By Wayne Allensworth
In my previous piece on the war in Ukraine, I noted some sizable cracks appearing in the globalist elite’s consensus on the war. The Blob’s war aims may be shifting from trying to destroy the Putin regime to helping Ukraine enough to prompt the Russians, who are inflicting huge casualties on the Ukrainians and steadily, slowly advancing in Eastern Ukraine, to come to the bargaining table.
Earlier this month, CNN reported that the Western powers were discussing a possible framework for a peace agreement without Ukrainian participation:
“US officials have in recent weeks been meeting regularly with their British and European counterparts to discuss potential frameworks for a ceasefire and for ending the war through a negotiated settlement, multiple sources familiar with the talks told CNN. Among the topics has been a four-point framework proposed by Italy late last month. That framework involves Ukraine committing to neutrality with regard to NATO in exchange for some security guarantees, and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia on the future of Crimea and the Donbas region.
Ukraine is not directly involved in those discussions, despite the US commitment to ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.’”
Subsequently, on June 12, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, during talks with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, brought up Ukraine making territorial concessions in order to secure a peace deal:
“President Zelensky has stated many times, this war will end at the negotiating table. The question is what kind of position will the Ukrainians have when they negotiate a solution? Our responsibility is to make that position as strong as possible. We know that there is a very close link between what you can achieve at the negotiating table and your position at the battlefield… So that was ‘peace is possible’ – that’s not the question anyway, the question is: what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory? How much independence? How much sovereignty? How much freedom? How much democracy are you willing to sacrifice for peace? And that’s a very difficult moral dilemma. And it’s for those who are paying the highest price to make that judgement.”
Stoltenberg also mentioned that Finland itself had made territorial concessions to Moscow after its “Winter War” struggle with the Soviet Union, and that those territorial concessions made it possible for Finland to emerge from the Second World War as an independent state with most of its territory intact.
President Niinistö replied to Stoltenberg’s comments by saying that “Making peace is not an easy task,” but noted that the Finns “had to make the peace” with the Soviets.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian losses have been mounting. While Ukrainian President Zelenskiy had earlier mentioned losses of 50-100 Ukrainian troops killed in action every day, his advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak, while pleading for more NATO military aid (he stated that there was a “complete lack of parity” between the Ukrainian and Russian armies on the battlefield), recently cited a figure of 100-200 Ukrainian soldiers dying daily.
Compare that to K.I.A. figures for American forces at the height of U.S. involvement in Vietnam: In April of 1969, for example, there were 543 Americans reported killed in action, or about 18 per day, the highest monthly total for the entire war.
The Ukrainian pleas are taking on a whiff of desperation, as did Zelenskiy’s bold claim that in the face of such losses and the methodical Russian advance, Ukraine would re-take all its lost ground, including Crimea.
I doubt that even the most hawkish globalists now believe that is possible, if they ever did. But Russia’s previous claims that the West was prepared to “fight to the last Ukrainian” were apparently not far off the mark.
It became evident much earlier that the Ukrainians were in considerably worse shape than the Western media—and the Ukrainian authorities’—narrative maintained. The vaunted Azov battalion was virtually destroyed in Mariupol, its remnants surrendering, as did Ukrainian Marines who had complained that they lacked supplies, food, indeed, any kind of serious support from the military leadership. The Marines said that the leadership had abandoned them, a compliant similar to that made by Azov fighters trapped in the gigantic Azovstal plant. There have been stories circulating of other Ukrainian units, lacking adequate training and support, finding themselves in a desperate condition. The soldiers who voiced their complaints in this Washington Post piece, itself a sign that the Blob’s consensus was cracking up, were subsequently arrested.
The Marines who gave up in Mariupol and the soldiers who talked to the Post were denounced by their superiors, who have seemed far more concerned with hunting down Russian sympathizers than taking care of their men.
Whatever issues the Russians have had, and there have apparently been serious equipment and supply failures, however many blunders their commanders have made, and in spite of whatever tactical victories the Ukrainian side has won, they are still advancing, outgunning the Ukrainians.
I will repeat: It’s time to stop encouraging the Ukrainians to continue a war they cannot win, one that could still escalate into a broader, much more dangerous confrontation with an unpredictable outcome.
Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.
