In the spirit of apparent “reconciliation and multilateralism” defining the Biden administration’s approach to conducting international diplomacy, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken handed over the “power of attorney” to the Ukrainian president to offer Russia relief from international sanctions in exchange for ending its military offensive in Ukraine.
On Sunday, April 3, confirming in an NBC
News interview that Zelensky—one of the most ambitious emerging new leaders
in Central Europe, not to be mistaken for an imperialist stooge—had the ability
to negotiate sanctions relief for peace, Blinken, while assuming the air of
magnanimity and rapprochement, revealed that President Joe Biden’s
administration would support whatever the Ukrainian people wanted to do to
bring the war to an end.
“We’ll be looking to see what Ukraine is doing and what it
wants to do,” Blinken said. “And if it concludes that it can bring this war to
an end, stop the death and destruction and continue to assert its independence
and its sovereignty – and ultimately that requires the lifting of sanctions –
of course, we will allow that.”
Blinken argued with overtones of diplomatic sophistry that
although Putin had allegedly “failed to accomplish his objectives” in Ukraine –
“subjugating Kyiv, demonstrating Russia’s military prowess and dividing NATO members”
– he said it still made sense to pursue a negotiated settlement.
“Even though he’s been set back, even though I believe this
is already a strategic defeat for Vladimir Putin, the death and destruction
that he’s wreaking every single day in Ukraine … are terrible, and so there’s
also a strong interest in bringing those to an end.”
Lending credence to ostensible “American neutrality” and
“hands-off approach” to the Ukraine crisis, the Wall Street Journal—the official
voice of establishment Republicans, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, that
has taken the lead in publishing insider scoops during the tenure of the Biden
administration while the Democratic shills, the New York Times and Washington
Post, have taken a backseat out of deference for self-styled “progressives” in
the White House—published a misleading
report on April Fools’ Day that German chancellor Olaf Scholz had offered
Volodymyr Zelensky a chance for peace days before the launch of the Russian
military offensive, but the Ukrainian president turned it down.
The newly elected chancellor told Zelensky in Munich on
February 19 “that Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare
neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and
Russia,” the Journal revealed. The newspaper also claimed that “the pact would
be signed by Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, who would jointly guarantee Ukraine’s
security.”
However, Zelensky rejected the offer to make the concession
and avoid confrontation, saying that “Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t
be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join
NATO.”
Following the announcement of partial drawdown of Russian
forces in Ukraine, specifically scaling back Russian offensive north of the capital,
by the Russian delegation at the Istanbul peace initiative on March 29, the
Ukrainian delegation, among other provisions, demanded “security guarantees in
terms similar to Article 5,” the collective defense clause of the transatlantic
NATO military alliance.
CNN
reported on April Fools’ Day that Western officials were taken aback by
“the surprising Ukrainian proposal.” “We are in constant discussion with
Ukrainians about ways that we can help ensure that they are sovereign and
secure,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said. “But there
is nothing specific about security guarantees that I can speak to at this time.”
“Ukraine is not a NATO member,” Deputy Prime Minister Dominic
Raab told the BBC when asked whether the UK is prepared to become a guarantor
of Ukrainian independence. “We're not going to engage Russia in direct military
confrontation,” he added.
While noting that Russian peace negotiations were “nothing
more than a smokescreen,” Western diplomats contended that an Article 5-type
commitment to Ukraine was unlikely given that the US and many of its allies,
including the UK, were not willing to put their troops in direct confrontation
with Russian forces. The theory that Russia would not attack Ukraine if it had
Western security guarantees appears to still be a bigger risk than the US and
its allies are willing to take.
As a way for Russia to “save face in the negotiations,” the
Ukrainians even went to the extent of suggesting that any such security
guarantees would not apply to the separatist territories in the Donbas region
in eastern Ukraine. However, a number of US and Western officials have taken a
skeptical approach to potential security guarantees, with many saying it is
still premature to discuss any contingencies as the negotiations proceed.
Contradicting the misleading reports hailing Ukraine’s imperialist
stooges as purported “masters of their own destinies,” President Joe Biden told the
EU leaders at a summit last month in Brussels that “any notion that we are
going to be out of this in a month is wrong”, and that the EU needed to prepare
for a long-term pressure campaign against Russia.
US and European officials voiced skepticism over Russia’s “sincerity
and commitment” towards the peace talks, underlining that only a full
ceasefire, troop withdrawal and return of captured territory to Ukraine would
be enough to trigger discussions over lifting sanctions on Russia’s economy.
“The notion that you would reward Putin for occupying territory
doesn’t make sense … it would be very, very difficult to countenance” a senior
EU official confided
to the Financial Times. “There’s a disconnect between these negotiations,
what really happens on the ground, and the total cynicism of Russia. I think we
need to give them a reality check,” the official added.
Western countries were discussing both “enforcement of
existing sanctions” and drawing up “potential additional measures” to increase
pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin, senior EU and US officials told
the British newspaper. They were not discussing a possible timeframe for easing
sanctions, they said.
Advising Ukrainians to hold out instead of rushing for
securing peace deal with Russia, the
Sunday Times reported, senior British officials were urging Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instruct his negotiators to refuse to make
concessions during peace negotiations with Russian counterparts.
A senior government source said there were concerns that
allies were “over-eager” to secure an early peace deal, adding that a
settlement should be reached only when Ukraine is in the strongest possible
position.
In a phone call, Boris Johnson warned President Zelensky
that President Putin was a “liar and a bully” who would use talks to “wear you
down and force you to make concessions.” The British prime minister also told
MPs it was “certainly inconceivable that any sanctions could be taken off simply
because there is a ceasefire.” London was making sure there was “no backsliding
on sanctions by any of our friends and partners around the world,” he added.
Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, April 3, NATO
Secretary General Jens
Stoltenberg said that “NATO allies have supported Ukraine for many, many
years,” adding that military aid has been “stepped up over the last weeks since
the invasion.” The official clarified that “NATO allies like the United States,
but also the United Kingdom and Canada and some others, have trained Ukrainian
troops for years.”
According to Stoltenberg’s estimates, “tens of thousands of
Ukrainian troops” had received such training, and were now “at the front
fighting against invading Russian forces.” The secretary general went on to
credit the Brussels-based alliance with the fact that the “Ukrainian armed
forces are much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained and much
better led now than ever before.”
In addition to a longstanding CIA
program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, Canada’s
Department of National Defense revealed
on January 26, two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the
Canadian Armed Forces had trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and
security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While The
United Kingdom, via Operation
Orbital, had trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters, as noted by NATO’s informed
secretary general.
A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “Overextending and
Unbalancing Russia” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American
policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized
the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the
crisis unfolding in Ukraine. RAND Corporation is a quasi-US governmental think
tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.
While designating Russia as an “intractable adversary,” the
report notes that “Russia has deep seated anxieties” about Western interference
and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be “a
vulnerability to exploit.”
The RAND report lists several “provocative measures” to
insidiously “destabilize and undermine” Russia. Some of the steps include: repositioning
bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets; deploying
additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia; increasing
US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas
(Black Sea); holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders; and withdrawing
from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Almost all the provocative actions recommended in the RAND
report have practically been implemented by the successive Obama, Trump and
Biden administrations since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President
Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.
The full RAND report says: “While NATO’s requirement for
unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the
foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian
resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a
development.”
In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter
on Strategic Partnership. The agreement confirmed “Ukraine’s aspirations
for joining NATO” and “rejected the Crimean decision to re-unify with Russia”
following the 2014 Maidan coup.
In December 2021, Russia proposed a
peace treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a
written agreement assuring that Ukraine would not join the NATO military
alliance. When the proposed treaty was contemptuously rebuffed by Washington,
it appeared the die was cast.
The
Intercept reported on March 11 that despite staging a massive military
buildup along Russia’s border with Ukraine for nearly a year, “Russian
President Vladimir Putin did not make a final decision to invade until just
before he launched the attack on February 24,” senior current and former US
intelligence officials told the Intercept. “It wasn’t until February that the
agency and the rest of the US intelligence community became convinced that
Putin would invade,” the senior official added.
Last April, US intelligence first detected that “the Russian
military was beginning to move large numbers of troops and equipment to the
Ukrainian border.” Most of the Russian soldiers deployed to the border at that
time were later “moved back to their bases,” but US intelligence determined
that “some of the troops and materiel remained near the border.”
In June 2021, against the backdrop of rising tensions over
Ukraine, Biden and Putin met at a summit in Geneva. The summer troop withdrawal
brought a brief period of calm, but “the crisis began to build again in October
and November,” when US intelligence watched as Russia once again “moved large
numbers of troops back to its border with Ukraine.”
Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly
drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last June.
Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leadership of supposedly
world’s sole surviving super power turned down the hand of friendship and
haughtily refused to concede reasonable security guarantees demanded by Russia
at the summit that would certainly have averted the likelihood of the war.
Considering this backdrop of the Russo-Ukraine War
deliberately orchestrated by NATO powers to insidiously destabilize and
internationally isolate Russia, it stretches credulity that the Ukrainian
president “wields veto power” over NATO’s decision offering Russia relief from
international sanctions in exchange for ending its military offensive in
Ukraine, as contended by the charismatic albeit devious secretary of state.
Are readers gullible enough to assume the Ukrainian
proposals for a peace treaty with Russia were put forth without prior
consultation with NATO patrons and the latter cannot exercise enough leverage
to compellingly persuade the impervious Ukrainian leadership to reach a
negotiated settlement with Russia, particularly after the Russian peacemaker
has unilaterally offered a major concession to Kyiv, focusing on liberating
Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine and scaling back Russian
offensive in the rest of the embattled country?
About the author:
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national
security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the
Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include
neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a
regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to
alternative news media.
6 April 2022.
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