The situation in Mariupol is ‘apocalyptic’, deputy mayor says there is genocide, Russian troops approach Kyiv, and while Moscow says the war could ‘end at any moment’ if Ukraine complies with the demands, Ukrainians are digging their dead men and women and children out from under the rubble. Against this background, Russian and Ukrainian ministers Lavrov and Kuleba will meet for the first time since the start of the war on Thursday. The outside world is hopeful and Moscow is feeding that hope, including a call to return to the ‘peaceful coexistence’ of the Cold War.
Dutch professors see opportunities for peace. According to Rob de Wijk (Leiden University), the Russian demands are ‘not too bad’: demilitarization, neutrality, recognition of Crimea, recognition of separatist Donetsk and Luhansk. Jolle Demmers (Utrecht University) advises the West to give up the ‘misplaced masculine ambition’ and to exclude Kyiv for good. For professor Luuk van Middelaar (Leiden University), granting Russian demands reflects the ‘power-political status quo’. Alternatively, he screens a Third World War. So do it, and succumb to the demands.
In theory, there are certainly opportunities. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not going according to plan. CIA Director Burns summed up the setbacks: the Ukrainians are fighting back, the West is responding with harsh sanctions, the Russian economy is faltering and the armed forces are not as modern and effective as Putin thought. And the word ‘denazification’ has (temporarily?) disappeared from the Russian vocabulary. Would Putin – for whom a democratic, independent Ukraine is a nightmare – want to back down if he gets an ‘honourable’ retreat? Can the Democratic leaders in Kyiv he calls “drug addicts and neo-Nazis” stay?
Putin’s Historic Mission
It’s hard to believe for those who review his package of demands for NATO (withdrawal to borders of 1997), read his historical writings, and let his statements about the non-existence of the country and the people sink in. Putin looks isolated and is already responsible, along with his executors, for war crimes committed. Which way can this poisonous ‘clique’ go now that Putin is rapidly burning all the ships behind him? Supplications from Western leaders have no hold on him. So is the disappointing start of the war – not without conquests, by the way – enough to hold back?
Maybe not (yet). The uncertain factor is the ‘economic war’ with which the West reacted. Perhaps this has no effect on ‘Vladimir the Great’, who apparently wants to unite the three peoples that sprang from Kyiv. But other Kremlin top figures now see their lives and wealth under threat. In a short time, Putin, who became popular with stability and increased prosperity, has thrown the Russians back to 1989 – a drama. Does Putin realize this enough to allow him to disrupt his historic ‘mission’? Nobody knows.
The 2008 Vladimir Putin was still willing to slow down. In the Georgia War, after several months of occupation, he withdrew to the borders of the separatist republics. But that says little about what the Putin of 2022 will do. The turn from a leader who wanted to become an economic superpower to openly professed and adept historical revenge has long been made. Just like that of an unfree fake democracy to a strictly repressive autocratic state.
Ukraine: what is Zelensky doing?
And what about the ‘modern Churchill’ Zelensky? Is he ready to succumb to Russian firepower and odds? On Tuesday he spoke to the British Parliament: ‘We will fight to the end, at sea, in the air. We will fight in the woods, in the fields, in the streets.’
Motivation counts. Russia expert Fiona Hill says (to The New York Times) that the Western experts who see ‘Ukraine’ mainly as a plaything in a competition between Russia and the West (and for that reason may or may not advocate Finlandization) ‘completely and completely ignore the opinions and beliefs and aspirations of the people on the ground ‘. Just like Putin himself. “He cannot believe that Ukrainians want to live like Ukrainians, in their own state, and that they make their own decisions.”
Ukraine has had bad experiences with international agreements. In 1994 it gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for “security guarantees” that now prove worthless. Now Russians are shelling humanitarian corridors and bombing residential areas. This aggression is creating new facts – in Russia, in the West, but especially in Ukraine. All Ukrainians now know that Putin really wants to “save” them with bombs from themselves, their identity and their own choices. That is the engine of the resistance.
In the Kremlin
By the way, President Zelensky has been willing to talk to Putin from the start and find a solution. Even before the war, he hinted that Ukraine was ready to shelve the ‘Nato dream’ and was ready to talk about the separatist areas again. He remains so, and he says he has solutions for the major issues. But not if it makes proposals to Russia in the form of an ‘ultimatum’. “Putin needs to start talking instead of living in his information bubble without oxygen.”
The current state of affairs on the battlefield, Ukrainians’ motivation not to be wiped out and Putin’s obsession with a ‘Russian Ukraine’ do not point to a real willingness to negotiate or compromise at this point. Unless. Unless the panic in the Moscow elite has reached the top man in the Kremlin. Minister Kuleba said on Wednesday that expectations are “limited” but that he is trying to make the best of it. For now, the dynamics on the battlefield seem to be decisive.