Speaking to the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, 70-year-old President Vladimir Putin confirmed his interest in moving the Ukraine conflict to the peace table after eight long months has inflicted massive damage to both Ukrainian and Russian troops. Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky talked tough last week saying he would only negotiate if Putn were removed from office, something so unrealistic, so preposterous, so irresponsible that the young Ukrainian president needs urgent talks with the White House and European Union. Spending the last eight months battling the Russian Federation, Zelensky gambled with Ukraine’s sovereign territory, losing some 25% of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, including the entire Black Sea coast and all its strategic ports. Zelensky is in no position getting all his funding from the U.S. to call the shots.
Biden and Zelensky gambled by not taking Putin’s offer in March, saying that the war would end if Zelensky would recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and accept Crimea as sovereign Russian territory. Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1954 by Nikita Khrushchev when Ukraine was a loyal Soviet satellite. Many other foreign leaders and industrialists have said that Zelensky needs to compromise on his ambitions to end the war. Zelensky didn’t control Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea before the Feb. 24 invasion, why does he keep promising today that he won’t stop the war until he has every inch back of Ukrainian territory? It’s not a question about us, we are ready for negotiations. But the leader in Kiey decided not to continue negotiations with Russia,” Putin told the Valdai Discussion Club. Putin wants Biden to tell Zelensky that it’s in everyone’s interest to go to the peace table.
When you consider that Zelensky’s gamble to take on the Kremlin has backfired, you’d think Kiev would want a negotiated settlement. But Zelensky is about face-saving, knowing, from Day One, he gambled with Ukraine’s sovereign territory and lost to Moscow. Washington and Kiev would like Russia to withdraw from its borders before any negotiations start. But given the fact that Putin controlled Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea before the war started, why has Zelenksky with U.S. backing asked for all Ukraine’s sovereign territory back? If Biden weren’t funding the Kiev government and the war effort, things would look very different now. “It is very easy to solve this problems if Washington gives a signal to Kiev to change its position and solve the problem peacefully,” Putin said. What more does Biden need to hear to move this conflict to the peace table.
Zelensky’s vindictiveness has no bearing on the outcome of the war. He needs to follow up with what the U.S. and EU want for the war. Keeping the war going carries too many risks for the European Continent and world peace, with no one in the EU or NATO wanting to take on the Russian Federation. Zelensky must ask himself why not one country, no matter how allied with Ukraine, has offered to commit troops to repel the Russian invasion? Zelensky has asked from Day One for U.S. and NATO troops and a no-fly-zone, only to be told that it could escalate the conflict into WW II or nuclear war. Yet that hasn’t stopped Zelensky recently from asking NATO Secretary-General Jens Stotenberg for fast-track NATO membership. Zelensky was rebuked again by Stoltenberg, told that NATO must have unanimous consent to bring any country into its open membership.
U.S. and EU countries understand the implications of NATO membership with its Article 5, requiring the Trans-Atlantic Alliance to defend one of its members. Biden has said repeatedly that Kiev has the right join NATO, even though it’s over the Kremlin’s objections. Biden hasn’t gotten that the Feb. 24 invasion started because the U.S. and NATO armed Ukraine to the teeth on the Russian border. Putin asked for months for new security arrangements, only telling Putin that was a “non-starter.” Biden has never accepted that his stubbornness to negotiate new security arrangements with Putin pushed the Kremlin to invade. After eight months of war, there’s a real chance for peace if all sides come together, let the neutral peacemakers at the U.N. trying to put a ceasefire and peace deal together. Putin knows that he’ll also have to make concessions to end the bloody Ukraine conflict.
Biden and Zelensky must come to the conclusion that war with the Russian Federation will not end well for Ukraine. Zelensky talks constantly of war crimes and unnecessary destruction to Ukraine’s infrastructure. But war is war, and anything goes when both sides seek to vanquish the other. Letting peacemakers do their jobs would be the best solution for both countries, mired in a war of attrition, where both sides stand to loose more live and equipment. Zelensky can’t demand that Putin step down as Russian president before he’s willing to negotiate a ceasefire and peace. Putin isn’t going anywhere, contrary to propaganda from Kiev that put Putin due to terminal illness in an early grave. Zelensky really has no choice but to let the U.N. do its job and end the conflict that’s gotten Ukraine nowhere. Putin will have to suck it up and leave most of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
