“Ukraine will stop Putin” declared America’s failing president whose uncertain political fate and cognitive issues loomed over NATO’s 75th annual conference hosted last week in Washington, where many participants took time on the side to meet with some of Donald Trump’s top advisors such as former ambassador to Germany, Rick Grennel, and ex-NSC chief of staff, general Keith Kellogg. The Europeans are now “paying” more for NATO as 23 members cross the 2 percent of GDP for defense threshold this year, long insisted by Trump , so they may be looking to get their money’s worth in advice.
But it will take a lot more than “twenty four hours” to convince Putin to settle for a bombed out sliver of Ukraine after losing a half million Russians.
If they wanted to know whether Biden meant that Kyiv will stop Russia from overrunning all of Ukraine and threatening the rest of Europe as long as Western military aid keeps flowing, the Europeans would be told that would not change under Trump. But if he meant that Russia can be stopped from taking over eastern Ukraine as is Putin’s currently declared goal, bets may be off. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: U.S. Policy Lets Russia Dock in the Americas)
Situations both on the battlefield and in the increasingly active diplomatic front are not running in Ukraine’s favor. China has become a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war effort” according to the official statement issued by the NATO conference, allowing Putin an almost limitless capacity to prosecute his war.
Western intelligence reports indicate that China is increasingly providing electronic software components through various guises for Russia’s production and perfection of its cruise missiles, which are becoming notably more accurate and stealthy. It’s also speculated that North Korea may feed troops from its 1.5 million man army to replace Russia’s mounting losses as part of a military alliance recently signed by Putin and Kim Jong Un, who is already supplying Russia with millions of 152 mm artillery rounds. Reports last week even indicated that Chinese or North Korean special units joined Russian Spetznaz for military exercises in Belorussia, Putin’s close ally bordering Ukraine to the north.
While NATO pledged “unwavering” support for Ukraine, the $40 billion annual aid package committed to its war effort at the conference, falls short of what president Volodymyr Zelensky and other east European leaders now consider necessary. The main types of weapons mentioned for the package are largely defensive; lots of billion dollar Patriot air defense systems and a limited quantity of F-16 jet fighters, maybe 70, to be flown in over the next several months. It’s about half of what Zelensky considers necessary to counter Russia’s air force capable of launching 300 air sorties a day.
Despite Biden boasting that “NATO has never been stronger” cracks could develop within the alliance as support for Kyiv starts weighing against peace initiatives being proposed with increasing insistence by some members. While the conference concluded that Ukraine’s path to full NATO membership is “irreversible” the fine print indicates that’s only “after the war with Russia is over,” according to an AP analysis based on statements by NATO secretary Jens Stoltenberg who gave no timetable for Ukraine’s adherence and signaled caution with Russia.
“NATO does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. We remain willing to maintain channels of communication with Moscow to mitigate risk and prevent escalation” said Stoltenberg who emphasized the need to “end the war as soon as possible” without mentioning the need to defeat Russia or force withdrawal of its forces from Ukraine as was NATO’s past position.
Putin launched his 2022 invasion because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. He attempted to take Kyiv using outdated armored tactics in an operation modeled on the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, which ousted a reformist government threatening the cohesion of the Warsaw Pact at the time. He grossly underestimated Ukraine’s highly nationalistic armed forces already formed with Western arms and guidance, while overestimating the capabilities of his own army riddled with corruption under his regime. He has only recently started trying to fix that by firing top defense officials and reorganizing Russia’s military industrial base.
Following his rout outside Kyiv, Putin refocused on the more limited goal of annexing eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region to secure a land connection to the Crimean peninsula, set up local puppet governments under ethnic Russians, and control key industrial zones. While initially encouraging Zelensky’s crusade to recover “every inch” of Ukrainian territory, NATO now seems resigned to conceding Moscow its land gains through negotiations in which Kyiv’s NATO membership could be a bargaining point.
In exchange for at least de facto recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea and however much of Donbass its troops hold at the moment of a hypothetical ceasefire, Russia would have to accept NATO’s protection over Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine. A special new body set up at the U.S. army base in Wiesbaden, Germany to administer and channel assistance to Kyiv would serve as a “bridge” to eventual full membership, says Stoltenberg.
A similar idea was floated about a year ago as Ukraine’s “counteroffensive” failed to break through Russia’s highly fortified southern lines to siege Crimea. Zelensky threw a fit and NATO officially disavowed the leaked conversations. But the plan resurfaced behind closed doors at this week’s summit as the only viable peace solution that the West can propose at the moment, according to diplomatic sources.
As the conference got underway, Ukrainian government spokesmen reluctantly expressed willingness to negotiate with Moscow without a prior Russian agreement to withdraw from occupied areas, Zelensky’s main demand until now. But that may hardly satisfy Putin at this point. He wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from parts of the Donbass not fully occupied by Russia as the starting point for talks, according to Hungarian president Viktor Orban who is leading efforts to mediate a ceasefire. Orban had meetings with Putin in Moscow and China’s Premiere Xi Jing Ping in Beijing before heading to Washington.
Turkey’s authoritarian ruler Tayyip Erdogan who has one of NATO’s largest armies and controls access to the Black Sea through the Bosphorus straights is also fence straddling, having participated at the meeting of a newly formed alliance of Central Asian nations including Iran, chaired by Putin and Xi days prior to attending the Washington conference. He openly disagrees with alliance policies in such key areas as supporting Israel and fancies his role as potential peace broker in Ukraine.
The peace lobby, however, faces resistance from Poland and other east European states that feel most threatened by Russia and whose leaders have publicly criticized NATO for failing to do enough to support Ukraine. They would fiercely reject any move to turn over the north east province of Luhansk, for example, back to Russia after Ukraine retook it in 2022 and successfully fought off renewed Russian advances against its main city, Kharkhiv, in recent days.
Neither can the east europeans or NATO founding states such as UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands which are supplying Ukraine’s F-16s and long-range cruise missiles, be expected to pressure Kyiv to just allow Russia to walk onto the strategic ridge line of Chasiv Yar controlling the industrial Donetsk valley and the key city of Kramatorsk.
Despite months of pounding the area with the bulk of his forces deployed in Donbass, Putin has made only marginal gains, taking a small neighborhood on the eastern side of a canal that crosses the town of Chasiv Yar, at a cost of 5,000 men, according to the Institute for the Study of War. (READ MORE: Argentina Is Making Progress, But Not There Yet)
Orban cut short his NATO summit attendance to fly to Mar-a-Lago to talk with Trump about the increasingly dangerous and precarious situation he would be facing in Ukraine if returned to the White House, thanks to the Biden administration’s indecisive mismanagement and poor planning.
An intricate and multifaceted U.S. led peace initiative combining military pressures with direct personal diplomacy on Putin, requiring a degree of focus and coordination which Biden is clearly incapable of, is the only way of ending the Ukraine war on Western terms without reaching the MAD of WW3.
But it will take a lot more than “twenty four hours” to convince Putin to settle for a bombed out sliver of Ukraine after losing a half million Russians. He now has China and much of the Eurasian continent firmly behind him as Biden barely managed to articulate at Thursday’s press conference.
