UKRAINE’S President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is reportedly aiming to force Russian President Vladimir Putin toward negotiating peace by this fall before another winter sets in, through combined military, economic and diplomatic pressure. He has set no specific timeline for ending the war, but he sees a window opening by this fall.
Zelenskyy offered to talk peace one-on-one with Putin at a neutral location, but the latter flatly refused. He took this as a sign that Putin had a massive offensive in mind, recruiting for the meat grinder 1.5 million soldiers, if possible. But Russia would have to wait until after the elections to the Duma scheduled this fall, mobilization being more unpopular with the Russian electorate than ever before. Ukraine has overcome Russia’s overwhelming numerical advantage through the use of domestically produced unmanned drones, missiles and robots, but Russian industries are able to catch up with superior versions of these weapons in three months’ time. Whatever shortage Russia faces will be filled by imports of North Korean soldiers, and drones and missiles.
The United States is holding midterm elections for its lower and upper chambers of Congress. President Donald Trump will have to keep his pro-Putin sympathies to himself given the overwhelming support the American public holds for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy visited Trump last month to follow up on the latter’s apparent flipping to the Ukraine side during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Ankara and offering to transfer Patriot air defense systems and license their production by Ukraine’s domestic industries. Later, Trump denied giving formal agreement to grant the license to Ukraine. To lawyer Ben Meiselas of the Midas Network on YouTube, Trump’s flip-flopping revealed the substance of the mission Putin gave to Trump via a secret telephone call on the fourth of July: trapping Zelenskyy to reveal the extent of Ukraine’s shortage of the Patriot system and denying Ukraine the license to produce it locally. The purchase of the Patriot systems would moreover take time because they had to be sourced from a third country. With the information that Ukraine was running out of Patriots, Putin ordered his launchers to rain ballistic missiles on civilian targets in Ukraine, where there were no Patriots to intercept them, killing several people, including a child. (For an explanation of Trump’s deferential attitude toward dictator Putin, nay, worship of strongmen, note the diagnosis of Trump’s psychiatrist niece Mary: a pathological weakness of character that runs between Trump and his father).
In the talks with Russia, Ukraine would desire no peace at any cost. Any settlement must preserve Ukrainian sovereignty over all the territory it owned prior to the illegal occupation of Crimea, rather than result in capitulation of any bit of this territory. It seeks a NATO-style security guarantee to deter future Russian aggression. Russia, for its part, wants to talk peace under its terms before discussing ending the war. This includes annexation of the entirety of the regions that it only partially occupies. It wants to be assured of Ukraine’s neutrality and of not being part of NATO. It also wants Ukraine to be demilitarized.
Ukraine must fight its war this fall so well that its victory will itself be the leverage at the negotiating table.
Ukraine may not only continue but escalate its drone and missile strikes on Russian military bases, especially those launching the ballistic missiles which the drones and missiles that Ukraine produces cannot intercept. The same is true with the roads, railways and bridges, which the supplies of food, weapons and ammunition pass on their way to the frontlines.
Ditto its strikes on the oil refineries to deprive the Russian military of the fuel to run its war and to bring the war home to the Russian civilian population. Ukraine may have to strike all the remaining Wildberries warehouses to bring the banks and the economy to heel. Russia is, however, taking measures that may mitigate the effects of the ensuing oil crisis on the driving public and the effects on the economy as well. It’s securing gasoline from its oil-producing neighbors and former republics of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. It is stopping oil exports in the meantime. It is also rationing gasoline at gasoline stations. A recent survey showed the public blaming the fuel crisis on the war but not Putin, but that is good enough.
Trump must deal with Trump carefully, catering to his monstrous ego. He has to be patient, making all the many members of NATO happy. NATO at its last meeting in Ankara allocated a sum of military and economic assistance, some fourfold of what Ukraine requested. But Ukraine needs more than money invested in its domestic weapons production but also actual weapons. The war may be shifting from the ground to the air, with fighter planes having to fly over mines-laden frontlines.
At the Bastille Day celebrations, it was moving to watch troops from 30 European countries marching ahead of Ukrainian troops. The leaders of the countries were onstage watching their troops pass by, flying their flags. Those were the countries willing to keep the peace between Ukraine and Russia after the conclusion of the war. Since North Korea is sending its troops to help its war, wouldn’t it be only fair if those countries be also willing to help fight Ukraine, the victim of Russia’s aggressive war?
