving face and Putin's regime, obtaining something that can be declared a "victory" ” and that allows him to get out of the mess he has gotten himself into. His hopes of success are now dependent on whether a possible Trump presidency abandons Ukraine and Europe to their fate.
In my opinion, this is an illusion. Trump will continue to support Ukraine. He will demand that the "bill" of aid to Kiev, like that of US participation in NATO, be paid by the Europeans. In his electoral propaganda, however, he has already watered down the most rigid demands, such as the claim to impose peace in 24 hours or 3 weeks, which could only consist in Kiev's unconditional surrender. He cannot do otherwise. It would compromise the entire international credibility of the USA. Mike Pompeo, former head of the CIA and his probable Secretary of State, clearly highlighted this in The Wall Street Journal. MAGA (Make America Great Again) would become a joke. It does not mean – indeed it is incompatible – with the Make America Alone, typical of American isolationism.
The decisive factor is resilience, that is, the morale of the Ukrainian troops and population. Many of our self-styled strategic experts have not understood this. Not just those who think that “victory” for Kiev and its supporters can only consist of a triumphal parade in Red Square. But also those who are convinced that a NATO proxy war is being fought in Ukraine against Russia. The West would have decided to fight it "to the last Ukrainian". According to them, the “naive” Ukrainians would let their young people be massacred and their cities destroyed because the cunning Westerners would convince them to resist for their own interests, convincing them that they could win. It would be the first case in history that a people allows themselves to be massacred for the interests of another!
The resistance capacity of troops and peoples depends on their cohesion and the importance they attach to what is at stake. For the Ukrainians it is a question of surviving not only as a state, but also as a nation, avoiding the "forced re-education" (lasting twenty-five years), foreseen by Putin for their "de-Nazification", that is, for their "de- Westernization". This ultimate goal has never been changed by Putin, despite his and many Westerners' repeated assertions that Ukrainians should stop resisting to avoid further loss and destruction. Undoubtedly, the phrase “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian” is effective. However, it has the drawback of being completely detached from the reality of the conflict in Ukraine and also from any historical precedent. In particular, it does not take into account that the majority of Ukrainians want to continue resisting. In particular, it does not take into account the motivations that lead soldiers and people to fight. It echoes – I hope unconsciously – the “voice of the master of the Kremlin” and the “narratives” spread by Russian disinformation: for example, that the war was provoked by NATO and that it did not end by the will of the West. Only "fools" can believe it. No people can bear the losses and destruction that Ukrainians suffer if they do not want to. I am convinced that even in the event of a breakthrough of the front, the Ukrainians would continue to fight with the strategy of territorial war, which, incidentally, was what the USA and UK suggested to Zelensky after 2014. This strategy was abandoned only after that Putin made the disastrous mess of the blitzkrieg on Kiev.
In this regard, it is a "lie" of Russian propaganda that a negotiation should start from the treaty that would have been agreed between Russians and Ukrainians in Turkey in early spring 2022. The negotiations were still in the initial stages, as illustrated by Foreign Affairs and the New York Times . They confirm what was said by Israeli Prime Minister Bennett – then another mediator between Russia and Ukraine – about having seen a dozen draft peace treaties, each different from the other. The reality is that there was no shared treaty. But only drafts exchanged between the two delegations. The most controversial point concerned security guarantees, which would give Ukraine a reasonable certainty of not being attacked again. “Ukrainian neutrality” – already foreseen in Budapest in 1994 and in the Treaty of Friendship between Kiev and Moscow in 1997 – could not, nor cannot be enough for Kiev, which needs much more solid assurances than just NATO or the USA can give them. Furthermore, according to Moscow, Ukrainian neutrality should have been guaranteed by a group of states – including Russia – each with the right of veto for any intervention. In practice, Moscow reserved the right to prohibit intervention against its aggression. In addition to this central point, the disagreement concerned various issues. For example, with "demilitarization" the Ukrainians planned to maintain 850 tanks, while the Russians wanted a maximum of 250.
In short, we need to be convinced that at the moment there are no alternatives to the continuation of the conflict. Westerners – especially Europeans who are so inattentive about the conflict in Ukraine and so permeable to Kremlin propaganda – should convince themselves of how important the Ukrainian resistance is for them too, and that the only possibility of putting an end to the conflict consists in persuading Putin that with the increase in Western support for Ukraine, has more to lose than to gain by giving up serious negotiations, which do not place Ukraine's practical surrender as a precondition for their start.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/guerra-ucraina-prospettive-vittoria-trump/ on Wed, 07 Aug 2024 05:35:10 +0000.