Posted on 05/24/2022 9:17:14 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Has land for peace ever worked — even lately? We’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s look at a critical moment in the Russian offensive in Donbas. If Putin wants to force a face-saving settlement, he needs to win a decisive battle to secure an area that he, um, largely controlled by proxy before the invasion. Reuters casts the ongoing battle on the Siverskiy Donets river as Putin’s last, best hope to get out with some claim of victory:
The decisive battles of the war’s latest phase are still raging further south, where Moscow is attempting to seize the Donbas region of two eastern provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, and trap Ukrainian forces in a pocket on the main eastern front.
The easternmost part of the Ukrainian-held Donbas pocket, the city of Sievierodonetsk on the east bank of the Siverskiy Donets river and its twin Lysychansk on the west bank, have become the pivotal battlefield there, with Russian forces advancing from three directions to encircle them.
“The enemy has focused its efforts on carrying out an offensive in order to encircle Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” said Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk province, where the two cities are among the last territory still held by Ukraine.
“The intensity of fire on Sievierodonetsk has increased by multiple times, they are simply destroying the city,” he said on TV, adding there were about 15,000 people in the city and the Ukrainian military remains in control of it.
It’s not just Russia that sees this battle and others around it as potentially decisive. Volodymyr Zelensky urged his people to remain firm in their resolve and for Western allies to step up arms shipments in order to blunt the new Russian offensive:
Russian forces on Tuesday stepped up their offensive on the last pocket of resistance around Lugansk in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, as the conflict entered its fourth month.
Since Moscow’s invasion in late February, Western support has helped Ukraine hold off its neighbour’s advances in many areas, including the capital Kyiv. Russia is now focused on securing and expanding its gains in Donbas and the southern coast.
“The coming weeks of the war will be difficult, and we must be aware of that,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday after regional leaders and residents reported heavy bombardments.
“The most difficult fighting situation today is in Donbas,” Zelensky said, singling out the worst-hit towns of Bakhmut, Popasna and Severodonetsk.
So far, the Ukrainians have shown little appetite for negotiation. They saw how perseverance worked for them in Kyiv and Kharkiv, where their underground transportation system transitioned back to operation today from its previous status as shelter. Even when Russians gain ground in Ukraine, they wind up losing it due to bad tactics, egregiously planned logistics, poor morale, and increasing artillery superiority for Ukraine. Even when outmatched, as they were initially in Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s superior morale and discipline prevailed over time, especially with fresh materiel from NATO.
That brings us to Henry Kissinger, the remarkable eminence grise of American diplomacy. Kissinger warned today in Davos that the West would make a terrible error in attempting to punish Putin with a crippling military loss, and urged the US and EU to convince Ukraine to trade land for peace:
Dr Kissinger said the war must not be allowed to drag on for much longer, and came close to calling on the West to bully Ukraine into accepting negotiations on terms that fall very far short of its current war aims.
“Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome. Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” he said.
He told the World Economic Forum that Russia had been an essential part of Europe for 400 years and had been the guarantor of the European balance of power structure at critical times. European leaders should not lose sight of the longer term relationship, and nor should they risk pushing Russia into a permanent alliance with China.
“I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom,” he said, adding with his famous sense of realpolitik that the proper role for the country is to be a neutral buffer state rather than the frontier of Europe.
Yes, land for peace has a great history of success, especially in Europe. Oh wait ….
Ukraine has already responded to this free advice:
Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova on Monday took aim at suggestions that Ukraine “allow Putin to save face” or cede territory for peace in an effort to end the more than three-month war.
“Peace at any cost is not in anyone’s interest, because it’s not possible. Either you win and you can live peacefully in your own country, or you die, and it doesn’t matter whether you die quickly, right away from the shells, or you die slowly [from] occupation and torture,” she said.
Ukraine might be forced to accept such an outcome if Putin can reverse his military fortunes on the battlefield. There hasn’t been much evidence of improvement, but the recent short-term gains at least leave that as a possibility. For now, Ukrainians see a grinding war as in their favor, and the evidence thus far backs that theory. At the very least — and this is likely a lot more important than “the very least” — it keeps Putin from rebuilding his military for a second attempt at seizing and annexing the entirety of Ukraine.
That’s the problem with Kissinger’s advice here, too. If we could trust Putin to be chastened by a negotiated stalemate or return to the status quo ante, Kissinger might be right. Putin clearly wasn’t sated after 2014, though, and won’t be sated now with merely peeling off Donbas and Ukraine’s ports on the Sea of Azov. He wants Ukraine as a puppet state at worst, and annexed to Russia eventually. All of his moves since 2008 at the latest have aimed at military aggression to expand Russian territory at the expense of sovereign neighboring states, and Ukraine likely won’t be the last to fall if we don’t take that seriously.
It’s tough to take an argument that Russia is necessary for power balance in an era where Russia has acted almost completely unbalanced for as long as they have. We didn’t inflict serious damage on Putin after his invasion of Georgia in 2008 and his military seizure of Crimea in 2014. Does Kissinger think that was “balance”? The only way to disincentivize Putin from further aggression is to make it as costly as possible. Ukraine understands that, because Ukraine will get gobbled up the next time if Putin doesn’t learn that lesson this time.
He’s a fanatic. He can’t help it.
RE: Ed Morrissey is a dimwit,
What part of his article tells us this?
If anybody in this picture ends up with just a bone, it’ll bee Zelensky and the nazis.
Kissinger? Dude must be 3’11” by now.
Pathetic but look at ol Henry he is 98 years old which is quite an accomplishment.
Kissinger is stuck in the time warp of 1600-2000 Europe. Unfortunately the world has changed. There is no need for a “balance of power” in Europe because everyone is on the same side now except Russia. And Russia will never be a part of Europe as long as Putin is in charge. Indeed, 8 years of Yeltsin was not enough to sway Russia away from the czarist and Soviet mentality.
The real long term threat today is China, not Russia. Russia is a failed oil kleptocracy on its last legs (though alas armed with nukes). Russia brings nothing useful to China except oil. And Russia has nothing useful to offer Europe.
Ukraine needs to decide how much blood it is willing to shed. At this point all indications are that it will keep shedding until it recovers all its territory. But that will not be feasible indefinitely. Maybe sign an armistice as has been done many times in the middle east, and live to fight another day? Russia can claim victory with the added territory but it’s a hollow one as now the whole world knows that the emperor has no clothes, and his army is probably worse off than the chicoms.
The real balance of power is the free world vs. China and autocrats around the world. Not to mention the civilized world v. the Islamo fascists of many stripes, the NORKs, etc. France v. Germany went out in 1945, just as USA v. USSR went out in the 1990s. Nobody told Putin yet, and he refuses to accept it, and hence his last gasp.
How many Ukrainians have come to Israel? My guess is 30,000.
The effed up thing is that if the US just said "you know what, this is between y'all, we're not helping anything by putting a thumb on the scales any more, we're simply not going to participate." both the Ukraine and Russia would keep going, destroying the lives of their countrymen in the hope that it would get so bad that the UN, WEF, US, etc.. would just throw money at the problem until it stopped looking awful. Worse still, they're mostly right.
The Volga River is less than 90 miles from the eastern most border of the Donbas. That river is the conduit for about 5 million barrels/day that head north from the Caspian Sea for distribution at Moscow. There was never any way Russia could allow NATO that close.
Stop thinking of who has moral high ground about what and who is in the wrong and how abused who.
It doesn’t matter.
This is the first war in history where both sides have excellent satellite recon. Advances will always be slow in all warfare of the future. You can do nothing with troop concentrations that the enemy cannot see. Everything can be countered.
It has nothing to do with courage or good vs bad weapons or poor tactics or poor morale. It’s all about recon and it’s not really about much else.
So all the silliness about the Russian convoy being stopped from having no fuel or Chinese tires . . . just forget all that stuff. They certainly had fuel and tires to redeploy, so that absurd story was clearly wrong.
Advance is slow because it has to be slow. If you mass troops anywhere, they will be seen and hit from afar.
No one outside the Kremlin has any idea where Russia will stop its advance. There is a nuclear power plant at a place called Energovar. Russia has it. It is 1/2 the nuclear power of all of Ukraine. Mayor of Metropol has said they will not be giving it back. They will sell power.
Watch that situation. It matters a lot more than hand waving over heads about war crimes.
How many more centuries eill the world be afflicted by Kissinger?
Israel took Sinai in the 1967 war.
They were merely giving it back as part of a peace treaty.
Ukraine is different; Apples-Oranges.
Kissinger was the architect behind Nixon’s “Let make China strong” policy. This ahole’s advice was a disaster for America. He should shut the hell up and spend his time pondering his epic disastrous advice.
“hey were merely giving it back as part of a peace treaty.”
Pretty much the same with Crimea, just a longer timeline. Ukraine should have NEVER demanded to keep it.
Up to this point it has been the US/UK that have all but forbidden the Ukes to make any sort of deal with Russia to end the conflict. Kissinger is recognizing the obvious (the Ukes are losing) and is trying to end the globalists’ disastrous little war before things really fall apart....and the clock is ticking. He’s smart enough to know that.
The choice is not make a deal now or keep fighting to deny Putin what he wants. The choice is cut your losses by making a deal now or Putin will bite off a much bigger chunk if you keep fighting. The collapse of the Uke army is inevitable. Its just a question of a few months max.
The good news is the globalists got the war they wanted and it blew up right in their faces. Their whole project has been dealt a severe blow.
I’d like to see him negotiate someone trying to rob his home or trying to rape one of his grandkids.
Correct. Nobody is saying Kissinger is a paragon of morality. The question is, Who do you think is smarter, more capable and more competent - Kissinger or the imbeciles in the Biden administration and the Deep State?
To any rational observer, that’s no contest.
1. The patient can get well and go home.
2. The patient can die.
3. The patient can continue to languish in the hospital, racking up bills.
Kissinger wants no. 3.
Shows you don’t know anything about Kissinger.
Don’t be stupid.
Russia, rebuild? 80% of the country outside of the major cities are barely out of the 1970s technologically.
Between them, Putin and the oligarchs have some 960 billion dollars to spend on anything... and they’re spending it on yachts, gold toilet seats, nukes and palaces.
The only oligarch to actually do a lot of constructive stuff to benefit ordinary Russians with his stolen wealth, has been ruined by Putin and is living in exile.
Two possible Putin replacements are interested in peace and modernisation, others just want perpetual war. Putin hasn’t had a single sleepless night because of the war on the ground; it doesn’t impact him directly. But perhaps he’s worried about his replacements / rivals, and his health.
The Russian kleptos aren’t even interested in rebuilding Russia let alone Ukraine.
On the flip side Zelensky has probably been surviving on 3 hour’s sleep a day for three months, has directly lost countless friends and relatives to the invasion, and that’s after fruitlessly trying to get Azov to stand down in 2019.
The idea he’s doing this for personal financial benefit for the rebuild is beyond retarded. The Globalists offered him safe passage out of Ukraine right at the start of this and several times since; he said he needed guns and air support to minimise Russian destruction, not a ride to safety.
He didn’t get the air cover (which is fair enough - we didn’t want to engage Russia that directly - but as a consequence of us not going there Russia was able to shell Mariupol day and night for weeks.
If we’re going to complain about the rebuild costs then MAYBE certain NATO members shouldn’t have been such pussies early on. Poland offered a way to reinforce Ukrainian air defences, Germany blocked it.
What is to stop Russia selling any deal as a huge victory at home, restocking its weapons, and hitting Ukraine even harder later?
Other deals that Russia broke include the UN Charter, the formal recognition of independence for the eastern bloc countries and Georgia, the Budapest Memorandum...
All of which had far more legal and moral standing than a ceasefire agreement that tears up the Budapest Memorandum and demotes Ukraine to a disputed territory.
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