Current Affairs

Putin is tactically clever, he has moved his country onto a war footing after the special operation failed. He constantly adapts, out manoeuvring and moving the Ukrainian war into something other than a territorial reach to far. The initial plan failed because much to the detriment of his own beliefs that President Zelensky would flee in the initial stages of the war, he was out manoeuvred by the Ukrainian leadership which gained popular support throughout Europe and the United States.

Russia, the eighth richest economy in the world is in a precarious position, it has found to a certain degree new markets for its export of oil and gas, but the reality is that the Russian economy has deflated between 4% and 6%, which challenges whether the long term prospects of the Russian economy are as certain as the Russian President has signalled. But there are other tactical failures that have led to Russia being frozen out of the world, for instance the slaughter in Bucha, the bombing of the civilians in Mariupol or the absolute horror of the actions of the Russian’s military and their inability to fight a war without mass bombardment of civilians.

Ukraine’s Western allies initially were concentrated on the relationship between America and China, and to focussed on what was happening in the Taiwan Strait, than Ukraine and Putin’s special police operation and did nothing other than accept Russia’s argument for a neutral Ukraine. But after the slaughter and question whether Russia was committing genocide and that Russian forces were nearing Kiev, the West decided to arm Ukraine. The talks in Turkey, were to a degree dragged out on the discussion of security guarantees by Ukraine in the hope that Moscow would guarantee Ukrainian territorial integrity, however the talks collapsed on 13 April, after Boris Johnson’s visit to Kiev on 9^th April 2022.

The United States has invested heavily in Ukraine, with $47bn committed, including $23bn military aid. Biden’s demand for regime change in Russia made in a speech in Poland last March 2022, is no longer part of the remit of US argument. On 6^th December 2022, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, said that US aid would be restricted to the recapture of territory lost in the Police action by Russian forces, which means that the Donbass and Crimea were excluded from US support in the war, but the Baltic states and Poland support Kyiv’s plan for the re-formation of Ukraine as a whole.

For now the Kremlin whose argument is entrenched in the war and Kiev’s political elite, have become entrenched in the war and its outcome, will not happen through negotiations. President Zelensky has moved on from the initial discussions held last year in April that Ukraine would accept a certain amount of territorial concessions, but now a settlement based on a negotiable stance set out in Zelensky’s G20 address on 15^th November 2022, that Russia must withdrawal to the 1991 border. In April 2022, these regions were not part of the security guarantees that Ukraine would accept, which means Ukraine has hardened its point of negotiation to the integrity of its recognised borders at the inception of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine has moved on from the weakness of its position last April and is pushing for a security alliance with the West and a continuation of the West support through a security pact, which Ukraine hopes will in the future lead to tying Ukraine to not only to NATO, but also membership of the European Union. Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yemak and former NATO secretary general Anders Rasmussen hope that they will achieve a strategic imperative, which would be the tightening of the relationship between the West, NATO and the European Union. This will be a death knoll for Russia, whose aim to take Ukraine was to move the border further West.

According to Mark Milley, current diplomatic efforts are tied up on the impact of the conflict, rather than finding a settlement. Management of Zaporizhzhia, prisoner exchanges and the prevention of a food crisis But the question of weapons of mass destruction has largely disappeared and concentration of what is available to the West to deliver to the war has now moved into the arena of how to end the war. There is a real belief that new weaponry will challenge the mass mobilisations that Putin is now considering. It has become a question of moving the argument into a new phase, and empowering the Ukrainians not only to defend the land that they already hold, but move the Ukrainian front from its defensive position into advanced military warfare.

The question as to why the WMDs are no longer relevant is because Xi Jinping and Modi have expressed concern at the Russian’s posturing. This in turn has led to pressure on the United States, Britain, France and Germany to provide more high-calibre weaponry, not just tanks but also missiles. France has already said that it will be sending tanks, Poland is also sending tanks, Britain and the United States are in the process of deciding whether to send tanks to the Ukrainian front.

Will this be a game changer, that is not necessarily the question that should be asked, it is whether Ukrainian territorial integrity will become more pliable and Russian forces are moved back into their own territory. But it is now obvious that Ukraine is now part of the NATO furniture and has become an important battleground towards where the pressure will be asserted on the Russian forces, though other territories are being shored up through Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, but will this in itself challenge Russia’s own obligations to other territories, such as South Ossetia. Russia, seems to be a master of splitting off territory and the future of Ukraine will be a question of whether Ukraine itself will be willing to accept Russian occupation, just as Georgia had to accept being split in two.

So is there a possibility of peace or is this going to be a ground out and long war, that is the question that is mostly on the minds of the West, especially Germany, who before the war were dependent on Willy Brandt and Chancellor Merkle’s appeasement that led to the carving off of Crimea and Donbas. It is a question of how much more cooperation the West, especially Europe and the United States are going to give the Ukrainians, but if the war does end tomorrow, there is still the question of Ukraine’s long term security and whether guarantees can be made, and this time whether Ukraine can procure the weapons that it really needs to ensure its territorial integrity.