Opinion - Sadly, Trump is right on Ukraine - Alan J. Kuperman (The Hill)

Não concordo com a exposição de fatos trazidos nesta matéria, assim como com a opinião do autor, mas creio relevante apresentar aos meus poucos leitores todos os elementos de informação que recebo diariamente sobre assuntos relevantes. Este é um deles: a guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

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Opinion

Opinion - Sadly, Trump is right on Ukraine

Alan J. Kuperman, opinion contributor

The Hill, Tue, March 18, 2025 at 4:00 PM EDT

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-sadly-trump-ukraine-200000471.html

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I rarely agree with President Trump, but his latest controversial statements about Ukraine are mostly true. They only seem preposterous because western audiences have been fed a steady diet of disinformation about Ukraine for more than a decade. It is time to set the record straight on three key points that illuminate why Ukrainians and former President Joe Biden — not merely Russian President Vladimir Putin — bear significant responsibility for the outbreak and perpetuation of war in Ukraine.

First, as recently documented by overwhelming forensic evidence, and affirmed even by a Kyiv court, it was Ukrainian right-wing militants who started the violence in 2014 that provoked Russia’s initial invasion of the country’s southeast including Crimea. Back then, Ukraine had a pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, who had won free and fair elections in 2010 with strong support from ethnic Russians in the country’s southeast.

In 2013, he decided to pursue economic cooperation with Russia rather than Europe as previously planned. Pro-western activists responded with mainly peaceful occupation of the capital’s Maidan square and government offices, until the president eventually offered substantial concessions in mid-February 2014, after which they mainly withdrew.

Just then, however, right-wing militants overlooking the square started shooting Ukrainian police and remaining protesters. Police returned fire at the militants, who then claimed bogusly that the police had killed the unarmed protesters. Outraged by this ostensible government massacre, Ukrainians descended on the capital and ousted the president, who fled to Russia for protection.

Putin responded by deploying troops to Crimea and weapons to the southeast Donbas region on behalf of ethnic Russians who felt their president had been undemocratically overthrown. While this backstory does not justify Russia’s invasion, it explains that it was hardly “unprovoked.”

Second, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky contributed to a wider war by violating peace deals with Russia and seeking NATO military aid and membership. The deals, known as Minsk 1 and 2, had been negotiated under his predecessor President Petro Poroshenko in 2014 and 2015 to end fighting in the southeast and protect endangered troops.

Ukraine was to guarantee Donbas limited political autonomy by the end of 2015, which Putin believed would be sufficient to prevent Ukraine from joining — or serving as a military base for — NATO. Regrettably, Ukraine refused for seven years to fulfill that commitment.

Zelensky even campaigned in 2019 on a promise to finally implement the accords to prevent further war. But after winning election, he reneged, apparently less concerned about risking war than looking weak on Russia.

Zelensky instead increased weapons imports from NATO countries, which was the last straw for Putin. So, on Feb. 21, 2022, Russia recognized the independence of Donbas, deployed troops there for “peacekeeping,” and demanded Zelensky renounce his quest for NATO military assistance and membership.

When Zelensky again refused, Putin massively expanded his military offensive on Feb. 24. Intentionally or not, Zelensky had provoked Russian aggression, although that obviously does not excuse Moscow’s subsequent war crimes.

Third, Joe Biden too contributed crucially to the escalation and perpetuation of fighting. In late 2021, when Putin mobilized forces on Ukraine’s border and demanded implementation of the Minsk deals, it seemed obvious that unless Zelensky relented, Russia would invade to at least form a land bridge between Donbas and Crimea.

Considering that Ukraine already was existentially dependent on U.S. military assistance, if President Biden had insisted that Zelensky comply with Putin’s request, it would have happened. Instead, Biden lamentably left the decision to Zelensky and pledged that if Russia invaded, the U.S. would respond “swiftly and decisively,” which Zelensky read as a green light to defy Putin.

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Had Trump been president, he would not have provided such a blank check, so Zelensky would have had little choice but to implement the Minsk deals to avert war. Even if Zelensky had still refused and provoked Russia to invade, Trump would have denied him a veto over peace negotiations, which Biden recklessly gave by declaring, “There’s nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

That pledge tragically emboldened Ukraine to prolong the war in expectation of eventually decisive U.S. military aid, which Biden then refused to supply due to fear of nuclear escalation. In that way, Biden raised false hopes in Ukraine, needlessly perpetuating a war that has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands in the last two years alone during which the frontlines have shifted by less than 1 percent of Ukraine’s territory.

The basic outlines of a deal to end the fighting are obvious even if details remain to be negotiated, as Trump and Putin started doing today in a phone call. Russia will continue to occupy Crimea and other portions of the southeast, while the rest of Ukraine will not join NATO but will get security guarantees from some western countries. The sad thing is that such a plan could have been achieved at least two years ago if only President Biden had made military aid conditional on Zelensky negotiating a ceasefire.

Even more tragic, whatever peace deal emerges after the war will be worse for Ukraine than the Minsk accords that Zelensky foolishly abandoned due to his political ambitions and naïve expectation of bottomless U.S. support.

Alan J. Kuperman is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses on military strategy and conflict management.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

America shouldn’t insist on a strategic defeat of Russia - MICHAEL O’HANLON & CAITLIN TALMADGE (The Hill)

 America shouldn’t insist on a strategic defeat of Russia

BY MICHAEL O’HANLON & CAITLIN TALMADGE, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS

The Hill, 12/13/23 

 

The Biden administration has done a generally solid job on Ukraine policy — first warning the world about Russia’s intentions, then helping Ukraine survive the invasion, and subsequently marshalling unprecedented NATO assistance. Along the way, America has avoided provoking Russia escalating to attacks on NATO territory or nuclear weapons use. Today, Ukraine controls more than 80 percent of its pre-2014 territory and is holding its own against Russia in the south and east.

 

But the war is far from over. Russia aspires to expand its territorial holdings and wants to keep Ukraine permanently destabilized, unable to integrate with the West. Ukraine wants to win back all of its territory, including Crimea, and to pursue its own future economic and security relationships outside Russia’s strategic orbit. 

 

The two sides are so far apart in their goals that negotiations currently seem pointless and, for President Zelensky, politically impossible. Meanwhile, Putin likely believes he can simply wait out Western support and throw more bodies at the front until he exhausts an abandoned Ukraine.

 

In this context, what should America’s war aims be? President Biden says the United States will help Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” Some Republicans want to cut off all U.S. funding, but most Democrats as well as Republicans seem to have a more practical question: what battlefield goals are truly within reach, and what strategic outcome would be adequate to protect American interests? 

 

Most Americans believe Ukraine has the moral high ground — but that is different from believing Ukraine will get everything it wants at the end of this fight.

 

We would counsel the Biden administration to rethink two aspects of its approach, even as it remains rightly and resolutely committed to Ukraine’s survival and ultimate reconstruction as a nation.

 

First, the slogan “as long as it takes” doesn’t work. The war has effectively been stalemated for all of 2023. Reinforcing failure to the tune of more than $50 billion a year in taxpayer money will, at some point, no longer make sense. The Biden administration should argue that Ukraine now deserves a serious chance to try again to win back territory over the 2024-2025 time frame — because the operations Ukraine is attempting are incredibly challenging, because building modern militaries takes time, because it would be awful to see Putin achieve his territorial goals, and because millions of Ukrainians still live under brutal Russian rule.

 

But once we have a newly elected president — Biden or Trump or someone else — that leader should undertake a strategic review of the Ukraine war over the course of 2025. Should the war still be stalemated then, it would make sense for the U.S. to rethink its maximalist approach to helping Ukraine — and there is no reason not to say so now. This would not embolden Putin, who already assumes as much. Nor would it imply that we might abandon Ukraine in 2025. It would mean only that we might have to scale back our goals for what can be achieved on the battlefield — and to scale back our support for Ukraine at that point accordingly.

 

Second, the U.S. should avoid setting its sights on the vague goal of a “strategic defeat” for Russia. We do not say this out of any sympathy for Vladimir Putin. And, to be sure, at one level Russia has already suffered a strategic defeat. Putin’s invasion has led to a larger and stronger NATO, severe economic punishment, the exodus of more than a million Russian citizens, at least 300,000 casualties and no obvious path out of what is becoming a forever war.

 

But Putin will likely remain committed to this war now that he is in it. He has a high tolerance for other people’s pain, which he surely sees as an acceptable price for reclaiming choice land that used to be part of Russia’s empire. And with Russia’s larger population, he may be able to continue paying that price indefinitely. Furthermore, whether or not Russia gains more territory, Putin is achieving his goal of destabilizing and impoverishing Ukraine simply by keeping the war at a stalemate and preventing deeper integration with the West.

 

As such, the goal should not be “strategic defeat.” The goals, rather, should be stability in Europe and the sustainability of a strong Ukraine, both of which are best served by ending the war sooner rather than later. Achieving these goals will require lots of help for Ukraine even if, ultimately, we must encourage Kyiv to give up on reclaiming all its land. This will also require strong Ukrainian economic and security linkages to the West. 

 

With this kind of more realistic talk about how the United States views the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration may improve its chances of convincing a wary Congress to provide another big assistance package for Kyiv. Now is the moment to help Ukraine prepare the proper offensive that it has not yet had the time, resources or strategic dexterity to prosecute. But that window will not, and should not, last forever — and defeating Putin comprehensively at all costs should not be our central goal.

 

Relatos sobre a morte de Putin talvez não sejam tão exagerados: muita gente gostaria que isso ocorresse, da elite sobretudo - Alexander Motyl (The Hill)

O próprio Putin pode ter armado uma armadilha para seus detratores, ou sucessores. 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

Reports of Putin’s death might not be greatly exaggerated

BY ALEXANDER J. MOTYL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR 
The Hill,  10/31/23 9:30 AM ET

SHARETWEET

 

Is Russian president Vladimir Putin dead?

According to a mysterious Russian Telegram channel called “General SVR” and Valery Solovey, a prominent Russian political analyst, the answer is yes.

In fact, the Russian president supposedly breathed his last on Thursday, Oct. 26. The Putin we see now is thus actually his double, who, Solovey claims, has been filling in for the sickly real Putin for several months.

Few Russian or Western analysts believe General SVR and Solovey (who some say are one and the same person). After all, they have no concrete evidence supporting their sensational claims. They do provide remarkably detailed accounts of Putin’s supposed death that enhance their verisimilitude, but imaginative crackpots and secret police provocateurs would be expected to do the same.

The problem is that Solovey strikes one as anything but a crackpot or a dupe of the Federal Security Service. He has a biting sense of humor, speaks well, argues logically and generally comes across as the kind of professor every student would want. Other than his claims regarding Putin’s death and the supposed exile of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the deceased head of the mercenary Wagner Group, to an island off the coast of Venezuela, his analyses of Russia’s internal politics are invariably smart and incisive.

So, if Solovey isn’t a madman or a puppet, he must be one of two remaining possibilities.

As a would-be opposition leader who may or may not really believe that Putin is dead, Solovey may be determined to sow confusion in the ranks of Russian elites and among ordinary Russians, leading them to wonder whether the great leader is still alive and to question whether the man claiming to be Putin really is Putin — thereby undermining his legitimacy.

With Russia’s presidential elections scheduled for March 2024, popular doubt about Putin’s health and existence can only complicate the Kremlin’s plans regarding just who should run and what margin of victory should there be. Unsurprisingly, Putin’s spokesman, the ever-mendacious Dmitry Peskov, felt compelled to deny rumors of Putin’s death and the existence of Putin doubles as fake news. But, since Peskov is always assumed never to tell the truth, was the denial a confirmation, or was it really a denial?

The other possibility is that Solovey and General SVR are not bona fide independent democratic oppositionists, as they claim to be. They may in fact be agents of the security services or spokesmen for powerful elites able to provide Solovey — who lives in Moscow and, despite his savage criticism of Putin, has managed to avoid arrest — with protection. The intended effect of the death claim would be the same — doubt, confusion and delegitimation — but the fact that the instigators could be establishment elites has more worrisome implications for Putin and the political system.

Two democrats in cahoots with a handful of others in Russia can effectively spread rumors, but cannot upend the existing system. In contrast, elite efforts to delegitimize the current regime bespeak a significant crack within what appears to outside observers as a monolithic regime.

And that, in turn, means that the post-Putin power struggle has already broken out, even if the real Putin is still alive. It’s broken out because the elites, both those supporting Putin and those opposing him, believe that Putin is too enervated, too weak or too politically moribund to make a difference.

Would the elites providing cover to Solovey be democratically inclined or, at least, opposed to retaining the existing Putinite system? Given Russia’s political culture, given that its population has been taught to despise liberalism and democracy for over two decades, and given the high likelihood that establishment elites may be out to merely reform the system and not replace it, chances are that Solovey’s possible protectors are conservative reformers who would want to dismantle the worst aspects of Putinism and try to end the war against Ukraine before the number of Russian dead exceeds 300,000. Solovey himself describes his politics as liberal conservative, which may also be the appropriate modifiers to describe his protectors.

Regardless of whether Putin is physically dead or alive, the brouhaha over his rumored death clearly shows that he’s in serious trouble. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have read General SVR’s and Solovey’s claims. Many more are discussing them. Seeds of doubt about the “grandpa in the bunker,” as Putin’s critics call him, have been planted.

And just as the general and Solovey have no proof of Putin’s death, their critics have no proof of his life, as one can always claim that the man claiming to be the real Putin is really a doppelganger.

Russian politics is becoming even more bizarre than usual. Strap on your seatbelts: The next few weeks and months are likely to be even more full of surprises.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

TAGS DMITRY PESKOV FSB RUSSIA UKRAINE VALERY SOLOVEY VLADIMIR PUTIN

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Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

US must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late: um alerta de eminentes personalidades americanas (The Hill)

Opinion>National Security

US must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late

by Debra Cagan, John Herbst and Alexander Vershbow, opinion contributors 

The Hill, 08/17/22 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3605064-us-must-arm-ukraine-now-before-its-too-late/amp/

Nearly 20 of our fellow experts and national security professionals — whose digital signatures appear at the end of this op-ed — agree: The war in Ukraine has reached a decisive moment and that vital U.S. interests are at stake.

Long before the Kremlin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, we have — from senior positions in the U.S. government and military — followed Moscow’s foreign policy and the grave dangers it presents to the United States and our allies. We have carefully watched Moscow’s major offensive since February and the response of the Biden administration and its allies and partners. We have maintained close touch with Ukrainian, U.S. and European officials. Two of us just returned from meetings with Ukraine’s defense and military leaders.

Although the Biden administration has successfully rallied U.S. allies and provided substantial military assistance, including this month, to Ukraine’s valiant armed forces, it has failed to produce a satisfactory strategic narrative which enables governments to maintain public support for the NATO engagement over the long term.

By providing aid sufficient to produce a stalemate, but not enough to roll back Russian territorial gains, the Biden administration may be unintentionally seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. Out of an over-abundance of caution about provoking Russian escalation (conventional as well as nuclear), we are in effect ceding the initiative to Russian President Vladimir Putin and reducing the pressure on Moscow to halt its aggression and get serious about negotiations.

Moscow’s imperialist war against the people of Ukraine is not just a moral outrage — a campaign of genocide aimed at erasing the Ukrainian nation from the map — but a clear danger to U.S. security and prosperity. 

American principles and interests demand the strongest possible response, one sufficient to force the Russians as much as possible back to pre-February lines and to impose costs heavy enough to deter Russia from invading a third time. With Russian forces struggling to regroup in the east and stave off Ukrainian efforts to retake Kherson in the south, now is the time for Ukraine’s allies to pull out all the stops by providing Ukraine the means it needs to prevail. Dragging out the conflict through so-called strategic pauses will do nothing but allow Putin to regroup, recover and inflict more damage in Ukraine and beyond.

But so far, neither the administration nor European allies have succeeded in making clear why this is important to the United States and the West. It is important because Putin is pursuing a revisionist foreign policy designed to upend the rules-based security system that has ensured American and global stability and enabled prosperity since the end of World War II. Putin’s aggressive designs do not end in Ukraine. As Russian officials have repeatedly made clear, if Russia wins in Ukraine, our Baltic NATO allies are at risk, as are other allies residing in the neighborhood.  

Prudent policy today identifies tomorrow’s risk and seeks the right place and time to deal with that risk. For the U.S. and NATO, that time is now — and the place is Ukraine, a large country whose population understands that its choice is either defeating Putin or losing their independence and even their existence as a distinct, Western-oriented nation. 

With the necessary weapons and economic aid, Ukraine can defeat Russia.

If it succeeds, our soldiers are less likely to have to risk their lives protecting U.S. treaty allies whom Russia also threatens.

What does defeat for Putin look like? The survival of Ukraine as a secure, independent, and economically viable country. That means a Ukraine with defensible borders that include Odesa and a substantial portion of the Black Sea coast, as well as a strong, well-armed military and a real end to hostilities. That should ideally include the return to Ukrainian control of all territories seized since Feb. 24 and, ultimately, the lands stolen in 2014, including Crimea. Such a peace is only possible when Putin realizes he is soundly defeated and can no longer achieve his objectives of dominating Ukraine or any other nation by force.

It would be a defeat for Ukraine (and the United States) if in haste to end the fighting, the West encouraged Ukraine to cede territory in return for a ceasefire. That would continue the pattern since at least Moscow’s aggression against Georgia in 2008 in which the West pushes for a ceasefire that effectively ratifies past Kremlin aggression and does not actually force it to stop shooting or taking more territory. (More than 10,000 Ukrainians died after the Minsk agreement ceasefireswith scores and even hundreds of Russian violations daily.) A ceasefire would not end Russia’s aggression or its occupation of Ukrainian land; it would simply give Moscow a pause to consolidate its gains and then resume its offensive. Moreover, the vast majority of Ukrainians in recent surveys oppose any territorial concessions in exchange for a ceasefire with Moscow.

Such a plan would also condemn millions of Ukrainians to live under a regime that has committed numerous war crimes, whose senior officials and media have called for de-Ukrainianization of Ukraine, which is already being subjected to forced Russification, including the illegal and involuntary deportation of nearly 400,000 Ukrainian children to Russia for adoption. These measures have prompted a growing number of scholars to describe Russian policy as genocide. 

Moscow’s plan now is to make as many gains on the battlefield as possible; to conduct sham referendums in the newly occupied Ukrainian territory as a prelude to their annexation; to undermine unity in the West’s support for Ukraine by cutting off gas supplies going into the winter; and to blockade Ukrainian ports to produce destabilizing food shortages in the Global South designed to blow back on the West. For all of these purposes, Moscow needs time. Which means the United States and its allies must keep the pressure on Moscow.

The Biden administration should move more quickly and strategically, in meeting Ukrainian requests for weapons systems. And when it decides to send more advanced weapons, like HIMARS artillery, it should send them in larger quantities that maximize their impact on the battlefield. 

Ukraine needs long-range fires to disrupt the Russian offensive, including Russian resupply, fuel, and ammunition stocks. That means the U.S. should send ATACMS munitions, fired by HIMARS with the 300km range necessary to strike Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine, including occupied Crimea. And Ukraine needs constant resupply of ammunition and spare parts for artillery platforms supplied from various countries, some of which are not interchangeable. These systems are constantly in use, which makes maintenance and spare parts resupply critical. How and where these tasks are accomplished and the logistics infrastructure to quickly get the equipment back where it can be of greatest use can also make a huge difference.

Beyond this, Ukraine needs more short- and medium-range air defense to counter Russian air and missile attacks. An increasing problem is the need to deploy adequate countermeasures to hamper the growing prevalence of Russian-produced drones and new ones it is trying to procure from Iran.

The administration has been reluctant thus far to take such decisive steps for fear of provoking Russia, or as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently said at the Aspen Security Forum, “to avoid World War Three.” Putin and other senior Russian officials have at numerous points in the run-up to and following Moscow’s Feb. 24 offensive reminded the West of the dangers of nuclear war. But the U.S. is also a nuclear power, and it is a strategic mistake to suggest that nuclear deterrence no longer works. Nuclear deterrence still works.

It is to Putin’s advantage to threaten nuclear war, but not to initiate it. And we have seen the Kremlin make nuclear threats that proved hollow — for instance in connection with Finland and Sweden joining NATO. If we allow Putin to intimidate us from providing the weapons Ukraine needs to stop Russian revisionism, what happens when he waves his nuclear wand over the Baltic states? And why would the administration assume that Putin would not dare do that with Estonia or Poland if the tactic worked for him in Ukraine?

The stakes are clear for us, our allies, and Ukraine. We should not fool ourselves. We may think that each day we delay providing Ukraine the weapons it needs to win, we are avoiding a confrontation with the Kremlin. To the contrary, we are merely increasing the probability that we will face that danger on less favorable grounds. The smart and prudent move is to stop Putin’s aggressive designs in Ukraine, and to do so now, when it will make a difference.  

Signed,

General Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.); 17^th Supreme Allied Commander Europe and distinguished professor, Sam Nunn School, Georgia Institute of Technology

Debra Cagan, former State and Defense Department official;distinguished energy fellow, Transatlantic Leadership Network

General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark, 12^th Supreme Allied Commander Europe; senior fellow, UCLA Burkle Center

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, former under secretary of state for global affairs

Ambassador Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Finland and Turkey;former under secretary of defense for policy

Dr. Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; executive director, McCain Institute

Ambassador Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of state for Europe;Weiser Family distinguished fellow, Atlantic Council

Ambassador John Herbst, former Ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan; senior director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ben Hodges, former commanding general, US Army Europe

Ambassador John Kornblum, former ambassador to Germany

David Kramer, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor

Jan Lodal, former principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy; distinguished fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council

Robert McConnell, former assistant attorney general; co-founder, US-Ukraine Foundation

Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich, former ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union; senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations;professor, Columbia University

John Sipher, former officer and chief of station, CIA Clandestine Service; nonresident senior fellow, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council

Ambassador William Taylor, former ambassador to Ukraine

Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, former NATO deputy secretary general; former assistant secretary of defense; former ambassador to Russia and NATO

Ambassador Kurt Volker, former ambassador to NATO; former special representative for Ukraine negotiations; distinguished fellow, Center for European Policy Analysis

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine

Institutional affiliations are for purposes of identification only.

Categories: National Security, OpinionThe Hill

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