Peace is just around the corner...

Zelensky's victory plan. Nationalists for peace - or not? The paradox of Ukrainian liberal doomers. No diplomacy, yes war. My own self criticism

Yesterday, Zelensky finally unveiled his mighty ‘victory plan’ to the Ukrainian public. To begin with, there was nothing new - entry to NATO and more military aid being the main point. Second, a few questions were raised by the fact that it was presented to the Ukrainian public quite some time after being triumphantly (and fruitlessly) presented to Ukraine’s ‘western partners’. And even then, several points are still ‘too secret’ to speak about. And do I even have to talk about his obsessive references to Ukraine’s mineral riches and its importance for western investors?

So what is the meaning of this plan? And all the other ‘peace ‘plans’, or promises, or whatever they are, which crowd up western media nowadays. And what about other pearls from Zelensky like his October 9 statement that the battlefield ‘creates an opportunity’ to bring an end to the war in 2025?

You don’t have to be a keen follower of the war in Ukraine to be struck with a sense of déjà vu. There certainly isn’t only one obvious interpretation of all these statements, rumors, and media columns. I’m going to present several possible interpretations, then take stock at the end.

Ukrainian society wants peace?

When I say ‘society’, I don’t mean the majority of Ukrainians. Their opinion has never meant much anyway. What I mean by this - and this is also what is meant when ‘Ukrainian society’ and its opinions is mentioned in western or Ukrainian media - is that minority of society, numbering around 20-30%, which has committed its life to nationalist political or military organizations. There are broadly two groups here.

First, nationalists who fight in the frontlines and are generally affiliated in some way to the Azov movement, the Right Sector network, and other complex paramilitary/parapolitical entities. Second, the liberal NGO nationalists who generally stay far from the war, often called Sorosites or, more recently, ‘the new nobility'. Both have their relationships with US funding/training networks, which Moss Robeson covers fantastically on his substack.

If you’ve been following my telegram roundups, you will have read the Ukrainian militarists complaining about how gay, draft-evading western-funded NGO liberals/Zelensky are intent on prosecuting the war until the last Ukrainian patriot. Tales of the IV Reich, a telegram run by an Azov sergeant, is particularly keen on this line of thought - that the US democrats (he is himself pro-Trump) are pushing Ukraine into an endless war that is ruining its demographic potential forever.

There’s been no shortage of similar voices lately as well. Major Kyryllo Veres is a quite well-known officer in the K2 Battalion - the second line mechanized battalion of the 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade. He is often interviewed by various media, and is respected by just about all militarists.

I already wrote how at the start of this year, Veres was harshly criticized by the state-run ‘Centre for the Prevention of Disinformation’ (cue 1984 joke), because Veres stated in an interview that Zelensky’s slogan of the 1991 borders or bust was untenable. In that conflict, he was supported by Tales of the IV Reich.

Anyway, Veres has done it again. In an October 10 interview, Veres had this to say:

I don’t think we have the potential to get to the borders of ‘91. If we had that, why are we losing Vuhledar and still fighting around Bakhmut? I don't even think about the borders of '91. I'm thinking about how not to lose the positions I have now. We were heading to the borders in 2023, 2024, in three months it will be 2025, and we're still moving toward the borders of '91 – only in the opposite direction. Maybe it's time to stop fucking up? We need to stand our ground, and only then can we talk about moving forward. Right now, we're stepping backwards in giant strides. What kind of fucking forward are we talking about? Who is saying this? Who believes in this? It’s some kind of surrealism.

When asked about the Chinese/Brazilian peace plans (freezing the frontline as is) and whether Ukrainians would accept such an unsatisfactory outcome, he replied:

It’s one thing to talk out your ass, it’s another to head to a trench and shoot a Russian

On that topic, I’ll note that in April of this year Tales of the IV Reich, Veres’ ally, in fact posted in favour of Ukraine working together with China to end the war instead of the destructive US:

The war can only end with an agreement between both sides, with the involvement of guarantees from the world's powerful nations. I’ve already written hundreds of times, and I’ll write it again: one of our weaknesses in this war is the lack of adequate relations with China. It is a hegemon of global development and a powerful economy, which, overall since 1991, and particularly since 2014, has been largely ignored. Unfortunately, I have an idea why this has happened. Because someone decided that Ukraine’s national idea is to look up to the same Russians who live on the other side of the ocean.

Veres also added that if his unit doesn’t get a 3-4 month rest, they won’t be able to continue fighting. I’ve written about the lack of rotations and its relation to the desertion crisis at length here. In short, all the motivated nationalists have been/are being used up in war, and the mobilized replacements mutiny rather than fight.

Don’t misunderstand me - Veres is no pacifist. In an interview from a few days later, he called on civilians to ‘take off their rose-tinted glasses’ and get ready for war and mobilization. He supports a stronger defense pose, rather than any ‘capitulation of Ukrainian interests’ (read: any formal compromises with the Russian Federation):

I’m not in favour of giving anything up - we need to fight. But we need to take another approach.

He also had plenty of praise for the military effectiveness of the Russian forces he faces at the frontline, and dismissed the stereotypes of incompetent Russian meat storms. Instead, he pointed out that Ukraine hasn’t taken back any territory from Russia, and that Ukraine itself suffers major losses - ‘so what, are we idiots too?’ This, by the way, is quite a common topic for serving nationalists in interviews - they are quite fed up with the liberal/Zelensky media lines about incompetent Russian soldiers.

Serhii Krivonos, an ex-general who is often interviewed by liberal-nationalist media, also wasn’t optimistic. In an October 8 interview, he described the situation at the front for AFU soldiers as ‘total shit’:"We need to understand that only a miracle can save Ukraine at this stage if we don't draw real conclusions from the situation and change our attitude toward what we have in the country," said Krivonos.

“The Russian army is actively forming assault units, and in many areas, due to these assault units, which are being transferred from other parts, they are combining such groups and, clearly understanding where the weak spots are, trying to break through the dam called the Ukrainian army, like melting water.

…

What the authorities are saying and what's happening on the front lines are completely different – this has been going on for more than a day, more than a month, but now the situation has reached the point where it will soon be very difficult to fight because, as the infantrymen themselves said, infantry is starting to die out as a branch of the military because there is no one to fight, nothing to fight with, and nowhere to fight."

There is clearly sentiment in the army in favor of solidly assuming the defensive. And the liberal nationalists have also been echoing them. This, despite the fact that this group often tend to actually be more rigidly militaristic than the serving nationalists themselves - largely because the liberals are often far from the frontlines.

Ostap Drozdov, for instance, is a typical example of the western Ukrainain ‘patriotic intelligentsia’. He gave an October 13 interview titled ‘this is the dying agony of the system of coercion’, responding partly to the mass mobilization activities conducted, in part, at ‘patriotic’ music concerts.

The interviewer also asked Drozdov about the meaning of his recent facebook post describing in detail the massive economic, ecological, and demographic losses Ukraine has suffered in the war. Drozdov answered that there was no need to explain it, the figures stood for themselves:

By continuing this war, it’s as if Ukraine were suicidal, some kind of fata morgana

Complications

Unfortunately, I don’t think peace has much chances at the moment. Neither the standard frontline militarists nor the liberal nationalists have any interest in actually entertaining any political compromises with Russia - removing NATO-membership as a goal in the constitution, for instance. Drozdov and other nationalist doomers blame Ukraine’s suicidal course on ‘the stupid masses’, who ‘have no consciousness’ and are naturally ‘far from being European’.

This is an increasingly common refrain nowadays, particularly among Poroshenkites for whom the stupid Russian-speaking Jew Zelensky is the cause of the war and all other problems. But it ignores the fact that most Ukrainians have never had much impact on politics - their main preoccupation has always been survival in a darwinian neoliberal society. It is the nationalist minority which has taken decisions in the country.

The majority of the country voted for Zelensky in 2019 to bring an end to the war - and once the nationalists vetoed his tentative steps towards reconciliation with Russia, the weak-willed Zelensky went along with the minority. But as usual, the liberals and nationalists are constructing their favorite myth of how they were betrayed by the stupid masses who voted in a pro-Russian populist - just like what happened in 1917-1920 (in fact, nationalists use this optic to explain just about everything in Ukrainian history).

Problems from the first White House

Ukraine’s presidential administration

But anyway, onto everyone’s favorite Zelensky. As you should be able to tell from this substack, he has no shortage of enemies in Ukraine - a list which only grows as the war ends. His callous extortion of Ukraine’s business class makes any sort of peacetime semi-democracy particularly dangerous. It is rather obvious that any end to the war and political democratization would be bad news for the president.

In response to the latest statement in late September from Kamala Harris that ‘the US won’t decide anything without Ukraine’s input’, Tales of the IV Reich had this to say:

In order for issues to be resolved with Ukraine's participation, elections are needed, where the citizens of Ukraine can respond to the devastating policies of the government, during which an unknown number of thousands of citizens have died, hundreds of thousands have been injured, tens of thousands are in captivity suffering daily torture, several million have emigrated permanently, and 25% of the country is occupied by foreign troops with no hint of return. Earlier, I believed that elections were unnecessary and that the current president, as one of the culprits of the tragedy, should bear personal responsibility for what is happening and thus should finish it himself. However, my hopes and desire to see humanity in those who lost it long ago are fading. There is no hint of a military junta coming to power, as the likely candidates for that role would only add more madness with watermelons in Foros. The only option left is democratic elections, where the citizens of Ukraine can voice their opinions. I think that, through conditional China and India, it would be possible to agree on some kind of one-week ceasefire regime for such a parade of justice, but who would even want that?

He gets right to the core of the idiocy of western media statements about ‘Ukrainian agency’. No ‘country’ really has agency - its leaders do, different political groups might (Hezbollah in Lebanon, for instance), but ‘the people’ as a whole never exists. This is particularly so in Ukraine, where the majority of the population are crammed into minibuses kicking and screaming by mobilization officers with automatic weapons.

Also note his ridicule for the idea of a military junta coming to power. People often ask me how likely this is, and there was even a forbes article recently about the possibility of a nationalist coup in response to any potential peace overtures by Zelensky. I’ve seen several polls on this topic on nationalist telegrams, with the majority of responses ridiculing the very question, and choosing the option of leaving the country or doing nothing. Soldiers are either deserting, essentially enslaved by the army, and if they’re nationalists, they know that any coup would simply be ideal for their Russian enemy at the frontline.

Furthermore, as this article should show, it seems to me that Zelensky is a great deal more interested in continuing the war than the nationalists themselves. Don’t forget that before the war, Ukraine’s nationalists ridiculed him as a treacherous crypto-Russian Jew. Nowadays, you can tell what they’re thinking at the back of their mind - you’re just continuing this war to get rid of us, your most powerful political opponents.

The other white house

You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about the upcoming US elections - the elephant in the room in any discussion of the war in Ukraine.

I have little confidence that the Americans are interested in an end to the war - both parties. I don’t put much stock in the fact that the NYT or other demparty-adjacent publications put out material criticizing Zelensky and proposing some kind of ‘German solution’, where the remaining sections of Ukraine would join NATO and the parts controlled by Russia would be abandoned.

This ignores an even more important elephant in the room - Russia. Putin entered Ukraine because he didn’t want the country in NATO or integrated with it in any way. So why on earth would Russia agree to Ukraine joining NATO, when Russia is winning on the frontlines?

I don’t think you have to be a genius to imagine other difficult aspects of such genius ‘peace plans’. For instance, the fact that any (quite likely, and probably ceaseless) Russian attack on the NATO part of Ukraine would activate article 5, creating the Russia-NATO war that all NATO leaders have been very open about wanting to avoid.

So I don’t see such publications as anything other than the pacification of a war-weary western public.

As for Trump - he was president before, and it was under him that the US first began sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. Mike Pompeo, supposedly one of Trump’s favorites, recently penned a very ‘pro-Ukraine’ think-piece, praised by liberal nationalist Ukrainian media in a subsequent English language interview on the topic. Pompeo raged at insufficient US military aid to Ukraine. And beyond that, Trump is older than he was before, and even then he was neither able, nor, it seems to me, particularly willing to reverse the collective desire of the US foreign policy establishment.

Is he really going to be willing to ‘capitulate to Putin’ by excluding Ukraine from any potential partnership or entry into NATO? With republicans and democrats alike yelling at him about ‘a bigger show of US weakness than Afghanistan’? I doubt it.

Blast to the past

Let me do something quite embarrassing - recall my first article on this substack, back in January 20, 2022.

Yes, that’s right - peace is right around the corner! I was stuck in Kiev eagerly believing this wonderful idea right until about February 21 of that year, when I realized something else was around the corner.

I wasn’t alone - I got my ideas from the ‘pro-Russian’ social democrats like Dmitry Dzhangirov (soon after violently disappeared, and probably misinterpreted by myself back then anyway) and strana.ua. We all wanted to hope that the US would ‘force Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements to restore relations with Russia’. And occasional statements by US representatives, along with hysteria among Ukrainian nationalists that ‘the west is forcing us to capitulate’, seemed to confirm this hope.

The fact is, that we underestimated US agency. I agree with Adam Tooze’s recent piece - the US isn’t powerless in the face of Israeli or Ukrainian agency, but is instead happy to use them in its geopolitical ends.

Coda

I don’t see the west collapsing economically any time soon because of weapons shipments to Ukraine. It can certainly send enough to slow down movement at the frontline. And both parties in the US are committed to maintaining US global power. Ukraine may not be a particularly winning piece, but it’s one of the few they have in conditions of hegemonic crisis.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s liberal nationalists, while increasingly pessimistic, are hardly enthusiastic for self-criticism. And why would they, given that any real self-criticism would lead them to contemplate the cosmic level of destruction they have inflicted on their country through their selfish idealism?

And Ukraine’s military nationalists, while contemptuous of Zelensky’s idiotic military ‘counter-offensives’ and the like, are also hardly peace doves. They want to dig in for the long run and mobilize all society, kicking and screaming.

Given all this, I have to conclude that the only real variable that plays a role in this war, is, surprise, the war itself. It was the Russian/separatist victories at Debaltseve and Ilovaisk in late 2014/early 2015 that forced Ukraine to sign the Minsk agreements. After deadlock in the Minsk process and failure in US-Russian relations, it was Russia’s launching of its new military intervention in February 2022 that once again transformed the situation.

And in future, too, politics and diplomacy will play second fiddle to events on the frontline. And not just events, but the broader processes I describe in posts like this: military organizational issues and degradation, the dramatic difference in motivation and training between forcibly-mobilized troops and patriotic volunteers, and so on.

Let’s assume that western ‘peace plan’ editorials and Zelensky’s schizophrenic rhetoric are psyops to prepare the public for a new ‘counter-offensive’. The latter always seem to happen right after a spate of the former.