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.
I am going to disagree with this conclusion. You omit several important factors including air power, logistics, and mobility of forces, as well as an understanding of centers of gravity.
Neither side has obtained air supremacy, or even superiority, though one would think the Russians capable before this started. The Russians failed to use their air power to shape the battlefield for the land invasion, though I’m not sure they would understand what centers of gravity to apply that to.
The northern convoy failure was absolutely both a logistics failure and a failure to understand the geographical defenses, as well as a demonstration of lack of maintenance and spare parts chain. You could almost certainly throw in Soviet doctrine and troop morale into that as well.
The slow grind you see is not the result of both sides being cautious in light of intelligence. It’s that Moscow apparently has no highly mobile forces capable of making targeted strikes at critical centers of gravity, unlike US special forces. This again was not expected from Russia, but it’s what they have demonstrated.
so Russia is fighting WWII tactics against an army 1/10 its size and only advancing at a pace equivalent to fighting Hitlers Germany, while taking huge losses.
“Now we have a destroyed Ukraine, a humiliated (and still dangerous) Russia, food shortages, bankrupting energy prices, a faltering stock market, and billions of dollars worth of man portable weapons that can take down airliners for the 20 years.”
Yeah, but no mean tweets!
Gotta have our priorities straight.
Better the stumbling, bumbling, incoherent, illegitimate, pedophile Joe Biden who can’t make a deal over pudding pops than the man who wrote the book on the deal.
Because.....mean tweets.
I friggin HATE soccer moms.
If only homo-erotic dancer Zelensky had not pushed for NATO membership on Russia’s border, Ukrainians would have been spared the deaths and destruction of infrastructure. Ukraine is unlivable now.
He’s regurgitating the Rooters propaganda about the state of the war.
The guy lives in the bubble, and is incapable of imagining anything else. His analysis is pig slop.
Apples-Oranges again.
Crimea was never part of Russia. Russians migrated into the region.
Russia annexed Crimea without Treaty.
Ukraine had all rights to protest. Had it not been for the large Russian population, Crimea should have been given back to Ukraine, mirroring Israel’s return of Sinai.
If, like the USA’s Gadsden Purchase, Russia had bought Crimea from Ukraine, the historical claims would be different. But the two nations, Russia and Ukraine, are corrupt, run by regional Al Capone’s..
Ukraine is in part noble and moral, and in part corrupt and ungodly. The corrupt in Ukraine are often able to buy off, to bribe moderate leaders, judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement who should know better.
Much like today’s USA which will go the way of Ukraine unless US courts and law enforcement stand firmly for the rule of law.
Example:
https://t.me/KanekoaTheGreat/4551
Kissinger is still kicking???
He was an old man when I was a kid… and now, I’m an old man..
Let go, Henry. Nobody wants you anymore, pal.
“Crimea was never part of Russia. Russians migrated into the region.”
Wrong, and since you don’t understand that tiny bit of history, I’m done with you.
“Worked fine for Israel, when the gave the Sinai to Egypt, and they’ve been at peace for over 40 years now.”
Faulty analogy all the way around.
The Sinai was not part of Israel. It was Egyptian territory occupied by Israel following the 1967 war. Per agreement between Egypt and Israel, Israel withdrew from Sinai, the withdrawal being completed in 1982. So, the Sinai was never Israel’s to give.
A more accurate analogy would be the following:
Russia attacks Ukraine (as Israel attacked Egypt in 1967). It occupies eastern Ukraine (as Israel occupied Sinai). Russia withdraws from eastern Ukraine (as Israel withdrew from Sinai).
See how an analogy works?
No land, no peace. So Israel gave up land and got peace. That’s all that matters.
3) Ukraine becomes a member of the EU and NATO.
“No land, no peace. So Israel gave up land and got peace. That’s all that matters.”
You want Ukraine to give Russia Ukrainian land. Thus rewarding Russia’s aggression. It’s as simple as that.
And don’t give me any of that crap about “autonomy” and “independence,” because those areas of eastern Ukraine that you want Ukraine to give away will be annexed by Russia within a week of any such “independence.” Russia’s border will thus move west. And you know it, but are too dishonest to admit it.
The problem now is that the war must be continued until there is an obvious winner.
Putin has too much personally at stake to with draw.
He essentially had the two territories in all but sovereignty. They were in effect separated from Ukraine. Time would deliver them to Russia.
But, fearing 70 and imminent death as an old man, Putin decided to go to war and in the process destroy Ukraine. Russia is now in serious jeopardy and will continue to be for a very long time.
Mother Russia will be dressed in rags for a long time as her total efforts will be tied up in reparations to rebuild Ukraine.
If Ukraine doesn’t want to lose more land, they’ll have to compromise on new borders, since they proved unable to protect millions who live in the now-liberated areas. Otherwise, more land will have to be liberated.
“If Ukraine doesn’t want to lose more land, they’ll have to compromise on new borders, since they proved unable to protect millions who live in the now-liberated areas. Otherwise, more land will have to be liberated.”
Do you see what you just said? No, you are so blinded by your support of Russia you are not even aware you have blown its cover!
You just confirmed that Russia’s invasion is not about “liberating” ethnic Russians in Donbas and vicinity, but is all about conquest and gaining land. Russia already controls the area it said it wanted to “liberate.” Now you let the cat out of the bag and admitted unless it gets its way, Russia will continue its war of conquest and will move even further into Ukraine, to “liberate” people who don’t want to be “liberated.”
Your Russian handlers are not pleased with you letting the cat out of the bag.
The extra land is obviously necessary to help bring Ukraine to the negotiating table. Eventually they will will understand that.
Your unceasing and blind support of Russia is obvious. And you call US warmongers!
Too funny!
No, it isn’t wrong.
Good riddance.
“And you call US warmongers!”
Good faith negotiations by Ukraine would have prevent the need for the Special Military Operation.
Please remind us of the massive military bases in Latvia and Estonia.
Thanks in advance.
Can’t say exactly, but I’ve seen a few of them.
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