Joe Biden's proposal: Assure peace with Moscow by ceding territories.
- How to recognize a traitor, father?
“He will be the first to run to negotiate peace with the enemy.”
Ivan Franko "Zakhar Berkut"
In one of the previous articles on Glavkom, “Ukrainian territories in exchange for a second term in the White House. Biden's Plan B" it was shown that President Biden, in his policy regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, proceeds from the need to “freeze it”, that is, in other words, to establish peace by transferring the occupied Ukrainian territories to Moscow. The means of forcing Ukraine to make territorial concessions should have been, according to the “Biden plan”, also supported by Germany, by limiting the provision of weapons necessary for the offensive.
Despite the short time that has passed since this publication, the status of the “Biden plan” has changed significantly.
Firstly, it actually got rid of the “hypothetical” camouflage sticker and acquired the features of an official course. According to Politico, the Biden administration is gradually changing the focus of its support for Ukraine, now focusing on strengthening its purely defensive capabilities and, accordingly, strengthening its position in future negotiations with the Kremlin after the war. The resulting peace agreements will provide, in particular, for the transfer of part of the Ukrainian territories to Moscow.
In other words, the “Biden plan” is now acquiring the status of an official doctrine in the US approach to resolving the Russian-Ukrainian war, the essence of which boils down to soft coercion of Ukraine to peace in exchange for its territory. According to The New York Times, certain government circles and think tanks have already begun developing various models for achieving a truce in the Russian-Ukrainian war; They are working on issues related to the ceasefire, the disengagement of troops, security guarantees to the parties, the creation of international monitoring missions to monitor the implementation of agreements, and the like. That is, all that empty “crap” in terms of the effectiveness of ensuring peace, which the international community at one time tirelessly imposed on us within the framework of the Minsk negotiations.
It is noteworthy that the limitation of Ukraine’s offensive capabilities provided for by the “Biden plan” is delicately and diplomatically called strengthening (!) its positions in negotiations with Moscow. Not by capitulation, not by a means of appeasing Putin, not by the dismemberment of Ukraine, as it really is, but by “strengthening” its position in negotiations for peace! What can I say, it sounds extremely humane and pathetic. But in fact, all this verbiage, well, almost according to Orwell (“war is peace”) is nothing more than a manifestation of boundless cynicism, which does not smell of humanism. It is noteworthy that the very attempt to disguise the real ethical and legal essence of the plan, that is, its inhumane and illegal nature, is the result of the authors’ fear of calling a spade a spade, because this could most likely entail a negative image trail for them. And this fear is, by the way, good news in this situation, which will be explained separately later.
Secondly, by a strange coincidence, the “Biden plan” has every chance in the near future to turn, if not into “Putin’s plan,” then certainly into “the plan of two presidents.” In recent months, Biden’s idea of “freezing” the Russian-Ukrainian war has received quite active, although perhaps not yet direct, support from the Kremlin. For some reason, Moscow’s desire for peace awoke quite sharply and, according to the same The New York Times, it began intensively sending official and unofficial signals to our Western partners about its interest in a ceasefire. Moscow's repeated reminders of this, according to Newsweek magazine, found a response in the souls of those politicians who consider “freezing” the war to be the only possible way to end it, as well as those who are long-time sympathizers of the Kremlin.
Due to this coincidence of the positions of Washington and Moscow in relation to the Russian-Ukrainian war, more precisely to the need to reach agreements on a ceasefire, they, it seems, again, as in 2021, will be ready to jointly defend peace in Europe as a whole and in Ukraine in in particular. True, then this ended with Washington agreeing on some general modalities of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and certain of its rules. But this time their joint efforts will no longer be multi-vector, because they will be based on a single conceptual basis, which is the “Biden plan.” The consensus of the two capitals, which is now being formed on the issue of a ceasefire, thus has every chance of turning the “Biden plan” into a kind of “Biden-Putin plan to pacify Ukraine.” Or maybe even into the “pact” of the same name. At least now for Ukraine, and later for history, to something like the “Munich conspiracy.”
“Do Russians want war,” or does Putin want peace?
The reasons for Biden’s interest in reaching agreements on a truce are clear and were discussed in detail by us earlier in two previous publications (here and here). As for Putin, the situation with him is more complicated. It is not entirely clear what kind of vicissitudes of social life suddenly forced the Moscow dictator to tirelessly beg for a truce. Therefore, let’s try to find out whether Putin really wants peace and why he began to seek a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. To understand how it really is, let’s answer a few simple questions for ourselves.
1. First of all, let's find out whether Putin is a peace-loving politician who wants peace without war in general and a peaceful Ukraine in particular?
The answer to this question is obviously negative, because if Putin had such aspirations, he would not have started a completely unprovoked war with Ukraine (we don’t even remember Georgia and Syria here). The war in Ukraine is not a random step, carried out under the influence of mood swings, a “drink” of cognac or a not entirely kind word from Kabaeva. Muscovy has been preparing for it since the beginning of independent Ukraine and especially intensively and purposefully throughout Putin’s reign. Since 2014, Moscow’s open military pressure on Ukraine has generally been steadily increasing, bringing more and more losses and human suffering to the Ukrainians. If Putin really wanted peace, then it could be achieved, as they say, “in two clicks.” To end the war, Moscow simply needs to liberate the occupied Ukrainian territories and withdraw its troops from there. But this is not even close. So what kind of desire for peace can Putin have in this state of affairs?
2. Perhaps Putin has only now begun to strive for peace, since he has come to the conclusion that Muscovy has suffered significant losses that make a war with Ukraine “unprofitable”?
Very doubtful. After all, the territory of the Moscow kingdom itself practically does not suffer from the war and the population almost does not feel it in their daily troubles. At least for now. And any human losses never bothered Putin at all. This is clearly demonstrated by the numerous bloody pages of the biography of the Moscow dictator, including the “meat” assaults. They convincingly demonstrate the absolutely insignificant significance for Putin of someone else’s human life. Several thousand citizens killed and maimed in the war are nothing more than a minor misunderstanding for him. The latter can and should be neglected, because who even counts those slaves, especially when it comes to “state interests,” no matter real or imaginary. Moreover, no one in Muscovy has ever given up the slogan “women will give birth” and is not going to give up. This is evidenced at least by Putin’s declared goal of having 7-8 children in each family. The corresponding government program is most likely already at the start and is simply awaiting the go-ahead in the form of funding. As well as muted in front of the so-called. “presidential elections” campaign for a ban on abortion. So, no human losses, in principle, are and cannot be an incentive for Putin to negotiate peacefully and stop aggression against Ukraine.
3. So, perhaps Putin’s SVO (special military operation) achieved its goals and, accordingly, there is simply no point in continuing the war further? After all, new Ukrainian territories have been captured, and the land corridor to Crimea has been breached?
And again, no. A slight increase in the area of the occupation zone in comparison with the territory of Ukraine and the acquisition of a land corridor to Crimea were by no means the goal of a full-scale invasion. Putin needs all of Ukraine. And not so much occupied as conquered. And for this, it was necessary to seat your pocket prince on the Kiev table, no matter what his last name would be. The trick failed, the fakir, aka Akela, aka - call sign “Cigarette Butt” was “inadequate” and missed big time. Ukraine survived and even became completely anti-Moscow!
Moreover, despite the fact that the annexation of Ukraine into Putin’s revived empire is an extremely important task for him personally, the geopolitical goal of Russian aggression was much broader. It consisted not only and not so much in the conquest of Ukraine, but in the destruction, thanks to such a step, of the existing world order and the development of a new one. Moscow is seeking the formation of a new world order, in which it would occupy the place not of a secondary player, but of one of the few main players, as the USSR once did. Moscow wants, as before, to have its own sphere of influence, inviolable for other influential states, primarily the United States, like the countries of the former Warsaw Pact, so that in such a new world not a single important decision would be made without its consent. And the seizure of Ukraine is only a means for Moscow to achieve this goal. In the struggle for a new world order and one’s place in it, aggression against Ukraine is just one of the steps in a larger foreign policy “multi-move”, which, as “Kremlinologists” say, Putin loves so much. A step, as is now clear, erroneous, but still due to reasons that lie far beyond the boundaries of Russian-Ukrainian relations.
Earlier, in one of last year's publications in Glavkom, it was briefly shown how the war against Ukraine was built into Moscow's broader foreign policy strategy. In this regard, we remind readers that at the end of 2021 there were active negotiations between the West and Moscow on “security guarantees for Russia.” They ended in January 2022, a month and a half before the start of Moscow’s aggression, with a demand for NATO to “collect its belongings” and return to the 1997 borders. Of course, at that time this statement sounded quite stupid, because Moscow clearly did not have the means to put pressure on NATO to implement it. However, what is important here is that it was proclaimed a month before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the success of which Moscow had no doubt. Now let’s imagine that the invasion was successful, pro-Moscow puppets were brought to power in Kyiv, Ukraine became a kind of resurgent part of the new Soviet Union. In these new conditions, this Moscow demand would have acquired a completely new meaning.
Now it would have an additional forceful resonance, since it would be based on demonstrated military power and would be put forward by a state that began a successful military expansion in Europe, openly and blatantly ignoring the basic norms of international law. And what would add diplomatic weight to this demand in subsequent negotiations with the West is that it was made in advance, before the invasion of Ukraine, and is, so to speak, a long-standing and well-founded position, the basis for further dialogue. This is an attempt, without a direct armed conflict with NATO, to regain at least partial control over the countries of NATO’s eastern flank. It was somewhere in this way that the expected rapid success of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine was closely woven in advance by her as one of the elements to ensure the implementation of strategic foreign policy objectives.
However, it did not happen as expected. The failure of the Moscow blitzkrieg in Ukraine has removed the requirement for NATO to “collect money” from the agenda today. But this does not at all mean Moscow’s refusal to achieve the chosen strategic goal, and therefore the place and significance of the war against Ukraine in its global foreign policy plans.
Be that as it may, but, as we see, the goals of the “SVO” in Ukraine remain unachieved by Moscow.
4. Perhaps Putin’s change in approach to the war against Ukraine is due to the growing pressure of citizens on the authorities due to the rapid spread of anti-war sentiment among them?
As various public opinion polls show, since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, support for the war and Putin’s policies among Muscovy citizens has remained at approximately the same level. The number of Russians who oppose the war remains stable at 18-22%. Among them there are more young people, slightly more women than men. But this group is not growing. Sporadic protests, in particular by the wives of mobilized women, have virtually no effect on this picture. The lion's share of the population of Muscovy supports the holding of the SVO in Ukraine.
And this state of affairs is not accidental. Its reasons are not limited to the banal influence of Putin’s propaganda. In fact, they are much deeper. Because they lie in the plane not only of Putin’s personal ambitions, but also of the ambitions and mentality of the population of Muscovy as a whole. For this population, including most of the so-called. liberal-democratic opposition, Ukraine is an eternal and integral part of the “Russian world”. Its existence on the political map of the world outside the borders of Muscovy is a historical curiosity for its citizens, an error that requires correction. Also, do not forget that the main political value for the vast majority of Moscow’s citizens is the greatness of their state, the only scale of measurement of which is the degree of fear of other countries in front of Moscow. If there is such greatness and fear, no matter real or imaginary, then for simple human happiness the population of Muscovy as a whole no longer needs anything else. Especially peace in Ukraine and anti-war actions.
So the answer to the seemingly rhetorical question of the ancient song “Do the Russians want war?” today it is already clear. They wanted it and wanted it, with all their hearts. In other words, the deep, psychological and mental roots of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine today have not been leveled either. This, by the way, deprives the idea of achieving peace with Putin of any prospects.
What is behind Putin’s desire for a truce, or Peace with Moscow as a postponed war
However, if Putin does not want peace, “SVO” has not achieved its goals, and there are no real signs in society that “Russians do not want war,” etc., then why should he actively seek a ceasefire? What and why does he want to achieve with this?
The answer to this question is suggested to us by the ten-year history of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war. The expected truce, which Moscow is asking for and which Washington will insist on, is not the first in this war. As was shown earlier, Russian aggression was “frozen” after Crimea, and after Ilovaisk, and after Debaltsevo, and even negotiated peace with Moscow in March 2022 (the so-called Istanbul agreements), that is, after the start of a full-scale invasion . Moreover, each subsequent “hot” phase of the war, which interrupted the relatively peaceful and longer phase of the truce, was distinguished by greater intensity, fierceness and scale of hostilities, as well as the number of military formations and military equipment attracted by Moscow to aggression against Ukraine, and the like. According to the experience gained by Ukrainian blood, the Kremlin used the periods of truce between “hot” phases exclusively for comprehensive preparations for the resumption of hostilities on a larger scale, for strengthening its military-technical potential in general and expanding the presence of its armed forces on Ukrainian territory in particular.
So why think that things should be different now? Indeed, today the units of the Moscow armed forces involved in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine are already severely depleted. They are qualitatively and quantitatively insufficient for the effective continuation of the war, especially an offensive one. The losses of personnel and military equipment were too great. The aggressor's armed forces need a new powerful mobilization, organizing proper training of recruits, regrouping troops, improving their provision of military equipment, and the like. However, this is extremely difficult to achieve in conditions of intense combat operations, which constantly require compensation for current losses, that is, they eat up all reserves.
So, the armed forces of Muscovy, involved in the war against Ukraine, need quantitative and qualitative renewal. Success in this matter, in turn, requires a truce. In other words, Moscow needs a ceasefire for the thorough preparation of new effective military actions, including offensive ones.
Do not forget also that agreements on a long-term ceasefire, that is, the truce that both Washington and Moscow want, must be put on paper as a document for signature. In international practice, documents of this kind usually record on the map the demarcation line between the parties. That is, by mutual agreement of the parties, they indicate which territories are under whose jurisdiction during the truce. Moreover, for an indefinite or very long period, as was the case in the draft Istanbul Agreement. This means that reaching agreements on a truce opens the way for Moscow to legitimize the occupation of Ukrainian territories.
However, purely military factors are not the only reasons pushing Putin towards a ceasefire and truce. After all, in Muscovy, “presidential elections” are just around the corner. And the Kremlin centenarian would like to spend them in a calm atmosphere and in the aura of a certain victorious peacemaker who achieved peace with a glorious victory in a difficult war against the United States and NATO. Achieving agreements on a truce would contribute to this in the best possible way. But such phenomena as a new wave of mobilization and the continuation of intense hostilities would not fit into this majestic picture of the next “victory.” Therefore, Moscow also needs a truce for internal political reasons.
Any peace with Putin in today's conditions is nothing more than a postponed war
In addition, a more or less long-term truce with Ukraine could potentially bring Moscow some foreign policy benefits. In particular, from the beginning of next year there may already be a new president in the United States, namely Trump. The Kremlin sees this as a definite chance to radically change Washington’s attitude towards the Russian-Ukrainian war. There is a possibility that the newly elected president will completely refuse any support for Ukraine due to his focus on internal American problems, relations with China, and the like. This means that in just a year, Kyiv’s position in the confrontation with Moscow may weaken significantly. So why shouldn't she wait for it?
Considering the benefits that the ceasefire agreements bring to Moscow, we should expect an intensification of its efforts to achieve them in the near future. Moscow's main work seems to be focused on two areas. The first of these will be a propaganda campaign that will be waged through foreign media and various “useful idiots of Putin,” through diplomacy and the like. Its goal will be to convince the public and political circles of the West that it is beneficial and that there is no alternative to an early agreement with Ukraine on a ceasefire. Such a campaign would increase external pressure on the Ukrainian leadership to agree to a truce. It will also provide additional arguments to Washington in favor of implementing the “Biden Plan.”
The second direction will be a sharp increase in terror against the civilian population of Ukraine. That is, we are talking about an increase in the frequency and intensity of missile, and not only, shelling of its populated areas. Their only goal will be to create internal pressure from Ukrainian citizens on the state leadership so that it does not refuse to start negotiations with Moscow on a ceasefire and sign the corresponding agreement. Today there is practically no such pressure. Let's see what comes of this.
However, it seems that Moscow has already begun intensive work in both directions.
So, the truce that Putin requested is not at all his step towards the development of the world, as it may seem to many naive Western politicians. This is a step towards continuing the war, but better prepared, and therefore even larger and bloodier than the previous one. Any peace with Putin in today's conditions is nothing more than a postponed war. We've already been through this.
The reasons analyzed above behind Putin’s desire to achieve a ceasefire in the war with Ukraine, as well as the obvious coincidence of positions in the desire to achieve a truce between Moscow and Washington, puts a number of other important issues on the agenda. What will the implementation of the “Biden plan” bring to Ukraine, what will be the consequences of such a step?
How beneficial is it to her in the short and long term? What position should Kyiv take regarding this plan? Should I support it or reject it? And if you reject it, then how? How to prevent the possible transformation of the “Biden plan” into the “Biden-Putin pact”? And does Ukraine have any potential to oppose Biden’s policies? The author hopes that readers will be able to find answers to most of these questions a little later in the fourth and final publication of the series, devoted to the analysis of the “Biden plan.”
