CNN
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is ending war in ukraine on terms acceptable to its chairman Volodymyr Zelensky The West will need to convince Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he is losing.
good luck with that.
Ahead of next week’s anniversary of the Russian invasion, US and Western leaders are gearing up for a show of unity and strength designed to establish once and for all that NATO is in for the long haul and Moscow’s In the struggle till defeat.
“Russia has lost — they have lost strategically, operationally and tactically,” Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Wednesday that “Putin must realize he cannot win” as he explained the rationale for delivering arms and ammunition to Ukrainian forces. And Julian Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, told CNN’s Becky Anderson that Washington is doing everything it can to continue to pressure Moscow to influence “(Putin’s) strategic calculus.”
and in An opinion piece by CNN’s Peter BergenRetired US general and former CIA chief David Petraeus said the conflict would end in a “negotiated resolution” when Putin realized the war was untenable on the battlefield and on the home front.
Western rhetoric and diplomatic attacks will intensify as Vice President Kamala Harris attends the Munich Security Conference this week. President Joe Biden meanwhile will visit poland And a frontline NATO and ex-Warsaw Pact state next week, carrying on his legacy of offering the most effective leadership of the Western alliance since the end of the Cold War.
Watch bird’s-eye footage of Ukraine dismantling a weapon that sucks oxygen out of humans’ lungs
By most objective standards, Putin already appears to be losing. Their war aims to crush Ukrainian sovereignty, capture Kiev, topple an elected government, prove Russian power, and sever Ukraine’s ties with the West, which has horribly retreated. Russia is a pariah state and its economy is ruined due to international sanctions. Putin is being branded war criminal, And far from being cut off from the West, Ukraine is now effectively in the extraordinary position of being a NATO client state backed by the US and Europe, whose survival, even if there is an eventual ceasefire deal, will probably require decades of Western support. .
Yet Western arguments about what is happening in the war can only hide insight into Putin’s mindset. Russian leaders have long viewed the world through a different strategic and historical prism. Many foreign observers, though not those in the US government, eventually convinced themselves that it was not in Russia’s interests to invade Ukraine – but Putin went ahead anyway. He is showing no signs of being deterred by a year of defeats and an astonishing influx of sophisticated NATO weapons and ammunition into Ukraine. he is sending Russian criminals admit to their deaths Pointless progress in the style of World War I, even though the Russian army has already suffered massive losses.
This war is also not a minor territorial dispute that he will easily let go of. It stems from his belief that Ukraine is not a country and should be annexed to Russia. His survival in power may also depend on his not appearing to lose. And while the West says this is in it for the long haul, Putin is already at war in Ukraine since 2014 following the annexation of Crimea.
A frozen conflict that drags on for several more years and prevents Ukraine from becoming whole could be a permanent situation for it. He has already shown that he is largely indifferent to human loss. And given his rhetoric, he believes he is locked in a titanic geopolitical struggle with NATO vital to Russia’s prestige. The question is whether the West has the same appetite for the long haul.
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All this explains why Western strategists see the next phase of the war as crucial, as Russian forces prepare for an apparent spring offensive and Ukraine awaits the arrival of recently pledged Western tanks it hopes that he would turn the tide.
NATO’s unity and staying power has confounded skeptics, largely due to Biden’s leadership. But political conditions in Washington and allied nations are not stable and may shape Putin’s thinking.
In the US House, for example, some members of the new Republican majority are jittery. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz last week called for a freeze on aid to Ukraine and for the US to demand all the combatants “immediately reach a peace agreement”. Bipartisan majorities still exist in the House and Senate to defend Ukraine. But it is not certain that Biden can guarantee a massive multi-billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine. And if former President Donald Trump or another Republican wins the 2024 election, US aid could be in serious doubt.
So while supporters of Ukraine hope for a breakthrough on the battlefield, months and months of bloody fighting seem likely.
CNN’s Jim Sciuto reported this week that the US and its allies believed Russia’s coming invasion was unlikely to make major gains on the battlefield. “It is likely to be more aspirational than realistic,” said a senior US military official. There are also doubts whether the Ukrainian military has the capability to breach Russian defenses in the east and south in a way that could threaten Putin’s land bridges to Crimea. And Stoltenberg told a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday that the conflict was becoming a “grinding war of hate” as he called on allies to send ammunition to Ukraine.
Russian mothers gather to send Putin a message about their sons fighting in the war
The outside world knows that Putin is not considering defeat or pulling out of the war because of the complete lack of any diplomatic framework for ceasefire talks.
Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the situation was not likely to change anytime soon.
“President Putin has shown no signs that he is preparing for peace. On the contrary, he is launching new attacks and targeting civilians, cities and critical infrastructure,” Stoltenberg said in Brussels.
Fiona Hill, a leading expert on Russia and Putin, who Worked in Trump’s White Housesaid at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday that there were some signs that Putin’s determination was waning.
Hill said, “I think it’s a very grim picture, because Putin didn’t seem intimidated in the first place.” “The second thing is that Putin also feels that he has great support from the rest of the world, including China… It may very well take countries like China, pushing Russia, so that Putin There should be a break in the resolution of.
China is likely to lean on Putin to end the war even before the fall in US-China relations due to the flight of a Chinese spy balloon over the US this month.
And even though Beijing may be embarrassed over Putin’s performance in Ukraine after both sides declared a “no borders” partnership last year, it may see an advantage in seeing the US engage in a proxy war against Russia as it escalates his challenge to American power. in Asia.
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, however, warned Beijing on Wednesday that a long-term bet on Putin would only lead to disappointment.
“You’re going to end up with an albatross around your neck,” Sherman said at an event at the Brookings Institution, though acknowledged that the US was concerned about strengthening ties between China and Russia when it was a Each power was locked in the accompanying performance.
“The Ukrainians are going to deliver a strategic failure to Putin. And it’s going to create a lot of problems for those who are further supporting this unholy attack,” he said.
The problem, however, is that there is no indication so far that Putin agrees.
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