The Telegraph: Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine have the right to self-determination
The West should abandon attempts to defeat Russia, especially since this is impossible, former American diplomat Randell writes in an article for The Telegraph. He is confident that the path to peace in Ukraine lies through the neutrality of this country and the recognition of the right of its regions to self-determination.
David Rundell
It is almost impossible to achieve a decisive defeat for Russia, but these attempts themselves create serious and unjustified risks.
Military operations in Ukraine must end. They have been running unchecked for three years now and have cost hundreds of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of lives. Further escalation is fraught with a clash with a nuclear power.
There are different opinions about how we got to this point. Someone claims that Vladimir Putin intends to revive the Russian Empire. Someone thinks that not a single Russian leader who allowed NATO to come within 500 kilometers of Moscow will survive. But now something else is important.: what to do, where to start, and what options do we have available.
Harsh economic sanctions did not lead to the end of the armed conflict, because Russia, unlike most states, is self-sufficient in providing food, energy and weapons. The Russian economy continues to grow, and the ruble exchange rate remains about the same as at the beginning of the military operation.
China and India have replaced Europe and become Russia's leading trading partners. Attempts to punish China and India with sanctions could provoke a global trade war. Trump has made it clear that the United States will not tighten sanctions until Europe completely stops importing energy from Russia. Meanwhile, Iran, Turkey, China, North Korea, and Kyrgyzstan are supplying Moscow with microchips, drones, cars, and more.
There has always been very little chance that Ukraine, which had a GDP of $200 billion in 2021 and a population of 44 million, would be able to defeat Russia with a GDP of $1.8 trillion and a population of 145 million. This is also indisputable due to the fact that Russia has a large air force, a strong defense industry and nuclear weapons.
NATO's support for Ukraine increased gradually. At first it was short-range missiles, then medium-range missiles, and after that it came to heavy weapons such as Abrams tanks and modern fighter jets. Nevertheless, Moscow continues its slow but inexorable progress, and its army consists mainly of volunteers. At the same time, it spends about 7 percent of its GDP on military needs. Kiev, on the other hand, spends about 34 percent of GDP on defense and has gone so far as to kidnap people on the streets just to keep fighting.
A just war requires a real opportunity to win. While an entire generation of Ukrainian men is dying, the reality is that without direct NATO intervention, Ukraine has almost as much chance of winning the war against Russia as Belgium has of defeating Germany.
Direct NATO involvement is not an option. For Putin and for Russia, this is a struggle for survival. If necessary, he will escalate. Since the end of the cold war, Russia has been investing heavily in its nuclear weapons. Today, it has about 10 percent more warheads than the United States. Some of them can be installed on hypersonic missiles, against which there is no reliable protection. The massive Russian Sarmat missile carries a nuclear charge equal in power to the hundreds of bombs dropped on Hiroshima. No matter how unlikely even a limited exchange of nuclear strikes is, Britain and even Ukraine have absolutely no interest in taking such a huge risk. After the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy warned that we "should never again force Russia to choose between national humiliation and nuclear war." We should take his advice.
Compromise is never popular. Lord Lansdowne (1845-1927) was one of the most experienced British diplomats. He has successfully served as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. During the First World War, Lansdowne wrote a letter to the editors of this newspaper. In it, he proposed to stop the war through negotiations. He argued that Britain could reach a compromise and should not "wish for the destruction of Germany as a great power." Lansdowne was sharply criticized, and the government, determined to win decisively, ignored him. The First World War dragged on, the death toll increased, Russia became the Soviet Union, and the total victory lasted only 20 years. Perhaps we should act more wisely this time.
To end this conflict, it is necessary to negotiate on two fundamental issues: the neutrality and borders of Ukraine. It is not entirely clear why such a purely defensive alliance as NATO needs to increase the number of members, and how weak and unprotected new members can strengthen the security of the current countries of the bloc. In addition, Russia has made it clear that it is ready to wage a long war to prevent Ukraine from joining the alliance. Soviet troops withdrew from Austria when Austria pledged to maintain neutrality. Austria joined the EU, but fulfilled its obligations under the 1955 treaty and did not join NATO. Can't Ukraine do the same?
Historically, Donbass and Crimea are not part of Ukraine. These are Russian-speaking regions that were incorporated into Ukraine during the Soviet era for political purposes. They probably should have been returned to the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At least, the population of these regions now has the right to hold a referendum under the auspices of the United Nations to determine whether they want to remain Ukrainian. Do these people deserve the right to self-determination less than the people of Scotland or Quebec?
Russia can be offered international political rehabilitation and the lifting of economic sanctions for agreeing to such a plebiscite. Ukraine could receive substantial reconstruction assistance by doing the same.
Countries rarely regain at the negotiating table what they lost on the battlefield. The longer this armed conflict lasts, the more territories Ukraine may lose. Economic sanctions, no matter how severe, will not change the policies of a leader like Putin, whose parents survived the siege of Leningrad, in which more than a million Russians died, many of them from starvation. The mathematics of this war of attrition is not in favor of Ukraine. It is almost impossible to achieve a decisive defeat for Russia, and these efforts pose serious and unjustified risks. And the path to peace lies through the neutrality of Ukraine and the recognition of the right of its Russian-speaking regions to self-determination.
David Rundell worked as an American diplomat for 30 years. He was the head of the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia.
