Zelensky Under US Patronage Versus An Adamant Putin Over a Senseless War

Zelensky Under US Patronage Versus An Adamant Putin Over a Senseless War Causing Untold Misery Turning Millions Into Refugees
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright March 2022

According to Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, Moscow could “end the war immediately” on condition that Ukraine;
[ ] agreed to sign a neutrality agreement that would block it from being a NATO member,
[ ] recognized Crimea as Russian,
[ ] recognized the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent, and
[ ] ceased all military action.

Does that sound simple enough to you? It does to me. But in case you don’t Peskov went on to explain further via Reuters on March 8th that negotiators on Ukraine’s side were also informed that Russia would end the war once Ukraine accepted the above four conditions. No ifs or buts!

This we shall have to see whether Putin will keep to his words. Chances are he will.

On the following day, March 9th President Zelensky said he was no longer pressing for NATO membership for Ukraine because “it was a delicate issue” that led Russia to invade his country. He also said to ABC News that he had “cooled down regarding this question a long time ago” because “NATO was not prepared to accept Ukraine.“

So, he was not pressing NATO because the union was not prepared to accept his country and he had “cooled down on the idea“. Also, he said he did not want to be president of a “country which was begging (for) something on its knees“. He was referring to his request for admission into NATO.

What we would like to know is how long before the invasion did he feel this way. Why didn’t he say something when Putin was amassing the army at his borders? He could have avoided the bloodshed.

Instead, if I remember correctly, he was telling every citizen to fight the Russians with whatever they had instead of calling Putin to tell him he had cooled down on the idea because NATO was not interested.

Anyway, that was one condition out of four given to him by the Russians but he did not address the “neutrality status for Ukraine“. Putin had wanted that in condition one. No to membership of NATO and Ukraine had to remain neutral.

For Putin, the demand had always been consistently the same, then and now. Zelensky knew Russia did not want Ukraine to join NATO, which was created during the Cold War to protect Europe from the Soviet Union. Putin sees NATO’s continuous enlargement as a threat with the military presence of these new allies on its doorstep.

By the way, I am just analysing facts before me. I am not taking sides but I am surprised at what Zelensky is saying now.

On the status of two breakaway pro-Russian territories that Putin recognised as independent Zalensky agreed that he was open to “compromise”. This was indeed comical. He was pressed to the walls by a big Russian bear and all he could say was, “Hello, shall we compromise?”

The dispute over Luhansk and Donetsk was nothing new. It had been on the table for quite a while now, at least since 2014 when MH17 was shot down over the same region with Ukraine wanting to exert its authority on pro-Russian separatists.

Why didn’t Ukraine ask for a compromise then? It could have saved many innocent lives including Malaysians and Dutch citizens who happened to be flying over the area.

Up until the time of writing, Zelensky still had not touched on the other two conditions, namely Crimea and military cessation.

We feel Zalensky would drag on the negotiations hoping for a miracle that would help him and Ukraine.

In the meantime, millions of his citizens are now refugees mostly in Poland and a few neighbouring countries.

But his hopes of getting help from the US through military intervention is not forthcoming. Neither is any member country of NATO willing to commit their armies to challenge the might of Russia.

For now, Zelensky is alone making his appeals to British Parliament, the US Congress and Germany for help.

In any case, the US Congress and the Senate had suddenly agreed on March 9th to provide $13.6 billion for Ukraine and European allies to use for military, humanitarian and economic purposes. So, Zalensky’s prayers are answered. A miracle might happen.

Meanwhile, European allies do not appear united in their efforts to help Ukraine. For instance, Poland had been helping Ukrainian refugees come out with a plan to send their Russian-made fighter jets to a U.S. base in Germany, with the good intention of handing them over to Ukrainian pilots to fend off Russian forces.

However, in return, they wanted the U.S. to supply them with U.S.made jets that have “corresponding capabilities.” This we assumed would eventually be paid for by part of the 13.5 billion military aid approved by the Senate. But the Poles failed to get prior approval from the Biden administration before going public with the idea. Of course, it was immediately shot down by the Pentagon dismissing it as “untenable.”

We do not know who else might benefit from military aid being extended by the US. For now, Poland had lost its chance to grab a chunk of the aid in military hardware. But we are certainly a big portion would go to finance the US Industrial Military Complex that’s hungry for war to sell off their weapons.

Meanwhile, all these could be brought to a quick end by Zalensky himself just by telling Putin that he would agree to the terms and everything would return to normal.

Otherwise, Zalensky would not even have a country to preside over when part of the 13.6 billion aid most of which would be in armaments arrive at his doorsteps. By then the country would have been shot to shreds by both sides.

Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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