Fresh off his White House state dinner with 80-year-old President Joe Biden, 44-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron tried tin introduce some diplomacy in ending the nine-month-old Ukraine War, decimating Ukraine’s infrastructure and driving some 15 million citizens in exile. Macron’s the only world leader to show balance, asking that the allies offer Russia some security guarantees to help facilitate an end to the war. Macron told French TV TF1 that a new security architecture was needed to satisfy what 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin has been asking for since before the Feb. 24 war. U.S. and EU countries forget that Putin asked Biden for months to sit down and figure out a new security arrangement since he wasn’t comfortable with the U.S. and NATO supplying Ukraine with unlimited cash-and-weapons. Putin’s requests were rebuffed by Biden, calling them “non-starters.”
In the current war-like atmosphere, the U.S. and EU haven’t figured out what’s important is ending the conflict on the European Continent. Only Macron and 64-year-old German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have called for a more balanced approach to global diplomacy, saying in Foreign Affairs today that the world should not slip into a new Cold War, primarily with Russia and China. Scholz has been clear that he wants to wean Germany off dependence on Russia oil and natural gas, at the same time not dividing the world in blocs like East and Weat. Macron said all the right things when hosted by Biden, muzzling his true beliefs about ending the Ukraine War. Macron, unlike Biden and Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky, has tried to advance a variety of peace proposals, all of which rejected by Kiev and Washington. Macron wants compromise, where Zelensky wants revenge.
Zelensky’s top aid Mykhailo Podolyak rejected Macron’s suggestion of security guarantees for Russia, saying the Russia needs to offer other countries security guarantees. “Civilized world needs ‘security guarantees’ from barbaric intentions of post-Putin Russia,” Podolyak said in Twitter, Sunday. Podolyak’s view reflect the belligerent rhetoric coming from Kiev, refusing to accept that to end the war compromise must be reached. Putin has said many times he doesn’t want a puppet U.S. state on the Russian border with Ukraine. “Denuclearized and demilitarized Russia” would be the best way to assure peace in Ukraine and around the world,” said Olesky Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. So, when it comes to Kiev, Russia is to blame for everything, entertaining no possible plans to find some common ground to end the nine-month-old conflict.
Zelensky and his National Security Council offer no compromises, only more rebuke of Putin and the Kremlin. Kiev complains daily of Russian’s war crimes, hitting Ukraine’s infrastructure, including Ukraine’s electricity grid, plunging many communities into darkness without heat. “Someone wants to provide security guarantees to a terrorist and killer state?” Danilov wrote on Twitter. Every member of the EU should object to the provocative and antagonist comments by Kiev. Without U.S. cash-and-weapons, Ukraine would have had to compromise to bring the war to an end. Talking about “denuclearizing or demilitarized” Russia only makes a bad situation worse, prompting Putin to strike Ukraine with more ferocity. EU leaders like Macron and Scholz need to let Kiev know that they expect the government to work toward a responsible ceasefire and peace talks.
U.S. Under Secretary form Political Affairs Victoria Newland, meeting with Zelensky in Kiev, put the onus back on Putin. “Diplomacy is obviously everyone’s collective objective but you have to have a willing partner,” Nuland told reporters in Kiev over the weekend. “And it’s very clear . . . that Putin is not sincere or ready for that,” making statements bound to antagonize the Kremlin. Nuland parrots back what Zelensky and other Kiev officials want, that the burden of diplomacy lies in Moscow, not Kiev. Zelensky rejected Macron’s suggestion that the U.S. and EU offer Putin some security guarantees to end the Ukraine War. Zelensky wants to continue to battle the Kremlin but only if the U.S. foots the bill. Lithuania’s former foreign minister Linas Linkevious said that the Russia has security guarantees as long as it doesn’t “attack, annex or occupy” its neighbors.
Putin understands that NATO reigns supreme in former Soviet satellites, especially the Baltic States, where there’s great concern about a Russian invasion. Baltic States are too concerned about the next Russian incursion to consider that NATO countries must have a relationship with Russia or risk perpetual war on the European Continent. Ukraine’s conditions for ending the conflict are unrealistic and provocative. Without U.S. cash and weapons, Kiev wouldn’t make incendiary remarks about Putin and the Kremlin. “For this it is enough, leave the territory of our of country, pay reparations, punish all war criminals, voluntarily surrender nuclear weapons,” said David Arakamaia, a member of Ukraine’s negotiation team. Macron and Scholz know with those conditions the war will never end. Biden and key members of the EU must let Zelensky know that the war can’t go on indefinitely.
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.
