Back in May, without making much of a splash in the mainstream press, China and Brazil presented a joint proposal to start peace talks that would include both Kiev and Russia. Unlike the sham peace talks being planned by Switzerland to take place in Lucerne, the China/Brazil talks would include both Moscow and Kiev, reasoning that you cannot get far trying to negotiate peace if one of the sides is banned from entry. China and Brazil had no plans to send a high level delegation on a wild goose chase around the Alps, preferring to press for genuine talks.
The sham summit, which opened on 14 June, was certainly a grand affair. The Swiss government invited over 160 countries, put the delegates in a posh hotel overlooking Lake Lucerne, and announced that the summit’s goal was “to provide a forum where world leaders discuss paths towards a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, based on international law and the UN Charter”.
However, as the summit drew near, doubts grew as to how many delegates could be persuaded to come, and how high-ranking were those that were being sent. But panic really set in as the rumours started that Joe Biden himself was thinking of ducking out, pleading prior arrangements.
News that Biden was considering absenting himself from the jamboree enraged Zelensky, who complained that if he didn’t turn up, his absence “would only be applauded by Putin, personally applauded by Putin, and it would be a standing ovation”.
As it turned out, Biden just palmed off the vice-president Kamala Harris in his stead, which pleased nobody. Meanwhile the only president who could have lent this circus some kind of legitimacy, namely Vladimir Putin himself, was of course banned.
With a good deal less fanfare, on the day before the Swiss conference, Vladimir Putin declared that Russia was willing to order a cease-fire and talk to Kiev, but only if Kiev withdrew its troops from the four regions that Moscow had liberated (Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhia regions) and renounced its ambition to join the warmongering Nato alliance. At the time of writing (14 June) the Swiss charade has only just got under way, but we can safely say that Vladimir Putin’s announcement on the previous day will loom large in the discussions that ensue, if anything more so than if he had been present.
Whatever is said in public, the simple reality is impossible to escape: Ukraine cannot win the war and neither US president Biden nor president non-elect Zelensky have any realistic method by which they could indefinitely stave off the Ukrainian defeat, let alone achieve their professed goal, the return of all territories occupied by Russia.
Those seeking consolation for this state of affairs may comfort themselves by the fact that on his latest tour around Europe, begging bowl in hand, Zelensky was able to sign security agreements with Belgium and Spain. But such flimsy bilateral tokens of support as these offer small compensation for the failure of the EU members to agree a serious commitment from the EU itself. Hungary’s Viktor Oban was blamed for this failure, but it is not to be doubted that more than one sigh of relief from member states will have greeted this outcome, letting grateful members off the hook.
And so far as the US is concerned, the truth is that, outside the immediate circle of the geriatric Biden, very few people in Congress with any influence truly believe there can be any serious kind of ‘victory’ for the Kiev junta, and certainly not one that would turn the clock back to 2022 and deliver Crimea back into bondage. Any such fantasies are quietly being ditched, or else postponed to some non-specific time in the future. Instead, other (equally hopeless) scenarios are being spun. Some advise the collective West to hunker down for a lengthy war of attrition so Kiev can live to fight again. Others urge throwing caution to the wind and ‘calling Putin’s bluff’.
Foremost among these latter is the departing Nato chief Stoltenberg, who is pushing hard for the US to give up its (official) policy which supposedly forbids the use of US-supplied rockets against Russia, warning that “The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine. Especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkiv, close to the border, to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.” And in a bitter assessment on the hypocrisy of the collective West, Zelensky jeered that the West just wanted “Ukraine to win in a way that Russia does not lose”.
As Stoltenberg nears the end of his term as Secretary General of Nato, his nightmare must be that the next US president will make it a priority to disentangle the US from its commitments to Kiev, cutting and running. Even if the lawyers manage to bring Trump low, it is difficult to see how any electable alternative leadership could long prosper without making a radical break with the Biden school of blind optimism as regards Ukraine. Fears that a new regime would turn its back on Kiev are perhaps behind moves to bring the existing Ramstein Group (an alliance of 56 countries pledged to aiding Kiev, formed when the prospects for the Kiev junta and its imperialist masters looked rosier) under the effective control of Nato. But it will take more than this kind of swift institutional footwork to restore confidence in the Ukraine war.
Biden was back at the G7 summit in Puglia, signing a ten-year security agreement with Zelensky. But the gloss rather came off this agreement when it was realised that the small print includes a provision that says it can be terminated at any time with just six months’ notice. On the back of this dodgy agreement and some more dubious military aid promises, Biden felt able to brag that the G7 had taken “major steps” at the summit that “collectively show Putin that he cannot wait us out, he cannot divide us and we will be with Ukraine until they prevail in this war”. Perhaps we should ask him how things are looking six months down the line.
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