The United States has sent billions of dollars of munitions and weapons to Ukraine. But arming Ukraine was never really about helping Ukraine pursue its goals. It was about the U.S. pursuing its goal of preserving its hegemony. A war is being fought in Ukraine, not to assure Ukraine the right to join NATO – something polling suggests a majority of Ukrainians have never been wed to and Ukraine was willing to forgo at the beginning of the war – but to assure NATO the right to expand into Ukraine.
Although the admission that Ukraine and the West have lost the war may be slow to evolve and the end of the war may still drag on for a very long time, the end of the war has begun. As Paul Robinson, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa, has recently pointed out, “Wars are inherently difficult to predict. That said, there comes a time when the general trend in a war becomes evident.” When it comes to the war in Ukraine, “the general direction of the war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly clear, and it doesn’t look good for the Ukrainians.”
If there ever was sincere hope that Ukraine could push Russia back across the border, that hope has ebbed. Perhaps realizing that the war could no longer be won by Ukraine nor sold to the West by defending Ukrainian soil, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi pinned what was left of their hopes on an invasion into Russian soil in Kursk.
That invasion has failed. The invasion was led by the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade, the Ukrainian armed forces most highly trained and heavily equipped by the West. But those forces were neither sufficient to maintain their advance into Russia nor to draw Russian forces from the Donbas front to the Kursk front. The Russian armed forces were able to stop their advance without diverting troops from Donbas. And the no longer advancing troops have become sitting ducks who are being subjected to terrible loss of equipment and lives.
The Kursk offensive may be remembered as the Ukrainian strategy that led to the loss of the war. Sending their most effective forces away from the Donbas front did not pull Russian troops away with them, but it did deprive Ukraine’s Donbas front of its most effective forces. Instead of falling for the trap, the Russian armed forces exploited the now weaker defensive lines.
Those lines that stand between the Russian forces and Ukraine to the west have begun to crumble. The Washington Post reports that “Ukrainian forces have been retreating along dozens of miles of a front line being pushed to its breaking point.” And at points, it has already broken.
On October 2, the heavily fortified town of Vuhledar fell. Encircled by Russian forces, the Ukrainian armed forces announced that its troops were withdrawing from the town. This loss is not just another loss of a small town. Ukraine had been fiercely defending Vuhledar since the beginning of the war. Vuhledar is a key hub for supplying Ukrainian forces in the east and for moving weapons to the front. Its fall will also expose flat, difficult to defend land to the west, helping Russia to realize its goal of controlling all of Donbas. Located just 30 miles south of Pokrovsk, the capture of Vuhledar could also facilitate Russia’s advance on Pokrovsk, the other key logistical hub used by Ukraine to supply their troops in the east and defend their land to the west.
The U.S. has from the beginning promised Ukraine whatever it needs for as long as it takes and that there would be “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” It is time to act on those promises. What Ukraine needs now is not more weapons in the pursuit of the survival of American hegemony, but peace talks in pursuit of their own survival.
Those peace talks will be hard for Ukrainians to swallow and for Zelensky to survive. He had decreed that Ukraine would not negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin and had promised that Ukraine would retake all of its territory. To end the war by talking to Putin about Ukraine withdrawing from its territory after two and a half years of war will be hard to sell to Ukrainians and hard for Zelensky to survive.
Polls suggest that increasing numbers of Ukrainians favor negotiations to end the war. But there could be an ultranationalist backlash against negotiations. After first being elected on a promise of peace talks with Russia, Zelensky faced that backlash from a far right who threatened that, if Zelensky fulfilled his campaign promise, “he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine.”
Those feelings of betrayal among right wing ultranationalists may now be even worse after two and a half years of sacrifice at war. In July, Strana reported that Bohdan Krotevich, the acting commander of the ultranationalist Azov Brigade said there would be no “peace without victory.” He warned Zelensky that “There is only one victory – not a single Russian soldier on Ukrainian territory. We will not leave this war to our descendants, and you will not leave it either, because if you try, it will be bad. Both for you and for them.”
Ultranationalist voices like Azov speak for a minority of Ukrainians, but they have oversized influence and ability. To extricate himself from blame, Zelensky may have to shift responsibility. Such a shift may be accomplished in two ways: shifting responsibility to the U.S. or shifting responsibility to the Ukrainian people.
The thought that Zelensky could attempt to shift responsibility to the U.S. can be attributed to Ukraine’s former Prosecutor-General Yury Lutsenko. Zelensky recently presented his “Ukrainian Victory Plan,” complete with its maximalist requests for accelerated NATO membership and permission for long-range strikes deeper into Russia. He left Washington with neither. Lutsenko suggests that the failure of the victory plan was the plan. Then Zelensky, reminding Ukrainians that the West pushed Ukraine from a diplomatic track to a war track with the promise of whatever they need for as long as it takes to push Russia out of Ukraine, can claim that the West betrayed Ukraine by not giving them what they need or what they were promised.
Zelensky could then complain that Ukraine cannot continue the war without U.S. support and move toward peace talks with Russia, all the time placing the blame on the United States. He will then accept an agreement based on the Istanbul agreement similar to the one that Putin recently proposed and then, to be fully free of responsibility, put it to a referendum.
And that is the second direction for shifting responsibility: letting the people of Ukraine decide to end the war and accept a peace in a referendum. In August, Zelensky told the French media, that decisions on giving up territory had to be made by the people of Ukraine, not by the President of Ukraine. “It goes against the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelensky said, “those in power have no official right to give up their territories.” A referendum would be needed because “the Ukrainian people has to want it.”
What Ukraine needs now is U.S. support in transitioning out of the war and into negotiations that will allow it the best possible future. There is no more time for U.S. talk of “Our job is to put Ukraine in a strong position on the battlefield so that they are in a strong position at the negotiating table.” That time has passed. The longer Russia is allowed to advance in Donbas, the weaker Ukraine’s position is on the battlefield and the more land they risk losing at the negotiating table: not to mention the more lives they risk losing on the battlefield.
Ukraine needs an agreement that wins them security guarantees in exchange for written guarantees that it will forgo NATO membership and return to their commitment of neutrality. They need to officially give up Crimea and withdraw from the rest of their lost territory without legally recognizing their annexation by Russia, as Putin seemed to allow in his recent peace proposal. They need the U.S. to encourage Poland and Europe to overcome resistance to expedited Ukrainian membership in the European Union so that Ukraine can retain 80% of its territory, maintain its sovereignty and pursue its integration with the West that could allow it to thrive despite the suffering and losses of the war.
It is time for the U.S. to stop pursuing its own foreign policy interests in Ukraine by supporting war and start advancing Ukraine’s interests by supporting their transition to negotiations. It is time for the U.S. to finally start really helping Ukraine.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
