Ukraine: Alternatives to Trump’s Russia Appeasement - HAROLD JAMES Project Syndicate

Alternatives to Trump’s Russia Appeasement

HAROLD JAMES
Project Syndicate, Feb 14, 2025

By adopting a strategy toward Russia that is ominously reminiscent of British and French appeasement of Nazi Germany in 1938, US President Donald Trump has all but assured that Europe will not achieve peace for our time. This time, however, France and Britain have the means to avert a catastrophe in the making.

PRINCETON – US President Donald Trump says he wants to bring peace to Ukraine. But his approach cannot work, because it fails to address the problem of security guarantees. There will be no peace as long as Ukraine must face Russia on its own.
But perhaps this flaw can be overcome. In theory, technical innovation in the miniaturization of warfare might offer new ways of ensuring peace, and France and the United Kingdom – both nuclear powers – could step in as America steps back.
Now is the time to consider such possibilities. Speaking at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels this week, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears to have just surrendered many of the key elements that would have been subject to negotiations. Before talks have even begun, the US says it will impose territorial losses on Ukraine and bar it from joining NATO. Worse, these comments were immediately followed by a euphoric social-media post from Trump about a conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With both parties in the war near exhaustion, it is not foolish to explore the options for achieving a lasting peace in the absence of complete capitulation by one side. But the path Trump has chosen leads directly into an impossible thicket. A lasting and credible solution requires removing the cause of war. But what is that cause?
For Ukrainians, it is Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Removing the cause thus would require a change in the Russian government – an unlikely outcome.
For Putin, the cause is what he sees as an illegitimate government in Ukraine. Indeed, as he made clear in a wide-ranging essay published in July 2021, he denies the legitimacy of Ukrainian independence itself. Removing the cause thus would require eliminating Ukraine as a sovereign nation-state.
History is full of ironies, and the latest flurry of peace initiatives comes just before the Munich Security Conference, a meeting held a few hundred yards away from the site of the most notorious failed peacemaking attempt in modern history. It was there, in 1938, that Adolf Hitler managed to convince Britain and France that Czechoslovakia, not Nazi Germany, was the cause of conflict on the continent.
After a month of crisis diplomacy, the British, French, and Italian leaders met Hitler at the Führerbau (“the Führer's building”) in Munich and imposed a political settlement on Czechoslovakia, stripping it of the so-called Sudetenland, a western region with a substantial German-speaking minority that had been radicalized by Nazi propaganda.
Although peace agreements are often driven by a revulsion to the horrors of war, they also often set the stage for new conflicts. In a September 27, 1938 radio address to the British people, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain reflected on, “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.” Within a year, Britons were putting on gas masks and building defenses.
Meanwhile, in France, the argument for peace (appeasement) in 1938 and 1939 was distilled in the question: “Mourir pour Dantzig?” (“To die for Gdansk?”). But those who believed they had kept themselves safe through clever diplomacy were soon dying for France.
The language of failed peacemaking follows a familiar pattern. First, we are told that the big boys will handle it by sidelining bothersome smaller countries with their complicated histories. As Trump said of his conversation with Putin, “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations.” The big European powers exhibited the same arrogance in 1938.
Second, we are told that simple logic will suffice. Or as Trump put it, “President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’” It was also common sense that the Sudeten question, not Hitler’s desire to unite Europe under Nazi rule, was at the heart of the 1938 crisis.
Third, the peacemongers invoke the threat of civilizational collapse. Russia has consistently threatened nuclear war, and similar fears of escalation shaped British decision-making in the late 1930s. “The real triumph,” Chamberlain told the House of Commons on October 3, 1938, “is that … representatives of four great Powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilisation as we have known it.”
With the benefit of hindsight, the real triumph would have been to freeze the conflict until a real solution could be worked out. That might take decades, as in postwar Germany, or even longer, as on the Korean Peninsula since the 1953 armistice. There may be a gradual thaw, as occurred in relations between East and West Germany, or there may not be. Either way, West Germany and South Korea both remained secure after the fighting stopped because they were protected by the West’s Cold War deterrence framework.
Likewise, effective deterrence is the key to ensuring that the conflict in Ukraine remains truly frozen, and that Russia does not just use the freeze to build up its military capacity until it can apply irresistible force. During the Cold War, such deterrence was achieved with the threat of mutual assured destruction. The same mechanism could offer a way out now.
It could be applied by France and the UK, which, along with the US and Russia, are parties to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, whereby Ukraine agreed to give up more than 1,700 Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for the other parties’ promise to ensure Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Either France or the UK – or preferably both – could supply nuclear weapons to Ukraine and any other vulnerable targets of Russian aggression.
Had Britain and France been capable of arming Czechoslovakia effectively in 1938, there would have been no German invasion, and maybe no World War II. But this simply wasn’t possible at the time. Today is different. France and Britain do possess the means of deterrence, and technological transfers are much easier.
There has long been talk of finding a new form of multilateralism in a world that is becoming more fragmented and multipolar. France and Britain have a chance to show how this might work, and how it could restore some peace and security to a world that is tottering on the edge of the abyss.


Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of The Euro and The Battle of Ideas, and the author of The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm, Making the European Monetary Union, The War of Words, and, most recently, Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale University Press, 2023).

It's worse than we thought (about Ukraine) - Viktor Kravchuk (Substack)

 It's worse than we thought

Better if history just repeats itself instead of becoming a worse version of it.

VIKTOR KRAVCHUK FEB 13

ALONG THESE THREE YEARS, I LOST MOST OF my ability to cry, and instead, my body finds other ways to balance my feelings. But I'm sure many people are crying as they realize what is happening.

Trump is making a deal with Putin.

Why? Why would anyone want to align with someone like that?

Illustration: Marian Kamensky

How can someone announce negotiations with the person who is commanding an invasion of a foreign country, where his armies stand accused of the worst war crimes?

The worst part of it all is not the war crimes themselves, as terrible as they are. The worst is that Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do. He is behaving exactly as predicted, following his agenda of insensitivity, hate, and recklessness.

He is exactly as we have always known, yet many times we failed to believe it. We thought our institutions were powerful enough to prevent the worst from happening. The worst inside the worst-intentioned human beings. And our institutions are strong.

But just like eight decades ago, we are living in a perfect storm.

This storm is what makes things worse.

This storm happens when someone emerges from obscurity and achieves domination of the discourse, exploiting contradictions within our societies and spreading distorted narratives with alarming speed. As the storm unfolds, large segments of society rally behind their ideas, forming a cult-like following where violence and hate become the norm.

Those who seize power in such conditions are far more dangerous than they appear. They develop influence to a level that even history’s most notorious totalitarian regimes struggled to achieve.

The moment of Trump's announcement was when I realized that history is clearly repeating itself. It was impossible to recall 1938, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich waving a document and claiming it “peace for our time.”

We know today that he had been deceived by Hitler. The historical judgment of Chamberlain is controversial, but he is often associated with innocence or ineptitude. Eighty-three years later, Trump is going one step further.

He isn’t being fooled by Putin. He’s collaborating with him.

This isn’t just politics. This is about power, control, and the erosion of everything we hold dear. The world can’t afford another Munich moment. Putin’s ambitions won’t stop at Ukraine, just as Hitler’s didn’t stop at Czechoslovakia.

I know what I'm saying. I'm in Ukraine. I feel the war. I witness its horrors every single day. My life has became living every aspect of this war. I see the widespread destruction Putin has inflicted on my family and every family in my country.

And I will keep fighting. For my nation, for my people. For my survival. I will be right here writing and telling my story to the world. Not just until Ukraine prevails, but until this empire of hate, terror, greed, dystopia, and vulgarity is completely defeated everywhere.

Because as long as these people have power, our planet will never be certain if it will survive another night.

🌻

---

🔖I hope I’m reaching you with an inspiring content and make at least a little difference in your perceptions about Ukraine.

The Domino Theory Is Coming for Putin - Casey Michel (Foreign Policy)

Argument

An expert's point of view on a current event.

The Domino Theory Is Coming for Putin

A series of setbacks for Russia is only gaining momentum.

By Casey Michel, head of the Human Rights Foundation's Combating Kleptocracy Program and author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. 

Foreign Policy, January 29, 2025, 8:51 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/29/domino-theory-putin-russia-georgia-transnistria-belarus/?tpcc=world_brief&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=World%20Brief%2001302025&utm_term=world_brief

For many, the daily news out of Ukraine paints a dour picture of Kyiv’s future. Russian troops continue to grind forward, sacrificing themselves by the tens of thousands for the sake of seizing more and more Ukrainian land. Dreams of a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive are long gone, with calls in the West for everything from Ukrainian neutrality to recognizing Russian sovereignty on stolen Ukrainian lands picking up steam.

These views aren’t without some merit. But they risk missing the forest of the daily news cycle for the trees of where we are—and just how battered and bloodied Russia truly is. On the economic front, Russia has seen both soaring interest rates and galloping inflation, providing a toxic brew of stagflation, from which there’s little likelihood of escape. On the manpower front, Russian President Vladimir Putin is so skittish of a potential new round of mobilization that he’s forced to rely on North Korean conscripts. And on the tactical front, Putin is no closer to Ukrainian collapse than he was in early 2022. He has created for himself, as scholar Michael Kimmage described, a “nightmare,” with only disastrous choices remaining, both for Putin’s rule and for Russian strategic interests writ large.

Indeed, it is the latter point that presents the greatest evidence of Putin’s disastrous turn and perhaps the greatest, or at least the most overlooked, suite of opportunities for Western policymakers. Few have made the connection, but a clear trend line has emerged over the past few years. Thanks to Putin’s monomaniacal fixation on Ukraine, he has been willing to sacrifice other geostrategic projects elsewhere, unwilling to step into the breach to help what had previously been key Russian interests. We’ve started to see a Russian variant of a domino theory emerge—one that has begun gutting Russian interests elsewhere, and illustrating, as few other things can, just how atrophied Russian power projection has become.

The first domino to fall came in 2023, when troops from Azerbaijan stormed into the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing ethnic Armenians to flee en masse. Rather than being the supposed guarantor of stability—and a key security partner of Armenia, which backed Nagorno-Karabakh for decades—Russia wilted in the face of Azerbaijan’s push. Tucking tail, Russian troops left the region entirely, scuttling a military base where nearly 2,000 Russian troops had once been deployed.

A year later, the next domino toppled. With the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Russia not only lost its key regional ally, but watched as its primary claim as a security guarantor for autocratic regimes disintegrated. Rather than act as a swaggering great power that could shore up illiberal leaders, Moscow was suddenly outed as a government that could do neither.

Both developments—the disappearance of Nagorno-Karabakh and the dissolution of Assad’s regime—are downstream from Putin’s overwhelming focus on subjugating Ukraine, regardless of the cost. All of which begs a pair of questions: Given that he’s been completely consumed by this messianic obsession with Ukraine, which pro-Russian domino will be the next to fall? And how can Western policymakers be ready to take full advantage?

Start with the oldest Russian-backed enclave there is: Transnistria. A sliver of eastern Moldova, Transnistria has been occupied by Russian troops since the earliest days of the post-Soviet era. If anything, the recalcitrance to find a solution to Transnistria was something of an “original sin” for Western policymakers, unwilling as they were to face the realities and reverberations of Russian imperialism, long before Putin set his sights on Ukraine. By the late 1990s, it was clear that Russian promises to remove Moscow’s troop presence from Moldova—and to finally end the Kremlin’s willingness to carve up a separate, sovereign country in the middle of Europe—were hardly credible. By and large, the West looked the other way, letting this blindingly, breathtakingly obvious example of Russian revanchism fester.

Now, though, it is Moscow’s relations with Transnistria that are suddenly in question. Earlier this year, Moscow cutting off its gas line to Europe left the entire region in, quite literally, the dark. While there has been some progress in restoring energy capacity, sudden chatter has emerged about the potential “collapse” of Transnistria wholesale and what that means for Moldova and the rest of the region more broadly. The West has been almost entirely absent from the conversations about potential solutions, let alone what this may mean strategically—a bizarre absence, given Transnistria’s border with Ukraine and the clear designs that Moscow has on eventually linking its Ukrainian gains with its Moldovan holdings.

Elsewhere, Georgia remains mired in a domestic political contretemps worse than anything the country has seen in years. After recent parliamentary elections—broadly viewed as fraudulent—the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party claimed victory, and with it, the right to thwart Tbilisi’s pro-Western direction. The stolen vote was the culmination of a longer trajectory, with the party’s leadership dismantling the underpinnings of Georgian democracy. Similar to the descent of Ukrainian democracy seen under former leader Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Kremlin sympathies resulted in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, Georgian Dream’s lurch toward authoritarianism has resulted in the kinds of protests that increasingly resemble those that toppled Yanukovych.

Meanwhile, it is in Belarus that we can find the West’s greatest blind spot—and, arguably, the greatest pressure point for testing just how weak Moscow’s reach and influence is now. In 2020, pro-democratic protests erupted across the country, presenting the greatest threat to the decades-long rule of Belarusian despot Aleksandr Lukashenko. However, in one of the greatest (and most overlooked) foreign-policy failures of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first administration, Washington did little to back the democratic protesters and instead ceded all influence to Moscow. As such, when it appeared that Lukashenko was on his last legs, Putin interceded, reinforcing the regime and restoring the rule of one of Moscow’s longtime clients. Years later, Lukashenko remains in power, and Belarus remains a key staging ground for Moscow’s ongoing assaults on Ukraine.

Now, Belarus faces yet another inflection point. On Jan. 26, another election in Belarus assured Lukashenko’s regime of another term in office—or so the dictator hopes. After all, it was the immediate aftermath of Belarus’s previous election, without even the pretense of fairness or freedom, that unexpectedly jump-started the country’s 2020 protests. While the regime has arrested tens of thousands since, that’s hardly a guarantee of post-election stability this time around. If anything, with Belarus’s opposition far more organized and far more committed than even five years ago, Lukashenko can hardly be sure that this won’t be his last thieved election—especially with his primary patron completely distracted and increasingly drained.

All these developments—Transnistria going dark, Georgia turning turbulent, and Belarus once again facing the same ingredients that sparked its largest pro-democracy protests just a few years ago—would be newsworthy on their own. But it’s the fact that the primary backer of Transnistria separatists, Georgian illiberals, and Lukashenko’s regime are suddenly watching their external influence erode that presents new opportunities for the West, if only Brussels, London, and Washington take advantage.

Indeed, it is somewhat shocking that the West hasn’t sketched out a better strategy for the broader region in recent months. The European Union has continued encouraging Moldova’s pro-EU direction, but the West remains effectively a nonactor when it comes to things like Transnistria. In Georgia, the United States recently sanctioned Bidzina Ivanishvili, the architect of the country’s democratic decline, but it’s clear that there’s little strategy beyond these kinds of individual responses. And Belarus, meanwhile, is effectively a black hole of policy analysis, even for the new administration in Washington. Reams of paper have been produced on new U.S. strategy regarding Ukraine, Russia, and Europe, but there’s been precisely nothing written on Belarus, which appears to be a complete vacuum of strategic thinking.

And that’s all a shame and an opportunity foregone. After all, it’s not just people like Assad suddenly learning that Putin’s support apparently comes with an expiration date. Transnistria separatists, Georgia’s budding autocrats, Belarus’s thug-in-chief—all of them have suddenly realized that Putin’s backing, even for them, isn’t bottomless. As they’ve seen, the Russian president will always, always prioritize Ukraine over Russian interests elsewhere, including client regimes and kleptocratic allies along Russia’s other borders.

This is, of course, a trend that has been years in the making. For over a decade, Putin has prioritized subjugating Ukraine over Moscow’s other key strategic goals, dating all the way back to the creation—and immediate implosion—of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. In the years since, Putin has prioritized the gelding of Ukraine over everything from a viable economy to stable relations with the West, even to the point of risking regime stability itself. Indeed, at this point, it’s fair to say that Putin may well choose domination of Ukraine over even places like Sakha or Chechnya, both of which remain part of the Russian Federation for the time being but have clear histories as separate, sovereign states—one of the primary reasons that Russia’s territorial stability is hardly guaranteed, or why, as the Economist said, Putin is “turning Russia into a failed state.”

Questions and crises of Russia’s internal stability are still a ways off. But that is, ultimately, where this accelerating collapse of dominoes is heading. That is all the more reason the West must begin formulating policy not just on the next dominoes to fall—places like Transnistria, Georgia, and even Belarus—but also on what a post-Putin Russia may well, and should, look like. After all, once they start tumbling, dominoes have a way of continuing to fall. The West should be ready.

Casey Michel is head of the Human Rights Foundation's Combating Kleptocracy Program and author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. X: @cjcmichel

Eastern Europe Is In The Crosshairs: Ukraine and Poland - Michal Kranz (Persuasion)

 Eastern Europe Is In The Crosshairs

A deal in Ukraine seems all but inevitable. That puts Eastern Europe in real danger. 

MICHAŁ KRANZ NOV 25 ∙ GUEST POST PERSUASION

Polish troops at NATO Multinational Corps Northeast, February 2, 2024. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.)

For much of the past year in Warsaw, the first question I’d be asked by Poles and Ukrainians alike when they learned I’d grown up in the United States was who I thought would win the 2024 election. The follow-up, inevitably, was whether a victorious Trump would really let Ukraine and Eastern Europe fall to the Russians.

In the day or two following Trump’s win, this fear was palpable among Polish friends and loved ones. But, after months of warnings of the apocalyptic consequences of Trump’s return to power for Ukraine and NATO’s East, a new narrative has emerged along Europe’s frontier with Russia—don’t panic, but prepare.

The likely conclusion of the war in Ukraine during Trump’s first year in office will only be the tip of the iceberg of the transformations on the horizon for Eastern Europe. States in the region, most notably Poland and the Baltics, are already looking beyond Ukraine to a scenario in which Russia might soon be ready to unleash its war machine on NATO’s East itself, which, without ironclad American security guarantees, would be more vulnerable than ever. And yet, for Eastern Europe, this tense moment offers surprising opportunities. In the absence of America’s guiding and often constraining hand, they will have the chance to redefine their own defense future, reap the rewards of the post-war economic order in Ukraine, and finally force Western Europe to confront the realities of the multipolar world head-on.

What we are looking at, in other words, is a complete shift of the balance of power in Eastern Europe. In the short term, Poland and the Baltics will have no choice but to pick up slack and assume a stronger position in Europe than they have in memory, as they stare down the barrel of a Russia that will only be further emboldened by a de facto triumph in Ukraine and the weakening of the American security blanket in Europe. Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing its worst-case scenario, with the spigot of U.S. support likely to turn itself off—forcing Europe to take the reins of Ukraine’s, and its own, defense for the first time in generations.

The chances of Trump doing an about-face on aid for Ukraine and continuing to fund its defense are, unfortunately, very slim—and Ukraine is expected to be forced to the negotiating table. European efforts, led by Poland, to continue supporting Ukraine’s military, will at best stave off the inevitable, and the Biden administration knows this. Recent changes in policy like the lifting of prohibitions on Ukraine’s use of long-range ATACMS against Russian territory and shipments of anti-personnel mines are, more than anything else, measures meant to help Ukraine secure as favorable a position as possible prior to negotiations and to give it at least a modicum of deterrence against future Russian aggression.

It goes almost without saying that any peace deal is likely to end in the permanent occupation of the territories Russia currently holds and in forcing Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions—in short, a win for Russia. But even then, many questions remain about how such a “peace” would be administered in practice, and how Ukraine could avoid being swallowed up by Russia down the line. The leading proposal of the Trump transition team, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, would compel Ukraine to promise not to join NATO for twenty years, while a continuing flow of U.S. armaments deters future Russian aggression and some kind of European peacekeeping force polices the demilitarized zone where the fighting has frozen. 

A proposal along those lines suits Poland well, with Polish president Andrzej Duda last year suggesting that Polish troops could be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping effort. Meanwhile, Poland is poised to benefit immensely from post-war reconstruction efforts, with 3,000 Polish companies registering with the Polish Investment and Trade Agency to participate in Ukraine’s reconstruction. Helping to guarantee Ukraine’s security on the ground does of course carry considerable risk—bringing Poland all the closer to a clash with Russia. Nevertheless, this is exactly the sort of role Polish leaders have spent years preparing the country’s military for.

The belief among Eastern Europe’s leaders is that, no matter what they do, they are in Russia’s crosshairs—and the priority must be an active defense. Leaders further west on the continent have tepidly come around to the same conclusion, with recent pledges to invest not only in national defense spending, but also in developing Europe’s military-industrial complex. There is no reason to think that Putin will be placated through a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Quite the contrary. With, effectively, a win in Ukraine behind him and a U.S. leadership unwilling to engage militarily in Europe beyond the bare minimum, Putin may well decide the time is ripe for further reconstitution of the Soviet sphere of influence. Western Europe has been inching up its readiness, with France for instance on track to bring its defense spending up the 2% GDP mark this year, but Eastern Europeans know that if Russia strikes, it will be up to them to hold the line. Poland at the moment has the third largest military in NATO, and, if Ukraine’s army was able to keep Russian forces at bay for nearly three years, the hope is that Poland’s more robust and technologically advanced military could do the same.

It is hard to overstate just how uncertain the security of Eastern Europe suddenly becomes with Trump’s election. A full-scale American retreat from NATO is less likely than widespread discussion might make it seem—the recent landmark opening of a U.S. base in Poland and efforts to Trump-proof American aid to Ukraine and NATO mean that it will be difficult for Trump to distance himself from the alliance entirely. But, with Russia updating its nuclear doctrine, firing a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine, and last week placing the new U.S. base in Poland on its potential target list, Putin clearly believes that he has the upper hand—and that Europe lacks the will or the ability to properly defend its Eastern frontier. 

With Trump on track to alter the entire regional paradigm a few short months from now, NATO’s East is scrambling to mitigate the fallout. That puts Poland, in particular, in the hot seat and in need of not only proving its worth as a rising military powerhouse, but also of working with countries like Romania, Sweden, the Baltic states, and besieged Ukraine to collectively keep Moscow at bay. But this moment is, above all, a crucible for Europe. For decades, Western Europeans have been able to bask in the security blanket the United States offered and to indulge in pacifistic visions. That illusion ended first for the states bordering Putin’s Russia, but Europe is now facing the same fork in the road—either make security a priority and forge an independent path forward on defense, or let Putin continue to have his way.

Michal Kranz is a Warsaw-based journalist who covers Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has reported from the ground during the war in Ukraine, covered politics and society in Lebanon, and regularly reports on regional developments from Poland.

Zelenskiy’s 'victory plan' to EU, NATO - Andrew Gray

Ukraine's Zelenskiy to pitch 'victory plan' to EU, NATO By Andrew Gray Reuters, October 16, 202411:42 PM Summary Ukrainian leader takes blueprint to Brussels Plan includes call for NATO invitation Kyiv's key allies have not endorsed plan so far Moscow says Ukraine needs to 'sober up' BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy takes his "victory plan" to the European Union and NATO on Thursday, pitching for a NATO membership invitation and a major increase in military support for Kyiv's campaign against Russia's invasion. Zelenskiy's plan contains requests that Ukraine's allies have so far declined to grant, such as a call for an invitation to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and permission to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Zelenskiy presented the plan to Ukraine's parliament on Wednesday at a critical time, as Moscow's forces advance in the east, a bleak winter of power cuts looms and a U.S. presidential election casts uncertainty over the future of Western support. On Thursday, he brings the plan, which he said could end the war "no later than next year", to a summit of European Union leaders and a meeting of NATO defence ministers, both in Brussels. He has already presented the five-point blueprint, which Zelenskiy said has three secret annexes, to key Western leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden. While voicing strong support for Kyiv, none has given the plan a full-throated endorsement. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday the plan represented "a strong signal" from Zelenskiy but added: "That doesn't mean that I here can say I support the whole plan. That would be a bit difficult, because there are many issues." Rutte said NATO's 32 members would have to discuss the plan in detail to understand it better. "You will have maybe some different views on particular aspects of the plan, but that doesn't say that we are not standing squarely behind Ukraine," he said. NATO MEMBERSHIP CALL NATO has declared that Ukraine will become a member, without saying when. But it cannot join while at war, as this would draw the alliance directly into a conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has cited Ukraine's potential membership of NATO as a reason for the invasion. Zelenskiy argued NATO could issue an invitation now, even if membership itself comes further down the line. "We understand that NATO membership is a matter for the future, not the present," he told the Ukrainian parliament. "But Putin must see that his geopolitical calculations are failing. The Russian people must feel this, that their 'tsar' has lost geopolitically to the world." The Kremlin said it was too early to comment in detail on the plan, but that Kyiv needed to "sober up" and realise the futility of the policies it was pursuing. Zelenskiy said his plan also proposes establishing a "comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package" inside Ukraine to protect against threats from Russia and to destroy its military power. He did not elaborate. The plan also offers the West a role in developing Ukraine's natural mineral resources and proposes Ukrainian troops could replace some U.S. forces in Europe. The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here. Reporting by Andrew Gray, Sabine Siebold and Lili Bayer; Writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by Bill Berkrot. Andrew Gray is Reuters' European Affairs Editor. Based in Brussels, he covers NATO and the European Union and leads a pan-European team of reporters focused on diplomacy, defence and security. A journalist for almost 30 years, he has previously been based in the UK, Germany, Geneva, the Balkans, West Africa and Washington, where he reported on the Pentagon. He covered the Iraq war in 2003 and contributed a chapter to a Reuters book on the conflict. He has also worked at Politico Europe as a senior editor and podcast host, served as the main editor for a fellowship programme for journalists from the Balkans, and contributed to the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent radio show.

The war is going badly. Ukraine and its allies must change course - The Economist leader

 Zelensky in Washington

The war is going badly. Ukraine and its allies must change course

Time for credible war aims—and NATO membership

The Economist, September 26, 2024

IF UKRAINE AND its Western backers are to win, they must first have the courage to admit that they are losing. In the past two years Russia and Ukraine have fought a costly war of attrition. That is unsustainable. When Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to America to see President Joe Biden this week, he brought a “plan for victory”, expected to contain a fresh call for arms and money. In fact, Ukraine needs something far more ambitious: an urgent change of course.

A measure of Ukraine’s declining fortunes is Russia’s advance in the east, particularly around the city of Pokrovsk. So far, it is slow and costly. Recent estimates of Russian losses run at about 1,200 killed and wounded a day, on top of the total of 500,000. But Ukraine, with a fifth as many people as Russia, is hurting too. Its lines could crumble before Russia’s war effort is exhausted.

Ukraine is also struggling off the battlefield. Russia has destroyed so much of the power grid that Ukrainians will face the freezing winter with daily blackouts of up to 16 hours. People are tired of war. The army is struggling to mobilise and train enough troops to hold the line, let alone retake territory. There is a growing gap between the total victory many Ukrainians say they want, and their willingness or ability to fight for it.

Abroad, fatigue is setting in. The hard right in Germany and France argue that supporting Ukraine is a waste of money. Donald Trump could well become president of the United States. He is capable of anything, but his words suggest that he wants to sell out Ukraine to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

If Mr Zelensky continues to defy reality by insisting that Ukraine’s army can take back all the land Russia has stolen since 2014, he will drive away Ukraine’s backers and further divide Ukrainian society. Whether or not Mr Trump wins in November, the only hope of keeping American and European support and uniting Ukrainians is for a new approach that starts with leaders stating honestly what victory means.

As The Economist has long argued, Mr Putin attacked Ukraine not for its territory, but to stop it becoming a prosperous, Western- leaning democracy. Ukraine’s partners need to get Mr Zelensky to persuade his people that this remains the most important prize in this war. However much Mr Zelensky wants to drive Russia from all Ukraine, including Crimea, he does not have the men or arms to do it. Neither he nor the West should recognise Russia’s bogus claim to the occupied territories; rather, they should retain reunification as an aspiration.

In return for Mr Zelensky embracing this grim truth, Western leaders need to make his overriding war aim credible by ensuring that Ukraine has the military capacity and security guarantees it needs. If Ukraine can convincingly deny Russia any prospect of advancing further on the battlefield, it will be able to demonstrate the futility of further big offensives. Whether or not a formal peace deal is signed, that is the only way to wind down the fighting and ensure the security on which Ukraine’s prosperity and democracy will ultimately rest.

This will require greater supplies of the weaponry Mr Zelensky is asking for. Ukraine needs long-range missiles that can hit military targets deep in Russia and air defences to protect its infrastructure. Crucially, it also needs to make its own weapons. Today, the country’s arms industry has orders worth $7bn, only about a third of its potential capacity. Weapons firms from America and some European countries have been stepping in; others should, too. The supply of home-made weapons is more dependable and cheaper than Western-made ones. It can also be more innovative. Ukraine has around 250 drone companies, some of them world leaders— including makers of the long-range machines that may have been behind a recent hit on a huge arms dump in Russia’s Tver province.

The second way to make Ukraine’s defence credible is for Mr Biden to say Ukraine must be invited to join NATO now, even if it is divided and, possibly, without a formal armistice. Mr Biden is known to be cautious about this. Such a declaration from him, endorsed by leaders in Britain, France and Germany, would go far beyond today’s open-ended words about an “irrevocable path” to membership.

This would be controversial, because NATO’s members are expected to support each other if one of them is attacked. In opening a debate about this Article 5 guarantee, Mr Biden could make clear that it would not cover Ukrainian territory Russia occupies today, as with East Germany when West Germany joined NATO in 1955; and that Ukraine would not necessarily garrison foreign NATO troops in peacetime, as with Norway in 1949.

NATO membership entails risks. If Russia struck Ukraine again, America could face a terrible dilemma: to back Ukraine and risk war with a nuclear foe; or refuse and weaken its alliances around the world. However, abandoning Ukraine would also weaken all of America’s alliances—one reason China, Iran and North Korea are backing Russia. Mr Putin is clear that he sees the real enemy as the West. It is deluded to think that leaving Ukraine to be defeated will bring peace.

Indeed, a dysfunctional Ukraine could itself become a dangerous neighbour. Already, corruption and nationalism are on the rise. If Ukrainians feel betrayed, Mr Putin may radicalise battle-hardened militias against the West and NATO. He managed something similar in Donbas where, after 2014, he turned some Russian-speaking Ukrainians into partisans ready to go to war against their compatriots.

For too long, the West has hidden behind the pretence that if Ukraine set the goals, it would decide what arms to supply. Yet Mr Zelensky cannot define victory without knowing the level of Western support. By contrast, the plan outlined above is self- reinforcing. A firmer promise of NATO membership would help Mr Zelensky redefine victory; a credible war aim would deter Russia; NATO would benefit from Ukraine’s revamped arms industry. Forging a new victory plan asks a lot of Mr Zelensky and Western leaders. But if they demur, they will usher in Ukraine’s defeat. And that would be much worse. 

Timothy Snyder on the non-sensical war of aggression by Putin against Ukraine

Putin's Legend The Nonsensical Basis of a Terrible War TIMOTHY SNYDER AUG 25 Two-and-a-half years ago, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, setting off the largest war the world has seen since 1945.  Although Russia's leaders have offered various spurious justifications for their illegal war of aggression, Vladimir Putin's nost consistent explanation has been ideological: Russia is an ancient state, and Ukraine is historically Russian land. Let us take advantage of this half-anniversary to consider this claim.  Anniversaries take hold of the imagination, especially the round ones.  The fullness of years and the beauty of numbers seduce us into myths of eternity and goodness.  But history, unlike legend,  is composed of fragments, of bits, of things we understand halfway, and seek to grasp ever better. This is one reason why few historians grapple with the gilded myths that Putin has put forward about the ancient past, most notoriously in a long essay in 2021 and then in a tedious interview with Tucker Carlson in 2024 (both linked below).   When confronted with magical thinking by dictators, historians feel out of place, like a bridge player invited to judge prestidigitation, say, or a surgeon hired to care for wax figures.   Putin is in love with a legend.  Historically speaking, this is very familiar: new regimes, such as Putin's, seek compensation in myths of ancient origin. Putin's idea of Russia, his justification for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, his rationalization of his attempt to destroy Ukraine as a people — it all rests on a very familiar sort of tall tale: we were here first.  These stories are generally complete falsehoods, from the “we” through the “were” and the “here” and the “first.” And so it is for Putin.  But the stories get repeated so often that they take on a kind of leaden plausibility, like a bad habit. It takes a little work to throw them off. So here goes! The legend begins with a single obscure incident, understood by Putin to prove the existence and endurance of a Russian state: Long ago there was a city called Novgorod, inhabited by people who were unable to get along.  These quarrelsome folk, the Slavs, invited three Viking brothers, known as the Rus, to come and rule them.  The arrival of Vikings began an unbroken tradition of a Russian "centralized state." As he says, Putin has the story from a medieval chronicle, "The Tale of Bygone Years," probably from the early twelfth century.  The monk (or monks) in Kyiv who compiled this text had heard about the arrival of the Vikings known as the Rus from Scandinavia, which had taken place about four hundred years earlier.  In the intervening centuries, the various parts of the fractious Scandinavian clans had founded, taken over, and lost control of a number or towns in eastern Europe. The monk or monks knew were trying to explain why the Kyivan part of a Scandinavian ruling clan still known by the name Rus was more important than other clans in other places.   "The Tale of Bygone Years" is one of dozens of helpful medieval sources which touch on the Scandinavians in eastern Europe, which mix fable and useful information.  These texts have to be read critically and together, and alongside the findings of archeologists and numismatists who have worked in the places in question.  In what follows I will be doing this. Before analyzing the legend that Putin loves, it would be helpful to spell out all of the claims it contains and that he draws from it, some of which are explicit, and some of which are implicit -- things that the listener might go away from the story believing, even though they are never stated. 1.  There was a city called Novgorod when the Vikings known as the Rus arrived. 2.  There were three Viking brothers. 3.  The Vikings accepted the invitation and peacefully and durably ruled. 4.  The people of this city were in some sense Russians because they were Slavs. 5.  These Vikings were also in some sense Russians, since they called themselves “Rus.” 6.  The existence of an ethnic group in a town more than a thousand years ago means a right to rule today by a dictator who calls himself a name that he also associates with that ethnic group. 7.  The existence of the rulers of that ethnic group more than a thousand years ago means a right to rule today by a dictator who calls himself a name that he also associates with those rulers. 8.  Events in one location more than a thousand years ago justify the existence and actions of a transcontinental empire engaged in a war of aggression against a neighboring state. 9.  An algorithm exists whereby we can justify repression and war today via obscure, distant events. 10.  This algorithm is known to dictators who tell the story, carry out the repressions and start the wars. When spelled out like this, the claims reveal their magical character.  Even if claims 1-5 were completely correct, the moral and political interpretations Putin offers in claims 6-10 are illogical and repugnant.   Such “reasoning” is why few historians will engage Putin's legend directly.  It has nothing to do with history -- with assembling evidence, with questioning hypothesis, with making reasonable arguments based upon sources and traditions of interpretation.  It is a claim to power, whose only sense arises from the power itself. That is really all that needs to be said. Having understood that, historians can choose to go the extra mile, and note that the factual claims (1-5) are balderdash.  It only really makes sense to do this in a constructive rather than in a destructive spirit, in an effort to reveal something about what we actually do know about early medieval Scandinavia and eastern Europe, and how we know it.  It is in that spirit that I will proceed.  Let us consider each claim in turn. 1.  There was a city called Novgorod when the Vikings known as the Rus arrived. There was not.  Novgorod had not yet been founded at the time of the arrival of the Rus in the territories that are now northeastern Russia.  It was founded about a quarter millenium later. (It had also not yet been founded when Vikings first began to lay claim to Kyiv, which already existed and was probably controlled by Khazars.)  Novgorod is attractive for a Russian myth because it exists now and it existed at the time the monks were writing. But it did not exist at the time of the events the monks were recounting. But this is just the very beginning of the profound untruthfulness of the story. Here is what we know. Traders from Scandinavia were present around the body of water we now call Lake Ladoga in the sixth century.  Around the middle of the eighth century, the Vikings who called themselves Rus established a trading emporium at a site that Russian archaeologists call Ladoga, but which the Vikings themselves called Aldeigja.   Packed away in storage in the Hermitage in St.Petersburg is a bronze figure from Aldeigja in its early days: Odin with his two ravens. This contemporary piece of evidence, similar to other figures from Scandinavia, and one among thousands, tells us more than later chronicles about the time and place and people. The power center associated with Aldeigja was probably called the Rus Khaganate. We believe that it was called this because of contemporary evidence: a recorded encounter between Rus emissaries and the king of the Franks. About a century after the foundation of Aldeigja, the Vikings known as Rus established another trade center, which they called Holmgar∂, and which Russians later called Gorodishche.   The town Novgorod in its turn was founded more than a hundred years after that and about a mile away. It had nothing to do with the first encounter of the Rus and the locals. It could not have done so, since it did not then exist. 2.  There were three Viking brothers. This is a different sort of claim.  One can show with considerable certainty, on the basis of the archaeological evidence, when Scandinavian Rus towns such as Aldeigja and Holmgar∂ were established, and have a pretty good idea of who lived there and what occupations were pursued.   One cannot of course disprove, on this basis, that there were once three Viking brothers.  The reasons to disbelieve this claim are of a different kind, arising from the study of political myth and its structures.   The number 3 has a profound significance in Indo-European stories about the origin of the world.  According to Tacitus, the ancient Germanic peoples (whose culture preceded that of the Germanic Vikings), believed that the earth god had a son, and that son had three sons, and those three sons founded all the other peoples.  Odin was himself one of three brothers. In Viking times, the settlement of new (from the Viking perspective) lands was systematically justified by a story of the arrival of three brothers, usually sons or grandsons of Odin.  In this manner the Viking clan who had power justified its position and its right to control lands (and native peoples).  The Tale of Bygone Years, which is essentially one saga among many others, reproduced this standard trope of the Scandinavian sagas.   It is worth emphasizing that the story of the three brothers is always about why Scandinavians get to rule other people. The survival of the “three-brothers” trope is a reminder of Scandinavian domination. That is its meaning. 3.  The Vikings accepted the invitation and peacefully and durably ruled. In the case of this bit of nonsense, both literary and archaeological methods help.  One does not have to be a student of early legends to understand that the "invitation" story is suspect.  Right down to the present, invading armies claim that they have come only at the invitation of the people whose lands they now occupy.   Contemporary Russians should be particularly sensitive to this, since the Bolshevik invasion of Poland in 1919, the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 were all justified by supposed invitations from within the invaded country.   The ancient Scandinavians also knew this trick, and the story of their being "invited" to the region of Aldeigja and Holmgar∂, in what is now northwestern Russia, is an obvious colonial tale.  Not only is it certainly fictional, its purpose was to deny (not to affirm) the agency of the local people.  The entity that Putin has in mind was the Rus Khaganate. The name Rus referred to the Scandinavian clan; the Scandinavians borrowed the term “kagan” for ruler from the Khazars, their partner in the slave trade. Vikings were in the area in order to facilitate trade southward for Arabic silver.  The chief goods they traded were at first furs and then slaves.   During the period in question, the Vikings known as the Rus understood systematic slave raids in the area, killing the adult men and then selling women, boys and girls into slavery. The power center around Aldeigja and Holmgar∂ had its ascent and its collapse. Either it was attacked by other Scandinavians, or it was challenged by local rebellions of peoples subject to slave raids, or perhaps both. The Rus Khaganate seems to have collapse in about 870. Rus and other Scandinavian traders remained active, and trade emporia would be revived and new towns founded, but the first Rus polity seems to have ended then. 4.  The people of this city were in some sense Russians because they were Slavs. Here one must apply the literary criticism not to the Tale of Bygone Years but to Putin himself.  He never actually says that the people in the Aldeigja and Holmgar∂ regions were Russians; he wrongly believes that they were Slavs, and implies a Russian identity by claiming that their actions laid the basis for a "centralized Russian state."  This is, of course, a trick.   It is absurd to imagine Russians existing 1200 or 1300 years ago, and Putin avoids the absurdity by slipping in his imaginary Russians by silent implication.  And so the point must be made explicitly: there were no Russians anywhere in the world 1200 or 1300 years ago.  There was no notion whatever of a Russian people.   The backup position would be that these people were Slavs and thus in some sense proto-Russians.   That is not how history works: there is no natural, inevitable progression from people speaking a language 1200 or 1300 years ago to the cultural identities or political regimes of today.  But even if one believes in this political magic, and even if one believes that people speaking a slavic language 1200 or 1300 years ago were somehow proto-Russians, there is still a major problem.  The people who lived in the area at the time did not generally speak Slavic languagues. They were mainly Finns, not Slavs.   For that matter, Finns seem to have been the most important group not only in the Aldeigja and Holmgar∂ regions, but in all of what is now northeastern Russia, including what is now the Moscow region. (There was, of course, no city of Moscow at the time.) 5.  These Vikings were also in some sense Russians, since they called themselves “Rus.” Here again we confront an implicit claim, one that is is backed by a semantic trick.  There is now a country called the Russian Federation, which is named after an earlier country called the Russian Empire, which was named after Vikings who called themselves Rus, or after the medieval power centers established by the Rus, the first of which was the Rus Khaganate.   There is a power in names, just as there is a power in anniversaries and round numbers.  If those people were called Rus, must they not have been Russians?  Well, no. The Rus came first. The Russian Empire was named after them about a thousand years after they appeared. The naming confuses things, but it need not confuse us.    At the time period in question, other European rulers had no difficulty establishing who the Rus were: they were Swedes.  In the poems and stories they sang and wrote, and in the traces they left in their burial ground, the Rus were unambiguously Scandinavians.  To be sure, they were influenced by the peoples with whom they came into contact: Finns, Balts, Arabs, Bulgars, Khazars, Slavs.  This was a period of the globalization of Scandinavia, and the Rus were part of an exploratory impulse that reached four continents  In the eighth and ninth centuries, the Rus were Scandinavian trading and clans.  Later on, as some Rus settled ever further south, for example in Gnezdevo, Chernihiv, and Kyiv, the Scandinavians reinforced their elite status by marrying Scandinavians from Scandinavia, by treating them as allies and friends, and by expanding upon and sharing in Scandinavian culture.   After the collapse of the Rus Khaganate, other Rus managed to establish another power center, much later, at Kyiv. Now rather than cooperating with the Khazars they were taking over their land and tribute centers. The Rus (or other Scandinavians) also built the first towns in other parts of eastern Europe, for example in the area around Moscow (which of course did not exist at the time). After telling his deeply implausible legend about Novgorod, Putin's next move is to cite the Tale of Bygone Years about Kyiv.  The person or people who wrote that saga was concerned to show that the Rus ruler of Kyiv, was the most important prince in the region. By the time of the writing of the chronicle, Novgorod did exist, and so a story presented itself which linked the two places and showed the superiority of Kyiv. The story is that a Viking from Novgorod managed to take Kyiv by dressing himself up as a trader and fooling the naive local rulers.  At his moment of his triumph this Viking produced a baby and proclaimed that the child was by blood the true ruler of the land. After this improbable succession of events that Viking of the story proclaimed Kyiv “the mother of Rus cities,” a bit of language meant to assure people in the twelfth century that the present rulers of Kyiv should dominate over other Rus in other towns. One could perform the same kind of analysis on this story.  At the time The Tale of Bygone Yearswas written, there was no Russia. There were no Russians. There were clans of Scandinavians called Rus, who were engaged in a contest of dominance, with towns and emporia that rose and fell. Part of this contest was a story, set down in the early twelfth century, describing the arrival of the Rus in Kyiv, a historical event of the early tenth century.  Rus did in fact arrive in Kyiv, but not as the story describes. The Vikings in the story could not have come from Novgorod, since at the time the Rus began to settle the Kyiv area Novgorod had not yet been founded. It was much later on, when both cities did exist, at the time of the chronicle, when the Scandinavians in Kyiv wanted to justify both their own pedigree and their own dominance. The story can only be understood in these terms. Otherwise it is just comical.  The baby thing is ridiculous; no Viking ever went to war with a baby on display, nor did any Viking have the idea of a royal dynasty of which the baby would be the heir. The dressup game is a fictional stratagem familiar from Scandinavian sagas as well as contemporary Byzantine war stories. Even if one ignores the legendary and preposterous character all that, the timing of the events is challenged by the recorded birth and death dates of the clever wardrobe Viking and the portable baby Viking.  The hero of the Kyiv story, the clever wardrobe Viking known as Helgi (or Oleh or Oleg in Ukrainian or Russian) is a semi-mythical character. There is no reason to believe that he represented a dynasty coming from Novgorod, since Novgorod did not exist yet, and since the Rus khaganate had ceased to exist. It is likely that, if he came at all, Helgi came from Gnezdovo, which was a rival of Chernihiv and Kyiv at the time. Helgi means “hero” and this Helgi is one of dozens who populate medieval Scandinavian stories. This Helgi supposedly died by fulfilling a complicated prophesy involving his horse, a story which features in multiple north European settings. The Kyiv incident could not have happened, did not happen, and even had it happened would have no implications for the present war.  It is not really worth the effort to press the point further about Kyiv, not least because the validity of the Kyiv tale, which is nil, would depend on the validity of the prior Novgorod story, which is nil.   You can seewhy historians hesitate to engage in all this.  What Putin is doing has nothing to do with history as a discipline.  He is engaged in building a legend, which us based on other legends. And each of his sentences is so rich in various kinds of error that it takes hundreds of words to explain all of the wrongness!   And in taking the tale seriously, the historian fears that he has made it more serious. This is what I called “dancing with a skeleton” in my book Reconstruction of Nations, where I discourage it. I am only doing it now since the both the myth and the war persist, and people (even outside Russia) persist in justifying the war by the myth. By concentrating upon the fundamental legend, the one on which all the others depend, I hope to have shown that the structure itself is empty. The rules Putin sets down for interpreting the past cannot be accepted.  It is nothing more than fantasy following force. This is the most important point. If we grant that tyrants are right to start wars because of fictions of brothers and babies, because of stories that are not even wrong, then every single corner of the world is subject to invasion and the entire international legal order is void. Even were we to accept the way Putin thinks about the past, which we absolutely should not do, it would lead to a very different conclusion than he thinks. The best guesses of long-dead monks are not a solid basis for contemporary statehood.  Tbe Tale of Bygone Years cannot do what Putin asks of it. If, in order to exist today, states have to prove their ancient pedigree and their durable ethnic and political history, then Putin would have to accept that there is no basis for the existence of today’s Russian Federation. Were Putin to follow his own logic, he would not be invading Ukraine, but handing over European Russia to Finland or Sweden.