"Russian President Vladimir Putin appears less pressured to
meet and talk. What does this tell us? Zelenskyy does not believe further
fighting will benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants
the war over."
"It's time to meet, time to talk ... time
to restore territorial integrity ... for Ukraine," said President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, March 19, 2022 .
Zelenskyy added that the need to negotiate was
even greater for Moscow. "Otherwise, Russia's losses will be so huge that
several generations will not be enough to rebound."
According to the Pentagon, Russia has lost 7,000
soldiers; Kyiv puts the figure at 14,000 dead.
Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears
less pressured to meet and talk. What does this tell us?
Zelenskyy does not believe further fighting will
benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants the war over.
As for Putin, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin said Sunday, "He's not been able to achieve the goals that he wants
to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them." Putin wants more time.
The Russian president began the invasion of
Ukraine with Crimea already annexed and the enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk
having already declared their independence of Kyiv.
Since the invasion began, however, Putin's
forces have besieged but not taken Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, or second largest
city, Kharkiv.
Yet, Russian troops are now in Mariupol on the
Sea of Azov, having completed a land bridge from Russia through the Donbas to Crimea
and, from there, halfway to Odessa, the last major Ukrainian port on the Black
Sea.
While the Ukrainian army and citizens have put
up fiercer resistance than was anticipated in Moscow, Russia is not losing this
war.
Measured by territorial gains, Putin is winning.
He has not
captured Kyiv or Kharkiv, but he has expanded the Russian-controlled
territories of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea that he had at the start of his
invasion.
While Russia's costs and casualties have been far
greater than was anticipated, Putin has added to the Ukrainian lands he held
when the war began. And Mother Russia has not lost an inch of land in this war.
"How does this thing end?" Gen. David
Petraeus famously asked on the road to Baghdad.
No political solution appears more likely than a
new partition of Ukraine, with lands east of the Dnieper River and along the
coasts of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea being ceded to Moscow, and the west
of Ukraine being declared a neutral nation like Austria or Finland in the Cold
War.
The problem with this probable outcome is that
Zelenskyy has ruled out any territorial concessions or land transfers from
Ukraine to Russia. And he seeks to "restore," not to make permanent,
the 2014 amputations of Crimea and the Donbas.
The dilemma: Zelenskyy probably cannot survive
ceding control of any Ukrainian land to Russia. And Putin probably cannot
survive a failure in peace talks to expand the Ukrainian holdings with which he
began the war.
The "territorial integrity" of Ukraine
is the crucial issue in ending this war.
And it is precisely here where it appears
impossible for both sides to come to terms.
The one issue on which both parties
will likely agree in any peace settlement is the issue that should have been
agreed to — to prevent the war: a formal declaration by Kyiv that it will never
join a NATO alliance created to contain Russia and, if necessary, defeat Russia
in a war.
A frustrated and enraged President Joe Biden has
taken to calling Putin a "killer," a "murderous dictator"
and a "war criminal" who has launched an "immoral war" —
comments the Kremlin calls "unforgivable"
Such rhetoric would seem to rule out any role for
U.S. diplomacy in negotiating the end to this war. Other nations — Israel,
Turkey, France, Germany — have maintained regular relations and constant
contact with Putin, who
sits and broods atop the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
Consider the moral dilemma the U.S. has put itself
in.
Our president says Russia is led by "a war
criminal," conducting an "immoral" war in which deliberate
atrocities are committed at hospitals, schools, kindergartens and art theaters.
Yet, the U.S. and NATO will not provide weapons to
Ukraine, including secondhand MiGs, that might cause Russia to retaliate
against us or NATO or risk World War III or risk Russia's use of tactical
atomic weapons.
Because, pillaged and persecuted though Ukraine
may be, it is not a member of NATO.
If Latvia, however, with 5% of Ukraine's
population, is encroached upon, we will engage Russia militarily, and to hell
with the risk of World War III or Russia's possible retaliation with atomic
weapons.
In war, the moral is to the material as three is to one, said
Napoleon. Unfortunately, what George Bernard Shaw said cynically also appears
to be true: In war, God is on the side of the big battalions.
Zelenskyy probably cannot survive signing away the
title to any Ukrainian land, be it Crimea or the Donbas. And Putin likely
cannot survive not bringing home new territory from a Russian "victory."
Again, perhaps the one issue on which almost all
now agree is that Ukraine renounce its right to join the NATO alliance.
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