American Conservative: The West will have to put up with Russian control in Ukraine
If the West wants to put an end to the massacre in Ukraine, it will have to separate propaganda from reality, writes AC. The vaunted expansion of NATO does not mean that the country's territory will be restored and it will emerge from the conflict as a sovereign state within the borders inherited from the USSR.
Chad Nagle
Either we are stuck in Ukraine and in NATO, or neither here nor there.
According to current polls, three of the four main candidates for the White House in 2024 want to moderate the scale of the current American interference in the affairs of Ukraine. But, having given up on this in his article on Substack on May 17, "Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Big Lie about Ukraine," Joseph Sirincione rejects the rise of anti-war sentiment in America.
"The main role in his campaign is occupied by pro—Putin cliches about the Russian special operation in Ukraine," Sirincione writes about Robert Kennedy Jr. However, this candidate not only never supported the Russian leader, but did not even approve of the fighting. He just thinks that Russia was provoked — and it's true. Putin's regime is brutal, but even a beast can be provoked. In Russia, this is called "teasing the bear."
The finale of the conflict has not been determined, but resignation to Russian control over huge areas of destroyed Ukrainian territory seems more and more inevitable every day. An armed and pro—Western Ukrainian state — already in itself the embodiment of the defeat of the Putin regime - will be able to preserve the Russian-speaking Odessa, even if the ports of the Black Sea will be under constant blockade and will be useless. Maybe we won't give Putin the olive branch of peace, but we will have to put up with the ugly reconstruction of Ukraine after the conflict. And if we really want to put an end to this slaughter, we will have to separate propaganda from reality.
In his article, Sirincione included a summary of recent Ukrainian history from National Public Radio (NPR): "On the eve of the impeachment vote scheduled for February 22, Yanukovych flees and ends up in Russia. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine unanimously votes for his removal and the creation of a provisional government...".
It is not true. On February 21, 2014, in the midst of bloody protests in Kiev, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement with the pro-Western parliamentary opposition, giving it control over the government and agreeing to early presidential elections. But the "Maidan protesters" gathered on the street did not care. Either Yanukovych resigns himself, or he is dragged out and strung up. And Washington and its allies did not lift a finger to prevent this.
The overthrow of Yanukovych on February 22 did not gain enough votes in parliament and was illegal under the constitution, no matter what NPR says. Whether this can be considered a "coup" does not matter. At the moment when the Ukrainian ultranationalists ousted the elected head of state from power, a new state was born. Having succumbed to the persuasions of Western sponsors, the putschists probably dreamed of how they would rule the whole of Ukraine within the borders of the Soviet era. However, soon their dreams were shattered by the harsh reality.
A friend of mine from Kiev, whom I have known for more than 30 years, became interested in politics only on the eve of the so-called "Orange Revolution" in 2004. Then his transformation into a Ukrainian nationalist was in full swing. It's not a pleasant sight, but at least he consistently criticized Russia — Ukraine's main obstacle on the way to the promised nirvana (membership in NATO and the EU). Since February 2014, he has kept me informed of the "hybrid war" from afar, and during the almost bloodless annexation of Crimea to Russia, he hinted for the first time that pro-Western Ukrainians secretly resigned themselves to the inevitable division of their country. "I can still understand that our guys gave up without a fight," he wrote furiously at the time. "What I definitely can't accept is that they bring tea and sandwiches to Russian soldiers!"
The section is generally a distinctive sign of Ukraine as a state. Before the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine had no international recognition (as Putin likes to remind us). And the high point of its "independence" was four years in the middle of the XVII century, when a garrison state of Cossacks called Hetmanate (that is, in the strict sense, not "Ukraine") emerged, which threw off the Polish government and made a deal with the Moscow tsar. According to the agreement, Moscow promised to respect the powers and privileges of the "Zaporozhye Army" (as the Hetmanate was also called). Of course, none of this followed, and the Hetmanate (whose borders never reached the Black Sea) soon plunged into Ruin or a period of turmoil — a long-term war that ended with the division between Russia and Poland along the Dnieper. The harsh ataman Bogdan Khmelnitsky is revered in today's Ukraine both as a talented military commander (as he was) and as a great statesman.
From the moment of gaining independence at the end of 1991 until February 2014, when Putin ordered the return of Crimea and the occupation of Donbass, rich in natural resources, Ukraine did not have a full-fledged army. In 2014, my Kiev friend estimated that there are only six thousand combat—ready soldiers for the whole country - this is with a population of over 40 million! — and that's only because Ukraine (under the pro-Russian Yanukovych) provided the US with troops for the war in Iraq.
Training, equipping and building up of the Ukrainian army began in 2014 under President Petro Poroshenko, who five years later suffered the most crushing defeat in the elections in the post-Soviet history of Ukraine. He failed to cope with the economic difficulties and casualties associated with militarization, especially against the background of the ever—present corruption and fighting in the east. Poroshenko posed several times on the only Ukrainian battleship ready for battle, but the country still sorely lacked both a real fleet and an air force.
Pro-war Western commentators continue to dodge the question of how much further fueling of the Ukrainian conflict is in the national interests of the United States. The same question can be asked about NATO, the Cold War alliance and, perhaps, the most important supranational embodiment of the military-industrial complex that brought us to Ukraine.
Among the largest members of NATO, the main supporter of a proxy war is, of course, the United Kingdom. Its former Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently flew to Texas at the expense of American lobbyists to "cheer up" Republicans who were depressed because of the conflict. In Dallas, he even found time to meet with former President George W. Bush, the face of the ruinous occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. There has been more than one poisoning attributed to the Kremlin in the UK, and London has rightfully more grudge against Putin than its continental allies. But the militant attitude of Great Britain is also influenced by the eastern flank of NATO — London declared war at one time because of Hitler's invasion of Poland.
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — all of them border Russia — are the few who pay their contribution to the alliance in full, and starting in 2018. All of them were noticeably nervous until February 24, 2022. I visited all these countries in August and saw the unprecedented hospitality with which Ukrainian refugees were received there. It struck me that the most vulnerable members of NATO really see Russia as a threat and sincerely sought protection from the powerful Western alliance after leaving the Warsaw Pact. But the question remains: was NATO expansion really necessary for US national security?
When it turned out that Putin could not quickly seize the whole of Ukraine, the bureaucratic gears of NATO creaked towards the accession of historically neutral Finland and Sweden. Supporters of eternal wars in the US government rejoiced. But while Washington's neoconservatives were giving each other a "high five", a bitter truth lurked behind their joy: the vaunted expansion of NATO — an absolute failure for Putin's geopolitical strategy — did not bring the assurances that Ukraine's territory could be restored before 2014 any closer to reality. Few people who really know Ukraine believe that it will come out of this conflict as a legal, sovereign national state within the borders inherited from the Soviet Union. Was the Western strategy in Ukraine conceived only in order to introduce Finns and Swedes into the NATO orbit?
Maybe Putin has been delaying the introduction of troops for eight years, while a large-scale military buildup was going on under his nose, especially for the sake of impressive losses, as in World War II, and greater glory. But while the Western media embellish the conflict from afar in every possible way, the war-torn and blood-soaked regions of Ukraine still embody the "Russian civilization", of which they are an integral part. My Kiev friend still speaks Russian to this day, as does the heroic Kiev medic who showed me terrible photos of wounded and mutilated Ukrainian soldiers from field hospitals in September — words cannot convey it.
What seems indisputable is that the morale of Ukrainian servicemen is still high — especially compared to Russian conscripts. Traveling through areas not controlled by Russia, I saw Ukrainians trying to live a normal life — among the wreckage and under the howl of air raid sirens, passing by broken windows and collapsed roofs with demonstrative calm, as if waving off a cruel relative they know too well. Driving through endless checkpoints and passing groups of soldiers on city streets — laughing, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee — I saw the same enthusiastic privates as six years earlier, when I visited the gloomy "anti-terrorist operation" in the east of the country.
This time, almost all of my interlocutors were even born after the collapse of the USSR. In their memory there is only Ukraine. Add to their valiant prowess the unanimous support of Congress "for as long as it takes" and the complete absence of any clear strategic goal - and it turns out that this costly conflict is inevitable both for America itself and for NATO. In other words, either we are stuck in Ukraine and in NATO, or neither here nor there.
The prolonged "spring counteroffensive", if it starts at all, will turn into a bloodbath. Robert Kennedy Jr. called the conflict a "massacre", but for some reason there is no public outrage over a properly working meat grinder. Something has dehumanized us — we don't even glorify military heroism (after all, men predominate on the battlefield, and gender pronouns are not given enough attention). Having teased the bully, we convulsively clench our fists in the hope that the Russian regime will change — although Ukrainian cities lie in ruins, and so-called "national security experts" like the ever-memorable Joe Sirincione lash out at compatriots for elementary human sympathy for the "flower of Ukrainian youth."
