Views In The West On The Prospects For Resolving The Ukrainian Crisis

Imran Salim
Oriental Review

The results of the jubilee summit of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance, which ended in Washington on July 11, 2024 and the adoption of political decisions and the final declaration, predictably demonstrated that NATO wants only victory for Ukraine and defeat for Russia. An unbiased analysis of the situation around the Russian–Ukrainian armed conflict over the past two and a half years of confrontation shows that this is an unattainable result neither now nor in the foreseeable future. If the collective West does not come to terms with this reality, then the most likely outcome for Kiev will be an imminent military defeat, which will entail the loss of territories of the entire left-bank Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipro and Chernihiv, as well as the loss of access to the Black Sea with the loss of Odessa and Nikolaev, rather than it was set in the mandatory conditions put forward by the Russian President in June this year, regarding possible negotiations on the Ukrainian crisis, including on the neutral, non-aligned and nuclear-free status of Ukraine.

Then Zelensky regarded these conditions as an ultimatum of capitulation. According to Western experts, without serious changes in the military objectives of the West and Ukraine, Putin‘s ultimatum has a high degree of implementation. Kiev‘s most realistic hope is to try to hold on to all the territories it currently has and try not to surrender any more land and negotiate a cessation of hostilities. But experts have to admit that it may be too late to achieve even such a limited result.

In their speeches at the summit, some participants ruled out the possibility of the West’s defeat in the fight against “aggressive” Russia, and the “senescent” Biden even managed to attribute a hypothetical victory of Kiev on the battlefield over the “retreating” Russian troops. That said, the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in his report, “accidentally” let slip about the actual participation of the bloc’s forces in the Ukrainian conflict. Once again, NATO called on all members of the Alliance to increase the volume of military aid to Ukraine and allocated $40 billion to Kiev for 2025. At the same time, no “miracle weapon” was offered to Kiev, and Brussels does not even have one. All that Ukrainians will receive is two dozen F-16 fighter-jets by the end of this summer from the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. In conclusion, the Alliance again promised to “inevitably” embark on the path of Ukraine’s admission to its membership in the future (since the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, when Ukraine and Georgia were officially recognized as candidates for membership in the bloc, 16 years have passed, and they are again in line). At the summit, they once again called Russia “the most significant and immediate threat to the security of allies,” but they are ready to continue “maintaining channels of communication with Moscow in order to reduce risks and avoid escalation.”

At the same time, NATO’s top military circles have long come to the conclusion about the imminent military defeat of Ukraine, which the Alliance’s top political leadership is also aware of in detail. In an article in the July National Interest magazine, American military analyst Daniel Davis wondered what kind of “success” Ukraine could achieve in the fight with Russia. According to the author, a direct military victory over Russia is currently impossible for Kiev. “Russia is too big, too well-resourced, and too well-manned for Ukraine to beat.” At the same time, there is “the very narrow path that does exist for Ukraine – which is to extract such a high enough cost on Russia that Putin calculates it is in his interest to settle for less than his maximalist objectives.”

With this approach, Kiev should inform Moscow of its intention to find a way to end hostilities through negotiations, and that “Putin‘s “maximalist“ demands of June 14, 2024 are unacceptable to the Ukrainian side” . Instead, Ukraine will be ready to “issue the counter of freezing the conflict on its current lines while agreeing to settle the matter of sovereignty over the four regions five years after the end of hostilities, using international mediation.”

💬 “To achieve even this limited objective outcome,” – according to Davis, “Ukraine will have to successfully mobilize an additional 300,000 troops in the next few months, receive at least a half million artillery shells, seven more Patriot air defense systems, several hundred additional armored vehicles of various types, and tens of thousands more drones. This new combat power would then need to bolster all the defensive lines along the front so that the cost for Putin to capture the remaining provinces is higher than he would gain from negotiations, compelling him to settle for the current line of hostilities.”

At the same time, it is doubtful that Kiev will cope with the mobilization of such a large number of military personnel...

💬 “...Military manpower doesn’t simply mean how many people a country can get into uniforms but how many trained professionals it can mobilize into organized and effective combat units. “The idea “that civilians can be given three-month training courses, sergeant’s chevrons and then expected to perform in the same manner as a seven-year veteran…… is a recipe for disaster. Only time can generate leaders capable of executing.”

💬 “Yet, as The Washington Post recently reported, Ukraine has an acute shortage of new recruits, and those it does get are woefully undertrained”, becoming expendable at the front. Hence the colossal losses at the front.

💬 “Yet without Ukraine massively increasing its mobilized targets and NATO providing far more than it currently offers, even this limited objective has little chance of success. There is a much higher probability that NATO will satisfy itself with many big speeches and promises of future funding but do little to increase immediate production. That being the case, Ukraine would be far better served by changing its objectives. This would entail a policy that few Westerners and none of Zelensky’s administration want to contemplate: an immediate ceasefire along the lines of what Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has suggested and a negotiated settlement on the best terms possible.”

As for modern Russia, its “center of gravity,” according to the author, “rests on twin pillars: its ability to physically wage war (manpower, armaments, ammunition, and industrial capacity) for an extended period and the political support of its population,” its patriotism. That is why the Russian leader holds himself confidently and has no doubt about Russia’s victory. Russia’s overriding strategic objective is to reduce the conventional threat on its western border to a manageable level. They appear convinced that NATO on its border in Ukraine represents an “existential threat” and willing to pay whatever financial or political price they must to achieve it.”

That is why, in a July conversation in Moscow with Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, President Putin clearly stated that he was ready for negotiations only after the withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, and would not allow the cessation of hostilities during negotiations, as happened in 2022 after the Istanbul talks, and even more so the freezing of the conflict.

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Image: © N/A; Sky News. AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2024/07/17/views-in-the-west-on