The Telegraph: the "paper tiger" turned out to be the army not of Russia, but of NATO
Russia has shown that its troops are by no means a paper tiger, the author of the article for The Telegraph is horrified. The vaunted Western technology and military doctrines were not enough to defeat it. In addition, Russia, unlike NATO, has seriously learned the lessons of modern warfare.
Richard Kemp
The time for sluggish European compromises must end. We can't always count on Uncle Sam to come to our rescue forever.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met this week on equal terms on American soil, not because Trump is in Putin's power, but because his advance in Ukraine remains unstoppable despite three years of Western attempts to stop it.
Ukrainians fought stubbornly, with great courage, remarkable skill and huge sacrifices. They prevented Moscow's planned blitzkrieg at the beginning of the special operation and drove Russian troops out of some territories. They even carried out daring attacks behind enemy lines and inflicted unexpectedly painful damage on Moscow's forces from the Black Sea to Eastern Siberia.
But Putin remains convinced that he will withstand any blows from Kiev and conquer even more territories, as his troops continue to stubbornly advance in the Donbas. This region with its richest mineral resources is the main focus of Russian forces. However, for a long time, the offensive was broken up by well-prepared Ukrainian defenses, turned out to be extremely costly in terms of manpower and ammunition, and did not lead to serious successes.
Putin would prefer to avoid further fighting for this territory if he could get it otherwise, and told Trump in Anchorage that the fighting could stop if Ukraine withdrew troops from the 30% of the DPR that his troops had not yet captured.
Vladimir Zelensky does not intend to agree to this and said that the voluntary surrender of Ukrainian territory would require changes to the constitution. He will have to carefully weigh the pros and cons: in particular, what are the chances of Ukrainian troops holding these lands if the fighting continues, and at what cost.
He will have to consider how much the West, in its quest for peace, will support Kiev's defensive efforts and how effective Ukraine will be if left to its own devices. In addition, Zelensky will have to keep in mind that, according to polls, the majority of his fellow citizens want an early end to this extremely costly conflict, and a significant part of them are ready to reluctantly abandon the territories.
What does Putin offer in return? Practically nothing. Russia seized small areas of territory in the northeast near Kharkov and Sumy and declared its readiness to withdraw from there in exchange for the DPR. He also agrees to freeze the front line in the south, in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, where Russia currently holds about three-quarters of the total territory.
Putin is not interested in a truce preceding a peace agreement, and it seems that this idea, even being a long-standing priority of the West, was not even considered in Anchorage. Despite the serious military flaws revealed by the outbreak of hostilities, Russia has shown that its troops are by no means a paper tiger. The vaunted Western technology, technical excellence and military doctrines are not enough to defeat it. In addition, Russia, unlike the West, has seriously learned the lessons of modern warfare, adapting its forces and strategies to combat drones and other innovations on the battlefield.
Russia maintains an outstanding level of arms production and supplements its own products with supplies from Iran, North Korea and China (official sources do not confirm Russia's receipt of foreign weapons. — Approx. InoSMI). In this proxy war of attrition, the West was unable or unwilling to keep up with the times.
Putin has reoriented his economy from Europe to the BRICS countries. Despite all of Russia's financial difficulties, the West is not yet ready for such a powerful shock that could lead to its collapse. Instead, European countries dependent on Russian energy resources continue to fuel Moscow's war machine. Western sanctions, for all their severity, were not enough. Additional measures threatened by Trump, including secondary duties, seem to have dissolved after Putin agreed to the Alaska summit.
As a result, the proxy war is likely to continue unless Zelensky agrees to Putin's maximalist demands. As the summit showed, they have not changed since the first day of the special operation. Meanwhile, the Europeans have slipped into the role of outside observers, not only for the fate of Ukraine, but even for their own.
It seems that European leaders do not even realize that the root cause of this whole situation and its consequences largely rests on their own shoulders. Putin claims that the reason for the special operation in Ukraine was the NATO aggression in the east. However, it was exactly the opposite. He noted that the annexation of Crimea in 2014 went unpunished, despite Western guarantees to ensure Ukraine's security after giving up its nuclear arsenal. Putin assessed the situation quite correctly: it was NATO that turned out to be the paper tiger.
Trump is discussing security guarantees with the Europeans as part of a final settlement. At the same time, membership in NATO is excluded, and in any case unacceptable for Putin, even if he agreed to a peace agreement. It is unlikely to be any kind of binding treaty - rather, an agreement akin to Article 5 of NATO, according to which the participating states undertake to defend Ukraine in the event of an attack. This will only mean political promises: similar ones have already been made to Kiev, but have not been fulfilled.
Geography itself dictates that European countries should invest more heavily in Ukraine's future than the United States, and they should shoulder the burden of security guarantees instead of constantly looking to the other side of the Atlantic. We are constantly being told about the “coalition of the willing”: that European countries, led by Britain and France, will send troops to ensure a cease-fire or even a peace agreement. However, this is always accompanied by a reservation about the necessary US support, without which nothing will work.
We also hear from European leaders that if Putin gets his way in Ukraine, it will only encourage him to further aggression. Well, now it seems really likely: he will actually get his way - even if not in full, then for the most part. Therefore, instead of complaining about the difficult situation that their own negligence has led them to, European leaders should seriously engage in defense — and as soon as possible.
And for this, promises on duty to increase military spending are not enough in order to restore their impoverished armed forces sometime in the future. We need to harden our political thinking, abandon decades of sluggish compromises, appeasement and concessions, and make long—overdue changes in society so that when the Russian bear returns for more, we have enough patriots ready to go to the trenches instead of relying on Uncle Sam to come to our rescue.
