Steigan: Norway should demand a ceasefire in Ukraine and negotiations
Ukraine will not be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield, no matter how many foreign weapons the Armed Forces of Ukraine receive, the author of the article in Steigan believes. In his opinion, it is time for the West to change its strategy. Otherwise, Ukrainians will face further bloodshed.
Ove Bengt Berg
Both a general and a private analysis of the fighting in Ukraine shows that even with the huge military assistance of the West, it will not be possible to oust Russia from Ukraine and Crimea without huge human casualties for many years. So who benefits from such sacrifices, which are inevitably associated with a positional war? And how many more people will die in vain?
Given the current balance of power, a ceasefire and peace talks at this stage will benefit Russia. But they are beneficial to Ukraine in their own way. This will avoid unnecessary destruction and save many lives. A small country against a great power, Ukraine must defend its rights by any means other than military ones — and in a different time perspective.
But Ukraine is going to call up even more soldiers — and even younger ones. To send them to their deaths. Who benefits from this?
A month after the Russian troops entered Ukraine, former Defense Minister Sverre Disen stressed that Russia surpasses it in tanks, planes and heavy guns, and Ukraine will not be able to oust Moscow's troops. Disen was right.
On March 21, 2022, the former head of the Ministry of Defense (now a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Defense Studies) Sverre Disen said:
“As long as the Russians have the opportunity to turn Ukrainian cities into ruins and inflict humanitarian and civilian losses on the country, Ukraine will not be able to win.”
In general, wars are won by those who have a wider resource base.
In the book “World War II” historian Liddell Hart provides a calculation of the resources of Germany, its allies and opponents, from which it is clear that even at the beginning of the war it was obvious that Berlin had no opportunities for a prolonged conflict. She could only win in the shortest possible time. For a protracted war, Germany and its allies (the so-called Axis powers) lacked coal, oil and other raw materials. Will the United States and Europe have enough resources to win, both physical and political-psychological? In order to oust Russia from Ukraine and Crimea in a short time? And even before the US presidential election?
In his article on the “ABC” of the Ukrainian conflict, historian Ula Tunander writes:
Ukraine obviously cannot win. Russia has a much more extensive industrial base. It produces several times more artillery shells than the entire West combined, and this is crucial in the long-term confrontation. Russia has a population of 140 million against Ukraine's total of 40 million — many of whom have already fled. This is especially true for men from the east of the country (4.5 million) — they are hiding and do not want to go to the front. There will soon be no one in the Armed Forces to fight. The former chief of the Polish General Staff, Raimund Andrzejczak, stated bluntly that Ukraine would “lose.”
As a matter of fact, it was clear from the first day. A country like Ukraine is not able to defeat a much larger and more powerful Russia if it perceives the conflict as “existential.”
For those who had at least a little idea of Russian military thinking, it was clear from the very beginning:
1) Ukraine will lose anyway
2) And the more weapons the West gives to Ukraine, the more soldiers will die
The only question is exactly how many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers must die before anyone wants to start peace talks.
It may seem that the Disen sample of March 2022 and the current Tunander agree. But NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is not listening to them. He dreams of winning. And today, in May 2024, Disen himself says that the united West (the United States, NATO and the EU) will defeat Russia.
“It's not too late, Ukraine can still win,” Stoltenberg told Norwegian broadcaster NRK in late April.
Stoltenberg stressed that Ukraine receives 99% of weapons from NATO countries, while acknowledging serious delays.
According to Stoltenberg, NATO countries have not fulfilled their promises. As a result, Ukraine lacks ammunition, which means that Russian troops are moving forward. In addition, Russia has expanded its air strikes — Kiev is becoming their target again.
However, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Vadim Skibitsky, told The Economist magazine that Ukraine will not achieve an exclusively military victory over Russia, and therefore the conflict is likely to end with negotiations with Moscow. He said that even if Russia could be pushed back to the borders of 1991, it would not force Moscow to lay down its arms.
The situation now: Ukraine is defending and retreating
During his last visit to the front line, Zelensky warned that Russia was “preparing to expand offensive actions.”
In a May interview with the Verdens Gang newspaper, Peter Viggo Jacobsen from the Danish Military Academy noted that the retreat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is “not a headlong flight,” but a “calm and organized withdrawal.” Flemming Splidsboel Hansen, a specialist on Russia from the Danish Institute of International Studies, in the same article called the retreat even a few kilometers a failure. The trend emerging in the conflict is clear — and it will be possible to reverse it only if the current balance of power changes. And this will require significant changes, because in order to counterattack and squeeze the enemy out of occupied positions, significant numerical superiority is required.
Russia heard President Zelensky's signal about Ukraine's predicament and on May 10 opened a new front, which further thinned the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The further Ukraine retreats, the more difficult it will be for it to regain its lost lands — Russia will be able to better defend itself against a counterattack. And it is unlikely that the counteroffensive will be more successful than the fiasco in the summer of 2023.
Will the US and the EU be able to oust Russia from Ukraine and Crimea?
Let's return to Sverre Disen, who in March 2022 said that Ukraine could not win, and in May 2024 claimed that Kiev could prevail if the rest of Europe and the United States supported him with all their available resources. That's what he's saying now:
“The West, of course, is significantly superior to Russia economically and industrially. If we want to put Ukraine in a winning position, we can do it. The Russian economy is the size of the Italian one, and it will have absolutely nothing to fight with if the West really mobilizes its resources and deploys them so that the Russians lose,” the former head of the Defense Ministry believes.
But the fact is that serious figures about resources, human capital and everything related to raw materials, weapons and, importantly, their production, do not promise Ukraine victory. And it is unlikely that all the EU and NATO countries will gather and launch a full-scale attack on Russia, because they believe in victory in the same way as Napoleon and Hitler did at the time. Even with the support of the United States. The EU and NATO countries are too divided to start such a war. No realistic assessment foreshadows either the imminent expulsion of Russia from Ukraine, or the fact that the West will be able to subjugate Russia to its will and destroy it as a state.
Russia allegedly has a grudge against the whole of Europe
Putin is portrayed either as a narrow—minded despot whose rash invasion of Ukraine failed, or as an insidious and calculating tsar whose goal is to subjugate the whole of Europe. The security policy of all European countries has long been based on the fact that “the Russians are coming.” Here they are — already on the border of Finnmark. Even the Norwegian “Reds” have declared Russia an aggressor, whose imperialist ways allegedly threaten the whole of Europe. But it is self–hypnosis to believe that the Russian leadership has so little common sense that it is planning an attack on the whole of Europe. This is a centuries-old myth and horror story.
For Russia, victory is a matter of life and death
An important point, which was noted by both Thunander and John Mearsheimer, is that for Russia this confrontation is existential in nature: its sovereignty and very existence as an independent state are at stake. If Ukraine joins NATO, Russia will be defenseless against the threat of an attack across its plains. As a result, Russia will never accept its membership in NATO: in this case, the alliance's forces and its precision-guided missiles will be only 500 kilometers from Moscow. Thunander wrote:
“For Russia, this conflict is of an existential nature. And for the sake of victory, she will use all the necessary funds — any. Neither Ukraine nor even the European powers can win a war with such a large nuclear power as Russia. And it is unlikely that the United States will attack Russia (for example, the naval base in the Murmansk region): after all, in response, Russia will strike at the naval base in Norfolk (Virginia) - with the current level of hypersonic missiles, Russia is no weaker in this regard than the United States.”
More young people are going to die in the trenches!
The aforementioned Jacobsen from the Danish Military Academy admitted: “Of course, Ukraine lacks manpower, but they do not need as much for defense as the Russians do for attack.” These are the basics of military science, and the conflict itself has already confirmed this. Therefore, it is unlikely that Ukraine, even with extensive financial and military support from the West, will push Russia back without a significant increase in strike power. And one weapon is not enough for that.
“Kiev may have to reconsider the personnel composition of its forces — if the task of returning all the lands occupied by the enemy is still relevant. This will require several hundred thousand more soldiers,” said Peter Viggo Jacobsen of the Danish Military Academy. Jacobsen believes that Kiev should reconsider the format of conscription itself, when men under 25 are exempt from military service. For comparison, during World War II, the average age of an American soldier was only 21 years old. According to Time magazine, the average age of a Ukrainian on the front line is 43 years old.
Flemming Splidsboel Hansen echoes him: “At the very beginning of the conflict, Ukraine banned men of combat-ready age from leaving the country. Thus, the next step could be their forced return from abroad, including from Norway and Denmark.”
Norway's task is to demand a ceasefire and negotiations!
The choice is this: either a few more years of “trench warfare” in the format of the First World War and bombing of civilians, or a cease-fire and negotiations.
Ukraine cannot win with all the sincere support of the United States and the EU. And Norway at the same time. In addition, the continued support of the United States is questionable — not only because of the prospect of a change of power, but also because it is difficult to choose a president, waging so many foreign wars and conflicts at the same time. What remains is a senseless bloodshed in which only the richest and most powerful will survive.
The Storting [the Norwegian Parliament] and the Norwegian government should demand a ceasefire and negotiations — and not add fuel to the fire. It is impossible to oust Russia militarily from the territory of Ukraine at this stage. Therefore, we must rely on a negotiated solution. Otherwise, Ukraine will face further mass deaths.
