A WAR THE GENERALS WANT TO ENDThough talks continue, a peace in Ukraine is no nearer than when Trump took office
One constant in the war between Russia and Ukraine that Vladimir Putin started more than three years ago has been the willingness of the generals on both sides to say: “No more.” I was told more than a year ago that the stunning interview Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi gave to the Economist in the autumn of 2023—the Ukraine commander famously said then that the war had become “a stalemate”—was planned with the knowledge of General Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces. An involved American official told me recently that it is not the generals but the politicians—he was referring to Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, his counterpart in Kiev—who are keeping the war going in still contested areas of Ukraine. One major battleground is in Donetsk oblast in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces are continuing to take physical and political control of Ukrainian territory amid talk of peace. Bitter fighting is going on now—ignored by the US press—thirty-five miles outside of Donetsk City, in and around the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk. Last week Russian forces captured three settlements in Donetsk that allow them to block critical supply routes for Ukrainian forces and to threaten two nearby Ukrainian provinces. Putin is clearly intent on controlling as much Ukrainian territory as possible before he submits, if he ever does, to serious peace talks. Another American with intelligence contacts in Europe told me that diplomats there are convinced that the Russian negotiators are “laughing behind the backs” of US negotiating team, which is headed by Steve Witkoff, a businessman of good intentions but little historical knowledge, and Keith Kellogg, a retired three-star Army general favored by President Donald Trump. The Trump team is now headed for Turkey, where more peace talks with a Russian delegation are to take place brokered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was hope that Trump, now in Saudi Arabia, would join, along with Putin, but Trump is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his stead. The second American told me that the “sheer incompetence” of the US team makes it unlikely, in the view of some European politicians, that a peace agreement can be reached without a summit meeting between Putin and Zelensky. It will not happen this week in Turkey, although Zelensky has said he would fly there if Putin did the same. He said that with their recently increased financial and military support of Zelensky, the Europeans have put themselves in the position of where they are “too weak to end the war but strong enough to spoil the peace.” The involved American official with knowledge of the current negotiations told me that “the Russians are the problem now. Putin is no Stalin, but you have to go back to the transcripts of the Yalta conference” to understand the modern-day Russian and European states of mind. He was referring to the second and final meeting in February, 1945, of what was known as the “Big Three” leaders—Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and the ailing US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “The ghost of Yalta still haunts European leaders, particularly those on the Russian border,” the official said. At Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt, representing the Allies, “bought”—the official’s word—Stalin’s commitment to stay in the European war “until Hitler’s defeat by giving him control of the new post-World War I countries of Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the Baltic States. As Soviet power waned, they all clawed their way back to freedom and were welcomed into NATO.” In his view, the official said, after noting that many Democrats and Republicans in the Congress and the American bureaucracy agree with him, the Russian leadership clearly believes it has been “cheated out of just reward for their great sacrifice.” That was the theme, he said, of Russia’s elaborate celebration last week of the defeat of Germany in World War II. Putin and many Russian generals remain convinced, with much justification, that it was the Russian Army’s willingness to fight to the death in Stalingrad and Eastern Europe that was the ultimate deciding factor in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. There are many today in Western Europe, the official said, who fear that Putin’s elaborate WWII victory show was meant to present his continuing military efforts in Ukraine “as the first step” in what is feared to be “a long-term plan for regaining these territories” Russia has lost to NATO and the West since 1989. The official made it clear to me that he still sees a chance for Trump, obsessed as he is with making deals in the Middle East that will spread billions of dollars among all involved, including many private US corporations, to reach an accommodation with Putin. But he said that the state of combat on the ground that may explain Putin’s insistence on continuing his war and trying to take more land in Ukraine. “Russia may have the desire,” he told me, “but its performance in Ukraine shows they [its army] simply do not have the capability. For them Ukraine is a separate history story. They are looking to reclaim ‘little Russia,’’’ as parts of modern-day Ukraine were known for decades beginning in the Eighteenth Century. One of the lingering issues of the current crisis, the official said, is that Trump has “never heard of Yalta.” A second issue, he said, is that the Europeans, fearful of an escalation with Russia, “hear Trump wavering on American military support”—in the unlikely chance that Europe were to agree to join forces with Ukraine against Putin —“just when they most seek reassurance.” Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |