Ukraine's neo-Israeli, Dystopian future

Azov for ceasefire. Zelensky and western motivations. The struggle for the heartland

I’ve been writing a lot about war lately - time for peace, surely. A new week, a new NYT article worrying about the ever-so violent world. Who could possibly be to blame? Let’s see what the great minds across the Atlantic have to say. They published this today:

In an interview session with reporters last week, Mr. Zelensky said that there was no evident Plan B if the West didn’t support his plan.

“I’m not insisting that they do it exactly this way,” Mr. Zelensky said. “I said it will work. If you have an alternative, then please, go ahead.”

He reiterated that he was still against ceding territory. But he also talked about diplomatic steps to resolve issues like protecting energy infrastructure and establishing a safe shipping corridor out of Ukraine on the Black Sea.

And he hinted at one approach that might allow Ukraine to save face if it does not reclaim all the land Russia has captured. “No one will legally recognize the occupied territories as belonging to other states,” he said.

U.S. officials have privately expressed some exasperation with Mr. Zelensky’s victory plan, calling it unrealistic and dependent almost entirely on Western aid. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military information.

Case in point: In one part not made public, Mr. Zelensky proposed a “nonnuclear deterrence package” in which Ukraine would get Tomahawk missiles, a totally unfeasible request, a senior U.S. official said. A Tomahawk has a range of 1,500 miles, more than seven times the range of the long-range missile systems called ATACMS that Ukraine got this year. And the United States sent only a limited number of those, senior U.S. officials said.

….

At the battlefront, the frustration with the United States and its allies is palpable. A drone pilot in the 57th Brigade in Ukraine, who goes by the call sign Fregat, said in an interview that he wanted the current front line to be frozen because the Ukrainians couldn’t beat the Russians with just shovels and machine guns. He blamed the Europeans and America for not providing more high-precision weapons.

A volunteer helping to evacuate people near Pokrovsk, an eastern town that Russian troops are closing in on, said the West just wanted to weaken Russia, not help Ukraine win.

“Soon, there may be no one left even to use the weapons they give us,” said the volunteer, Yevhen Tuzov, “because all our Western partners want is for us to fight until the last Ukrainian.”

Obviously, it isn’t all bullshit - I’ve been writing here plenty about how Ukrainian militarists familiar with the frontline have been calling for a ceasefire for months. Otherwise, given Russian military successes and the ever-worsening crisis in Ukrainian military organization and troop quality, the situation threatens to spin out of control.

But what I do find questionable is the idea that Zelensky ‘hinted at one approach that might allow Ukraine to save face if it does not reclaim all the land Russia has captured’. Or rather, even if he did say this, how possible is this? How would the US react? It’s time for another peace piece.

Azov - Ukraine must be like Israel, victory is a utopia

Things are certainly changing when it comes to border rhetoric. Earlier this week Ukraine’s strongman (#2 or #1 in government, depending on how you look at it) Andrii Yermak stated in an interview that Ukraine is ready to negotiate with Russia with the starting point of the ‘2022 borders’ - ie, Russia can remain in around a fifth of the country, that which it controlled before it launched its ‘Special Military Operation’ in 2022. Of course, he portrayed this as a stern ultimatum to Russia, which must retreat from its current positions to those it occupied before February 2022.

In any case, a shocking betrayal from the corner least expected! What about Zelensky’s famous slogan, trumpeted at every international meeting or otherwise the past two and a half years, that there are no negotiations possible before Russia retreats to the 1991 borders?

Brace yourself readers, for things get even worse - Zelensky’s ‘Victory Plan’, so triumphantly presented in Ukraine’s parliament earlier this month, said nothing about borders of any kind - 1991, 2022, or 2024! This was picked up on by no one other than Azov neo-nazi kingpin Dmytro Kukharchuk in an interview this week, where he ridiculed the 1991 borders slogan. I underlined the highlights:

How will Zelensky's Victory Plan impact the course of the war?

Zelensky presented a Victory Plan that consists of five points. When the president speaks, these are matters of strategy, not tactics. So, if we talk about the practical implementation of these steps, it’s clear that I don’t see it, but if we’re talking about the fact that it could be part of a strategy that might lead to certain results, then that’s possible. I hope so. Among these points, there’s nothing about our temporarily occupied territories. Any war is fought not for land but for people because borders don’t matter if there are no Ukrainians left in this country.

Currently, no one has an answer to the question of how to return lost territories. ....

In this context, can anyone or anything stop Putin?

When you ask me this, I’ll say: no, I don’t see any real individuals or realistic prospects for anyone stopping him. He has both the idea and a plan to implement it — even if it’s clumsy, he has it, and he wants to see himself in history, unlike others. If there were someone, some global player willing to see themselves in history, they would act. But there isn’t. There are only black swans, those unexpected events, that accompany history and are all we seem to rely on. Those who should have a plan are relying on black swans, thinking, “we don’t have a plan, so we’ll wait for a black swan.” There was hope when Prigozhin marched on Moscow — I remember how excited Ukrainians were. They thought, “Prigozhin will make it to Moscow!” I don’t know, I watched and thought it was interesting, but still, there was hope in Prigozhin.

And here we get to the core of the answer: we must rely on ourselves and develop these values within ourselves. The worst-case scenario for us is that the front will fall, we’ll be occupied, and there will be a guerrilla war, where we might manage to retain some portion of territory. An average scenario would be a freezing of the conflict — though I don’t believe in it much. If that happens, there will be time that can be used differently, but it can only be accomplished if we’re lucky. We won’t have six years; at most, two or three. Even in six months, we could achieve a lot if someone had the intentions and the will to do it.

….

Honestly, in the current reality, victory sounds more like a utopia than something achievable with our current resources compared to the enemy’s…

Forecasting three to six months ahead is mostly like fortune-telling, but it will certainly be difficult because people are dwindling, and hope in Western partners is also fading. It's becoming obvious that they don’t see us as full partners. Ultimately, everything depends on us — on Ukrainians' understanding of their role and place in the global order. Are we to become a self-sufficient force, or remain an object in the hands of global players?

…

To end on a positive note, how do you see the Ukraine of the future?

In my view, building the Ukraine of the future, like anything else, requires us to focus first and foremost on the risks we face. One of our primary risks is the Russian Empire, located right next to us. Thus, the Ukraine of the future must be a country with a clear position on the creation of its Armed Forces, taking into account its geopolitical position and the challenges it faces.

If I were to compare it to another country, I would compare it exclusively with Israel. I am confident that we have a lot to learn from them, and we need to build Ukraine in a way that enables it to withstand international challenges. That is the Ukraine of the future.

Thank you for the meaningful conversation, thank you.

Paradoxes

You know, dear readers, I was actually somewhat worried several months back when I started publishing translations of obscure, relatively anonymous Azov telegrams that called for a ceasefire. My favorite Azovite telegram, Tales of the IV Reich/Empire, is essentially anonymous - I only have suppositions regarding the identity of the admin based on my own sources and some digging. Should I really be relying on it, I wondered? Is what he’s saying even remotely popular among other Azov leaders? It felt somewhat dissonant when all the top, public Azov figures bellowed in unison about the 1991 borders.

But what was once the exception has now become the rule - now Kukharchuk is saying it. As usual, military fortunes determine rhetoric, not vice versa.

This brings to me a very important point - Zelensky is much more interested in continuing the war than the Azov-type ideological militarists. It’s the Azovites who are dying - not all of them quite live up to their Aryan Warrior rhetoric, of course, but plenty of them do head off to Valhalla on the frontlines. It’s Zelensky that has obscene political problems with EVERYONE, especially the repressed, extorted business class, once quasi-democracy returns in a post-war period.

I know it’s a popular idea that Zelensky is trying to convince Ukrainian society that ‘the west has abandoned us, so it’s time to freeze the frontline and stop fighting’. I’m skeptical. I don’t think Zelensky has much of a choice - the choice isn’t between peace and war for him, but between war and his own political, and possibly physical destruction.

In contrast, Azov will coast on their war hero status more than ever. And on the political marketplace, Azov’s fighting power will be as in demand as ever by political heavyweights and other oligarchs. Best of all, they won’t be at risk of dying on the frontlines, and will be able to focus some more attention on whipping the home front into fighting shape - a major preoccupation of that same Kukharchuk interview I translated above, by the way - he bemoaned how much more effective Russia has been at ideologically shaping its own society.

Beyond Zelensky, there are other issues in the way of peace. What about the law passed in 2022 which forbids any negotiation with Vladimir Putin? Yermak recently clarified that this is only directed against Putin - negotiation with others are possible. Hardly convincing. There are other more important legal obstacles - like the fact that the path towards NATO membership, Putin’s main interest in Ukraine, was fixed into Ukraine’s constitution in 2018. To change that, Zelensky will need a parliamentary majority.

Sure, democracy doesn’t mean much in Ukraine, and Zelensky generally gets what he wants in parliament through bribery and threats - but how well will that work when it’s something so absolute as NATO membership? Something that just about every Ukrainian politician has sworn to defend at all costs for years? Something that Ukraine has lost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives to maintain?

In short, it seems difficult. It could happen, under pressure of extreme military failures. But by that point, how controllable will the situation really be - not in parliament, but on the frontline?

This has always been the problem with democracy in Ukraine. It slows decision-making. Ukraine had years to implement the Minsk agreements (which would have also functionally made NATO accession impossible), and nothing happened precisely because of all this. We all know how that turned out - February 24, 2022. It seems entirely likely to repeat itself - even if Ukrainian political leadership wanted to abandon NATO accession ‘goals’, inertia gets in the way. And even if it managed to dig up the courage, would the mixture of veiled threats and promises from its western partners allow it…

The Americans

My general feeling is that these NYT editorials hinting at a ‘negotiated settlement’ are motivated by two things. First, Russian successes on the battlefield. The idea would be to negotiate the freezing of the frontline before Russia goes too far. But the problem is this is why Russia would agree to that.

Second, elections. Trump is campaigning with the idea that he’ll stop the war in Ukraine, or at least get the US uninvolved in it. The democrats seem to have a lot of faith in the convincing power of 'various media editorials and comments that can be interpreted as pushing a ‘pro-peace line’. They certainly enjoy this sort of show when it comes to Palestine - how many times have state department officials, or the president himself (whoever he is), solemnly stated their displeasure with Israel’s actions, their steadfast commitment to ‘ending the violence’…

The main problem with all this is who - who in the US elite really wants an end to the war in Ukraine? I don’t see any groups particularly dedicated to ending it - are there any US interests or interest groups directly harmed by it? Is anyone actually willing to endure the political damage of being called a ‘Putler puppet’ or ‘ruining US global power’, accusations that will obviously come flying upon any real US retreat from Ukraine?

The Americans only left Afghanistan after almost two decades of failure. As far as I know, it wasn’t particularly good for Biden among heavyweight donors and lobbyists. And there was far less energy to ‘defend Afghanistan’ among the US foreign policy elite and lobbyists than for Ukraine. When the US left Afghanistan, it was replaced by a weak, isolated Taliban in a quite distant corner of the world. Afghanistan isn’t so irrelevant, I know, but let’s keep things relative. I also have a particular attachment to the comparison because I remember being in Kyiv back in 2021, and my Ukrainian nationalist family being filled with a mixture of fear and disbelief at the US withdrawal.

In contrast, the US fears - rightfully so - that if it leaves Ukraine, it will be replaced by a globally powerful Russia on the doorstep of the EU. I’m not convinced that God-Emperor Putler will launch his galactic Jihad on Poland and Germany, but it certainly won’t make EU countries particularly confident in US power projection - maybe they’ll start squirming to come to agreements with US enemies?

In contrast, the Americans who are deeply interested in Ukraine are quite obvious. The Democrat Kagan and Biden families, Trumpist Mike Pompeo, Republican Lindsey Graham, the list goes on. And that’s without getting into all the various lobbying groups dedicated to ‘supporting Ukraine whatever it takes’.

Preventing the emergence of an independent ‘Eurasian Heartland’ has been THE priority of US foreign policy from - at least - Alfred Mahan in the late 19th century, and has continued to the present day through the familiar names. Mackinder, Spykman, and Brzezinski. The British were fighting their Great Game with the Russian Empire since the start of the 1800s. There’s no greater Anglo-Saxon fear than what Halford Mackinder, the British founder of geopolitics, formulated in 1919:

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island commands the world.

— Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality

I don’t think the US is going to ‘do whatever it takes’ in Ukraine. There are more ‘moderate’ voices than total hawks. But the fact remains that there aren’t many actual ‘doves’. That’s if we’re talking about the actually existing elite, the ‘deep state’ so to speak. Maybe Trump and JD Vance will act otherwise. But to do so would mean a total transformation of the US foreign policy world - a massive purging of the ranks. It seems unlikely to me.

What seems likely to me is more of the same - East Europe will continue to be degraded in the fight to control the Heartland.