Peace... through war?

Let the clown go and negotiate peace. The phenomenon of khataskrainichestvo. Bloggers against war. Zelensky's many discourses. Military vulture Prytula buys 3 new apartments in a day.

Peace, peace, when will it come? This has become a never-ending hum on Ukrainian and Western media. I wrote an article recently about Zelensky’s recent pacifist overtures. But to what is their real significance?

Peace… on our terms

To begin with, we need to take a closer look at Zelensky’s media policy.

For the international press, Zelensky has been making ambiguous statements that seem to abandon his usual (in fact, legally sanctified) insistence on war until the 1991 borders, no negotiations with Put(ler). For instance, in his July 19 interview for the BBC

Zelensky made another ambiguous statement about the need to end the war on July 9, at his speech for the Reagan Institute. Amidst the usual messages, he also stated ‘When we speak about territory, we have to know that we need to save people, nations.’ While this was surrounded by more militarist slogans, Ukrainian analysts at the time wrote that this line seemed to hint that the 1991 borders were less important than other priorities.

At the same conference, Zelensky came out with more pessimism about the F16 wunderwaffens, upon which many hopes are pinned among Ukrainian ultra-patriots:

The problem with the F16 is the number and the dates,… Russia is using 3 hundred aircraft against Ukraine every day…. We decided on 10, 20 [F16s]. Even if there are 50, it's nothing. They have three hundred. We are defending ourselves, we need 128. …until we have 128 aircraft, we will not be able to match them in the sky,

On July 19, Zelensky complained again about how Ukraine still hadn’t received any F16s. Lacking wunderwaffen, the obvious conclusion is that perhaps peace negotiations are all that’s left?

And on July 7, the NYT published an article advocating the remnants of Ukraine join NATO and the EU.

How scandalous! So it isn’t a war for survival, but a war to join the EU? This has been one of the most important topics of my substack, which I wrote about here. In that article, I wrote about how top Ukrainian intellectuals advocated abandoning eastern Ukraine to Russia, since local attitudes would make joining the EU and NATO impossible. Which is precisely what the NYT proposes:

European officials have also been infected with pacifism. On July 20, Scholtz called for Russia to be present at the fabled ‘next Geneva conference’. When he met with a representative of the Vatican on July 23, Zelensky also became momentarily infected by pacifism.

Why this coincidence between western and Ukrainian ‘pacifism’? It doesn’t take a genius to see the benefit of pushing for a ceasefire on the current frontline when your side is losing ground.

Russian foreign minister Lavrov made it clear on July 17 that his ministry wasn’t interested in a repeat of Geneva, despite their invitation by Ukraine. Peskov, the presidential press secretary, was also doubtful. Important security official Patrushev called Ukrainian and western talk of negotiations a ‘tactical trick’.

Another reason for peace narratives, as the recent Geneva ‘peace conference’ showed, is most countries in the world - the third world, the global majority, the global south, however else - are hardly enthused by Zelensky’s eurocentric militarism.

Hence, also, irrelevant overtures to the Palestinians, like Ukraine’s July 9 UN vote. Even though domestically, true patriots know that Palestinians are putler puppets, the equivalent of degenerate, orco-proletarian Donbass separatists.

And also the ‘great Chinese hope’. One thing you’ll hear a great deal on Ukrainian TV, even among diehard nationalists like Evhen Dyky, is that it’s a bad idea for Ukraine to antagonize China (not that this stops it from doing so, of course). Naturally, they like to emphasize supposed profound contradictions between Russia and China, particularly China’s supposed hunger for Siberian territorial acquisitions.

They hope that Ukraine could convince China to put pressure on Russia to agree to a less humiliating peace agreement. Why would China do that? Anyone’s guess. But that’s why Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, told Wan Yi that Ukraine is ready for negotiations with Russia in the future during his much publicized visit to China on July 24.

The Chinese plan, of course, is different to the Russian demands - the Chinese propose a ceasefire on the current frontline. On July 29, Chinese representatives again declared their support for this approach. But it isn’t China that’s at war. And if Russia continues doing well on the frontline, I don’t see why China would be interested in stopping it. In reality, these ‘future negotiations’, if they’ll ever happen, will simply have the same conditions that Russia already gives, except worse, given current Russian advances. But that’s obvious to anyone with a brain.

And when, naturally, the Chinese didn’t agree to force Russia to agree to Ukrainian demands with a gun to Putin’s head, the rhetoric became less pacifistic. On July 26, Podolyak told AP that any agreements with Russia are ‘agreements with the devil’:

If you want to sign a deal with the devil, who will then drag you to hell, well, go for it. This is what Russia is,

If you sign anything today with Russia, that will not lose the war and will not be legally responsible for mass crimes, this will mean that you have signed yourself a ticket to continue the war on a different scale, with other protagonists, with a different number of killed and tortured people

And according to Viktor Orban, Zelensky is just as confident as Putin is in his own victory. But where Putin is confident in his country’s military industrial capacity, Zelensky indulges in the usual hope for imminent Russian collapse. He told Orban that Russia would be gripped with protests because the government will supposedly be forced to mobilize more soldiers in 2025. At home, for some reason, Zelensky doesn’t seem to take seriously popular anger about real, not hypothesized mobilization, though my modest blog has been able to pick up on it.

Peace through war?

Former presidential advisor Aleksey Arestovych even came up with a neat theory in mid-July about the inner consistency of these seemingly contradictory positions. According to him, talk about a 2025 counteroffensive is serious.

Arestovych laid out a magnificently cynical calculation: If they win, great, victory. If they lose, also great. The huge losses and social trauma will be just what’s necessary to switch gears from militarism to pacifism.

Of course, Arestovych hasn’t been in government for a long time. But his paradoxical formula certainly seems aesthetically appealing. Though in my view, it might overstate the agency of average Ukrainians. Currently, the government has the guns and are happy to use them against those with disagreements. In my view - some Ukrainian friends I have also believe this - the government is quite free to choose whatever decisions it wants.

Harsh anti-negotiation statements made by nationalists on the TV are one thing, but who would really support them if they tried to mount a coup d’etat against Zelensky’s attempt to end the war? Azov is certainly influential, but even within it there are many voices that criticize endless, self-destructive war from consistent nationalist positions. If the government really wanted peace, it could tell its malleable patriots to change tack.

In any case, Arestovych’s paradox might still ring true. Other experts like Ruslan Bortnyk predict attempts at Ukrainian (and Russian) offensive actions around November, around the US elections. After that we’ll see.

The khataskrainik

While I’m ever one to emphasize the unreliability of wartime polls, they do show several things. On July 15, a poll showed that almost half of Ukrainians don’t consider it shameful to be a draft-dodger. Another poll showed that about the same amount of Ukrainians think its time to end the war through negotiations. In both cases, the most militaristic were the elderly - those not subject to mobilization, and those who spend most time in front of the television.