This is How Ukraine Ends
If I may be permitted one last WWII analogy …
The abject failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian “counteroffensive” has marked a turning point in the war. Based on what we see coming out of the Western capitols, as well as what we see on the battlefield, it is not too early to start predicting what a possible end scenario in Ukraine may look like.
I have broken down this article into the following chapters:
The West is running away
Those of us who are familiar with US “strategy” are not surprised that the western powers who staged the current conflict in Ukraine are now looking for a way out from the mess that they themselves created.
The Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House, John Kirby, appeared on FOX News recently to explain what the Biden administration is planning for Ukraine.
In Ukraine, a need to “turn the tide” — US
Kirby said, however, that F-16s are not enough to change the situation in Ukraine, as it requires more of other weaponry such as artillery and tanks.
“Now look, the F-16s will get there probably towards the end of the year,” Kirby said. “But it’s not our assessment that the F-16s alone would be enough to turn the tide here.”
Kirby’s choice of words is interesting as it appears to be the first time that a US or other western official has admitted that “the tide” is against the Ukrainians.
Certainly his framing of the situation is at odds with his boss Joe Biden’s assertion at the recent NATO summit in Vilnius that Russia had “already lost the war”.
“Putin has a real problem, how does he move from here? What does he do?” Mr. Biden said when asked about the timeline of the war. “There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine.”
Despite Biden’s tough rhetoric, however, Kirby’s admission that the US is simply out of stock when it comes to artillery and ammunition, and his downplaying of F-16 fighters as Wunderwaffen that will magically lead Ukraine to victory, make it clear that Ukraine is headed for defeat, according to US officials who are paying attention.
Indeed, the cold shoulder that was universally shown towards Zelensky at the NATO confab in Vilnius is another sign that the collective west is, in fact, cooling on Ukraine.
Losing support
While both Zelensky and the Ukrainian conflict enjoy broad-based support in the Eastern European countries of the so-called “Bucharest Nine” (B9) group within NATO, support in western countries such as France and Germany is dropping precipitously.
In fact, there are already fissures starting to appear in the alliance, as countries like Germany seek to reassure Putin that they are not seeking the destruction of Russia or the overthrow of his government, while the more hawkish members such as Biden and the Bucharest Nine leaders like Lithuania’s Foreign Minister openly call for regime change in Moscow.
Even in Washington, Ukraine is already proving to be a divisive issue. US Senators Krysten Sinema and John Kennedy wrote in an Op-Ed in USA Today:
“Ukraine is not without flaws. We’ve heard several unsettling reports of bad actors exploiting our generosity. Some of our costly weapons have ended up in black markets. And corrupt officials have tried to line their own pockets,” the senators wrote.
So — barring any unsanctioned intervention by the Eastern NATO countries it is clear that Ukraine is circling the drain, and NATO is prepared to let them go down.
From “as long as it takes” to “as long as we can”
What a difference a year makes. All throughout 2022, the US and EU were unified in their message that they would all support Ukraine “for as long as it take”.
Well, that messaging has changed now.
Sigh. Poor Zelensky. He is about to learn what the South Vietnamese learned; what the Afghanis learned: namely, that they do not really matter to the US, and the US will abandon them when they are no longer useful.
“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”— Henry Kissinger
Where do we go from here?
Putin’s overall strategy has for some time proven to be one of patience. He seems content to let Ukraine simmer rather than boil. The Russian moves on the battlefield have been for the past several months aimed at “wearing down” the Ukrainian armed forces through a war of attrition, inviting the Ukrainians to attack and then killing them off in large numbers.
The recent admissions by western leaders that they never expected the Ukrainian counteroffensive to succeed (as reported in The Wall Street Journal) is another indication that the west is “winding down” their involvement in Ukraine.
But the Journal report noted that the US and its Western allies would never launch an offensive without air superiority, something Ukraine doesn’t have. Despite the situation on the battlefield for Ukrainians, the US wants Ukraine to try to push harder to break through against Russian forces regardless of the risk of major casualties.
The Blame Game is in full swing
“Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan”, according to the old saying. Well, it seems that no one wants to accept responsibility for Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive, and the finger-pointing is becoming fierce.
Ukraine’s counter-offensive is failing to make progress because its army is not fully implementing the training it has received from the West, according to a leaked German intelligence assessment.
Kiev is spreading its troops out too thinly across the 1,000km front line and attacking in units composed of too few soldiers, according to the confidential document obtained by the German Bild newspaper.
Zelensky said during an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”:
“We did have plans to start it in spring. But we didn’t, because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons, still, more, that the training missions were held outside Ukraine,”
It seems that Ukraine’s western backers are perfectly happy to push more and more Ukrainian soldiers to the slaughter, and the Russians are happy to oblige.
Putin is walking a tightrope
For his part, Putin has to be careful to balance two opposing factors. On one hand, he has to show some progress towards ending the conflict in order to keep the more hawkish elements in his government — and the public — satisfied.
On the other hand, he has to keep the progress slow and deliberate enough so that the more bellicose NATO member countries (such as the B9) will not be tempted to rush to the rescue to avoid a sudden and catastrophic loss by Ukraine.
“Rope-a-dope” and the Big Picture
Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is aimed at a final and “comprehensive” victory not just militarily, but also geo-strategically and politically. The Russian goal is to use the current conflict to demilitarise not just Ukraine, but Europe and NATO generally.
And this is already happening — for months we have been reading about critical shortages of weapons and ammunitions in NATO. In fact, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, admitted as much when he told an industrial conference in Germany:
“Our weapons and ammunition stocks are depleted and need to be replenished. Not just in Germany, but in many countries across NATO.”
In this way, Putin is applying Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” boxing fighting technique in which one contender leans against the ropes of the boxing ring and draws non-injuring offensive punches, letting the opponent tire himself out. This gives the former the opportunity to then execute devastating offensive punches to help them win.
The New York Times has recently written that the Ukrainians are in the process of launching their last great offensive, and the West is throwing all of their reserves of weapons, armour, and manpower into this last, desperate push, which the Times says will last 1 to 3 weeks.
Once this “thrust” has spent itself against the Russian defences, I believe Putin will give the green light to advance, and then things will go quickly.
I estimate that by spring 2024, Russian troops will be on the Polish border, unless there has been a negotiated settlement between Russia and the “collective West” that includes the comprehensive European security framework that Putin has been proposing for years now, but which the US and its allies have repeatedly ignored.
What will Europe look like after the war?
Firstly, we should not be upset or surprised that the resolution to the Ukraine conflict will result in a redrawing of the map of Europe. The region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has always been subject to restructuring and change.
Unlike Western Europe, the CEE region has no massive mountain ranges and mighty oceans to help define and defend a nation’s borders, as is the case with the UK, France, Spain and Italy. Central Europe is a flat region with easily navigable waterways and broad steppes that facilitate the flow of people, goods — and armies.
Historically speaking, conflicts such as the 30 Years’ War often led to the emergence of new nations and the disappearance of others, as countries were broken up or subsumed into other entities.
Such will be the case here.
Wither Western Ukraine?
More importantly, NATO and those in the West need to lose their fear that Putin is bent on conquest. There is absolutely nothing to suggest this. Putin is interested in having a neutral if not friendly neighbour in Ukraine, and both Russia and the West have always benefitted from having Ukraine as a buffer between their respective spheres of interest.
In particular, Putin will not want to “conquer” Western Ukraine, and he certainly would not want to try and make the Western Ukrainians into Russians. I am speaking here of areas around Lviv, what has always been known as “Galicia”.
This area is vastly different from Eastern Ukraine. For example, the people are Catholic, not Orthodox, and they speak Ukrainian, not Russian. Western Ukraine is also known as the birthplace of Stepan Bandera, and many Banderists, including the modern day commanders of the Azov Battalion, consider themselves to be “Galician”. This was also the area from which Hitler drew recruits to form the Waffen-SS Division “Galicia” in World War II.
In fact, the size and shape of Ukraine has changed dramatically over the centuries, as various Russian authorities annexed land to add to the Ukrainian territory.
The Banderite Nazis thus hail from the area that was added only after the Soviet victory in WWII, when the borders in all of Central Europe were changed to accommodate the allied victors.
Putin may well be thinking that it is time for the borders of Ukraine to change again.
A gift to Poland?
It is almost a slam dunk to think that the upcoming partitioning of Ukraine will result in the Western regions being ceded to Poland. Indeed, there are many factions within Poland today that are actively agitating for the annexation of Galicia and the restoration of “Lwów” (Lviv) to Poland, which had first annexed the city in 1349.
Russian intelligence claims that the Poles are actively coordinating with the United States to support such an annexation — which seems believable given how Biden’s trip to Warsaw transpired last year.
According to Russia’s Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin, this joint military force will most likely move into the territories of Western Ukraine soon. In a meeting with Russia’s state Security Council on July 21, 2023, Naryshkin explained:
“Polish leadership is intensifying its mood to maintain control in the western territories of Ukraine, the western regions, by deploying its troops there. Such a step, as one of the options, is planned to be formalized as the fulfillment of allied obligations within the framework of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian initiative in the field of security — this is the so-called Lublin Triangle”.
“Dual citizenship” for Poles and Ukrainians already exists
In addition, Zelensky and Polish President Duda agreed a new law, the “Act on the Special Legal Status of Polish Citizens in Ukraine” which provides for special rights and freedoms for Polish citizens on an equal footing with Ukrainian citizens.
This Act reciprocates the “special status” afforded to Ukrainian citizens in Poland under that country’s 2022 “Act on Assistance for Ukrainian Citizens”.
These two acts essentially grant a de facto dual citizenship to Poles and Ukrainians, allowing them visa-free stays, automatic right to employment, free education, health care and other rights usually afforded only to citizens.
Poland’s proposed “peacekeeping mission” in Western Ukraine
It should also be noted that, immediately following Russia’s launch of their Special Military Operation, Poland proposed sending “peacekeeping troops” into Western Ukraine.
According to Reuters, Poland’s ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced the idea of a peacekeeping mission during a trip to the Ukrainian capital Kiev in March 2022.
“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission — NATO, possibly some wider international structure — but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said during the conference, which was broadcast on Polish television.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda reiterated Poland’s proposal at the recent Vilnius NATO summit in July 2023.
It should be noted that Poland has already established, together with Lithuania, a military force for such an occupation. It is called the “Lithuanian–Polish–Ukrainian Brigade” and is organised under the auspices of the aforementioned “Lublin Triangle” initiative.
A final settlement of hostilities in Ukraine may therefore include a “Polish appeasement” by Russia — namely formal recognition of Poland’s de facto annexation of the Western territories of Ukraine.
The Suwalki Gap
Indeed, Putin might agree to cede the Galician lands to Poland in return for some sort of concession around the so-called “Suwalki Gap” that would connect the Russian exclave Kaliningrad to Russia’s “union state” ally Belarus.
The matter of the corridor connecting Belorussia to Kaliningrad has become contentious since 2022, when Lithuania decided to impose a blockade on all rail traffic going to Kaliningrad, claiming that they are simply enforcing the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU.
In fact, Lithuania and Poland have recently announced that they may close their borders with Belarus completely.
Ensuring the complete and fulsome connection between Belarus and Kaliningrad may well be a part of any future peace deal in Ukraine.
What Russia wants
Russian officials at all levels — including Putin, the top military brass have repeatedly stated that they intend to prosecute the conflict in Ukraine until they have realised Putin’s stated objectives.
The “three objectives” of Russia’s SMO
When Putin launched his “Special Military Operation”, he said that he had three goals:
Safeguard and protect the people in the Donbas and their fledgling republics
De-Nazify the Kiev regime — i.e., liquidate the Azov Battalion and the other Nazi groups
Demilitarise Ukraine and restore it to neutrality — i.e., kick NATO and the US out of Ukraine.
The Russian people support these goals.
Moreover, every Russian official, when asked, has confirmed that the military operation will continue until these objectives are achieved.
Ousting the “unacceptable regime” in Kiev
This includes ousting the current “Nazi regime” in Kiev. Eliminating Zelensky’s “absolutely unacceptable regime” is an “overarching goal”, according to Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov.
Apparently Russia no longer believes in a negotiated peace treaty, and “regime change” in Kiev is their only solution.
Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R. Politik, told the South China Morning Post that Putin continues to seek the capitulation of Ukraine as part of a broader confrontation with the West and “without this he will never declare victory”.
First on the list of Russian demands will therefore be a change in government in Kiev.
Full annexation of Russian territories
In addition to Crimea, Putin has already declared four Oblasts in Ukraine to be “Russian forever”: Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Russia is almost certain to claim another four oblasts that it considers to be Russian territory — by history, demographics or both: Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Odessa.
These eight “Russian” oblasts represent 43% of Ukrainian territory, and they encompass all the areas that supported Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 Presidential election in Ukraine.
We thus begin to see a scenario in which Eastern Ukraine becomes part of Russia “forever”.
Indeed, that is what Putin said in September 2022, when he held a ceremony to welcome the four new oblasts to the Russian Federation:
Putin said Russia has “four new regions”, calling the residents of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions “our citizens forever”.
Putin will no doubt have similar ceremony once the additional four oblasts are annexed.
Towards “A New European Security Framework”
At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin highlighted the need for “a new European security framework” — one which recognised and enshrined the security concerns of ALL European nations — INCLUDING RUSSIA.
To make his point, Putin quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
“This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: ‘When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger’, Putin said.
Putin went on to condemn NATO expansion eastward:
“The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance,” Putin said. “We have the right to ask, ‘Against whom is this expansion directed?’ ”
“Of course we are not objecting to this. But why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this expansion?”
Four months later, NATO announced its “open door” invitation to Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.
That is when Putin began his quest to get a new, comprehensive security agreement in place with the US and NATO. He asked, again and again, putting forth “proposals on precluding the further eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of offensive strike systems in the countries bordering on Russia”.
In December 2021, Putin told his commanders: “As you are aware, we have sent the drafts of relevant agreements to our American colleagues and the NATO leadership”.
Putin also issued a clear warning regarding Russia’s intention to provide a military response if NATO’s “aggression” was not checked:
“If our western counterparts continue a clearly aggressive line, we will undertake proportionate military-technical countermeasures and will respond firmly to unfriendly steps,” Putin said in televised remarks. “I’d like to stress that we are fully entitled to do that.”
“We need long-term legally binding guarantees”, Putin added.
Putin’s draft security agreements were ignored in 2021, but I believe that Putin will revive those proposed security agreements and demand that they become part of any finalised peace plan in Ukraine.
Why the West will agree to Russia’s demands
As stated above, the conflict in Ukraine will most likely end with Russia having absorbed almost half of Ukrainian territory into its own direct jurisdiction.
Moreover, Russia will insist on replacing the current “Nazi” regime in Kiev with a government that is friendly towards Russia, and at best “neutral” in its relations with the West (US, UK and EU).
What does this mean for Western investors?
Ukraine is having a “fire sale” of its assets. They even have a government web site organised by the so-called “State Property Fund of Ukraine” dedicated to selling off Ukrainian assets to foreigners.
It is, of course, also funded and organised by US and western interests.
Organisations like UkraineInvest have been formed to help recruit and direct foreign investment in Ukraine, in everything from industrial parks to scientific research.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has seen three large spikes over the past 20 years — each one following a b road-based intervention in Ukrainian politics and government by Western powers, especially the US and UK:
This is because Zelensky has changed Ukrainian law to allow foreigners to buy farmland and other things that had been forbidden before.
BlackRock buys black earth
Zelensky has already done a deal to allow BlackRock to manage Ukraine’s reconstruction and restoration after the war.
BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment managers, has been providing “advisory support for designing an investment framework, with a goal of creating opportunities for both public and private investors to participate in the future reconstruction and recovery of the Ukrainian economy,” the company said in a statement last month.
A press release from the Ukrainian government reads:
“In accordance with the preliminary agreements struck earlier this year between the Head of State and Larry Fink, the BlackRock team has been working for several months on a project to advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds,” according to the Ukrainian government.
What will happen to Zelensky’s deals with the West once he — and his government — are gone?
A bargaining chip for Putin
Obviously, once Kiev is toppled by Russia, all those “redevelopment funds” and “investment funds” could become invalid.
Certainly any deal that includes resources and land that are now under the jurisdiction the Russian Federation will become, as they say, “highly problematic”.
Indeed, if Putin does not invalidate the foreign investments himself, the West may very well try to outlaw them due to “sanctions” or some other attempt to “punish Russia” which will — again — only serve to punish Ukrainians.
The status of these multi-billion (if not trillion) dollar deals will thus be a subject of negotiation once Russia has taken over the levers of power in Kiev.
Putin will be able to decide whether to honour the contracts signed by Zelensky — or not. He can decide whether to validate all the foreign investments made in Ukraine by what Russia calls “unfriendly countries— or not.
Certainly there will not be much that the US and its allies can do to Russia and/or Putin to prevent the obliteration of the billions of dollars and the massive trade deals that western corporations have signed since western powers first took control in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution.
Corporate oligarchs in the west, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, etc. will exert tremendous pressure on western politicians to accept Putin’s terms, to give Russia whatever it wants in return for allowing them to extract profit from their Ukrainian assets.
How the deal gets done
This is probably the most speculative aspect of this article. It is difficult to imagine a mediator such as China, whom the US now sees as being on Russia’s side, or most Latin Americans, whom Russia may see as being susceptible to pressure from their North American neighbour.
Even the Swiss have tainted themselves through their NATO participation and their “full” support for US and EU sanctions against Russia.
One thing, however, seems fairly certain: there will be no room for anyone from Ukraine at the table. Russia will insist that those it views as its primary adversaries — the US and the UK — negotiate with them directly.
Likewise, there will be no role for the European Union or NATO, which Russia views simply as a group of impotent “vassals” in thrall to the United States.
The Russians know who was driving the Orange Revolution in 2004 and who was behind the Maidan Coup a decade later. They know who forced Zelensky to reject the Steinmeier Formula and the Minsk Accords in 2019, and they know who pressured Zelensky to trash the peace deal he’d agreed with Putin in 2022.
So, similar to 1945, it will be the “Big Three” agreeing a new geopolitical reality in Europe. Only this time, it will not be a meeting of “allies” but one of adversaries.
The US, UK and Russia could even meet in Yalta, Crimea, in what was then, is now, and will forever be, Russian territory.
#End.
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Russia has what it wants,Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. To me anything else is part of the negotiations. The goal was never the Ukraine but the land east of the Dnieper River , a graph you showed on an earlier article
( 2010 Presidential electoral map of Ukraine, showing where
"Russian-friendly" Yanukovych beat the "EU-friendly" Tymoshenko.) shows it perfectly in my minds eye.