There seems to be a shift taking place in American policy toward the war in Ukraine. It’s not being officially announced at this point, but there are reports coming from White House sources suggesting that reality has begun to sink in at the White House and expectations will need to be scaled back. Politico reports that Biden administration advisers have come to accept the obvious reality that Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive has almost entirely failed. The original objective of driving the Russian military entirely out of the country was never realistic. And with support for further, unlimited funding for the war crumbling at home, some compromises will need to be made if a path toward peace can be found.
With U.S. and European aid to Ukraine now in serious jeopardy, the Biden administration and European officials are quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war, according to a Biden administration official and a European diplomat based in Washington. Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia.
The White House and Pentagon publicly insist there is no official change in administration policy — that they still support Ukraine’s aim of forcing Russia’s military completely out of the country. But along with the Ukrainians themselves, U.S. and European officials are now discussing the redeployment of Kyiv’s forces away from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mostly failed counteroffensive into a stronger defensive position against Russian forces in the east, according to the administration official and the European diplomat, and confirmed by a senior administration official. This effort has also involved bolstering air defense systems and building fortifications, razor wire obstructions and anti-tank obstacles and ditches along Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus, these officials say. In addition, the Biden administration is focused on rapidly resurrecting Ukraine’s own defense industry to supply the desperately needed weaponry the U.S. Congress is balking at replacing.
Assuming this is true, there are some sensible first steps being put forth here. Ukraine’s troops are being mowed down along a thinly stretched eastern front. Contracting their remaining forces to more strongly defend the western part of the nation around Kyiv would almost certainly discourage Russia from attempting another serious incursion into that region. Such a move would reduce both costs and casualties and perhaps free up resources to try to begin rebuilding some of the country’s shattered infrastructure.
But such an “adjustment” can’t happen in a vacuum. While it would likely have to happen through third-party intermediaries, someone is going to have to open a dialogue with Vladimir Putin. Pulling back from the eastern front and strengthening the border with Belarus doesn’t accomplish much if the Russians immediately move in to fill the void. As the analysis from Politico notes, any such agreement would almost certainly involve acknowledging that Russia is going to keep control of parts of Ukraine, much of which has effectively been lost since the 2014 invasion anyway.
That may not be an unrealistic goal at this point. Just this week we saw reports suggesting that Putin is already considering freezing the invasion and calling for a pause in the fighting. Or at least that’s the word that’s been circulating around the UN.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been sending signals through intermediaries since at least September that he is ready to agree to a ceasefire in the war of aggression against Ukraine, which would include freezing hostilities on the current contact line…
US officials believe Putin had already made attempts to negotiate a ceasefire a year earlier, in the autumn of 2022. His previously unknown intentions emerged after Ukraine defeated the Russian forces in the northeast. At the time, Putin indicated his satisfaction with the territories that Russia had captured and was ready for a truce, the newspaper’s sources noted.
However, Putin is now deploying fiery public rhetoric that Russia’s goals in the war have not changed while privately indicating his desire to “declare victory and move on.”
This is one possible outcome that many analysts have been predicting from the beginning. If the Russian army was unable to overtake Ukraine entirely, Vladimir Putin would eventually tire of the drain on his nation and simply declare victory and go home. As long as he doesn’t have to concede any territory or look like he’s surrendering, he can proclaim a Russian victory to his own people and begin rebuilding his forces. What seems far less likely is that he will agree to any sort of reparations for all of the damage in Ukraine. His ego probably couldn’t swallow that bitter of an outcome.
This will be a bitter pill for Zelensky to swallow, but reality can be a harsh mistress. Putin was wrong to invade Ukraine, so there is no way that he comes out of this looking like the good guy. But Ukraine was never going to be a match for even a weakened and depleted Russian military. This fight could drag out for years and Zelensky will eventually run out of troops long before Russia will. Let’s hope that something comes of this. We have bigger fish to fry and the fighting in Ukraine needs to end.
