At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made what may be a final gambit as speculation around negotiations with Russia becomes unavoidable. Addressing European leaders, he provided a reminder that the war in Ukraine, now featuring thousands of North Korean troops, is happening on their doorstep.
Most significantly, Zelensky proceeded to make perhaps his boldest demand in recent months. He declared that not only would Ukraine refuse to reduce the size of its military — one of the Kremlin’s key demands — it would also require a vast international troop presence to keep the peace, citing a “minimum” figure of 200,000 men. Presumably, as bitter divisions about the past and future of Russo-Ukrainian relations remain entrenched, any peace deal will require security assurances from the international community.
Some European leaders have not shied away from the idea of sending peacekeeping troops to a post-war Ukraine. However, concrete commitments have yet to be made. France and Poland, two of Ukraine’s most vocal and active supporters in the European Union, have made encouraging noises about “security guarantees” and imminent negotiations. French President Emmanuel Macron met with his Ukrainian counterpart this month, but no firm plans emerged. It is doubtful that Macron, who is facing domestic chaos, has the political capital to create the commitment Zelensky is seeking. Poland’s Donald Tusk, despite his country’s enthusiastic support for Ukraine and vast defence budget, was quick to pour cold water on any imminent deployment of peacekeeping forces as recently as December.
Europe’s other leaders lag even further behind. Most notably, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s time is nearly up. The sentiment of German voters is shifting on Ukraine, with Scholz coming under fire for the most recent €3 billion aid package. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, embattled domestically and staring down a defence budget crisis, has issued only the vaguest of promises about taking “full part” in any peacekeeping action.
The sheer size of the peacekeeping force Zelensky is floating marks it out as a demand that even he must know is impossible — for perspective, the US-led force in Afghanistan at its peak in the mid-2000s was 130,000-strong. It is also a move the Kremlin will never tolerate. Nonetheless, he is using what has become a tried and tested Ukrainian tactic for extricating contributions from an occasionally intransigent international community: making maximalist demands before celebrating minor gains when leaders eventually contribute something far short of what was initially demanded. This tactic has been effective to secure the delivery of weapons systems such as the US-made ATACMS missile system.
Yet asking other countries to risk lives in Ukraine is a demand of a different order. No European leader looks willing or able to risk the electoral or moral blowback of sacrificing their own young men on the altar of Ukrainian and broader European security. Even though Zelensky’s insistence on a vast peacekeeping force may be a move in the game of shifting pre-negotiation demands — the leader has recently moderated his demand for the military recapture of Russian-occupied Crimea, a problem he now sees being solved “diplomatically” — it risks disappointment at home.
Although a war-weary Ukrainian public is more open to negotiating with Russia than ever before, Zelensky’s maximalist tactics hazard a backlash from disappointed nationalists and veterans. Returning from a war in which they sacrificed their homes, their limbs, and their compatriots to ensure peace, anything seen as short of a durable peace, which international troops may be needed to ensure, could feel like a stab in the back. No matter how unfair it may seem, Ukraine’s President, as the end of the war nears, may be talking himself into an impossible situation in which either the international community or his own public blame him for a failed peace.
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SubscribeHe knows he won’t get 200k troops, he’s merely laying the groundwork so when it comes to negotiations he can be seen to be making concessions to secure a peace deal. Zelenskyy has proven himself to be a fairly canny negotiator during the Russian invasion, it’s realistically his being able to convince allies to hand over vast amounts of weapons that has kept Ukraine from turning into a vassal state
It already is a vassal state.
I’d rather be in debt to the west than under the thumb of Putin like Belarus
I’d rather have my elected representatives act for the benefit of my country rather than seek profit for themselves. Regrettably that is extremely uncommon.
Where did you acquire this taste for luxuries?
Britain, as it used to be, but is no longer.
Once upon a time British politicians didn’t become wealthy by being politicians. They were either already wealthy eg many Tories and therefore didn’t need to sell themselves ( and sell out their country) or weren’t eg Labour but both had the best interests of the country as an aim.
Thatcher didn’t end up rich, actually relying on the Barclay family to provide her a place to die with some dignity.
Wilson had no wealth whatsoever and Parliament had to vote him a pension.
It’s only post Thatcher that politicians, especially PMs became colossaly wealthy after leaving office.
Now, why can that be? No prizes for a correct answer.
Britain is still pretty non corrupt and most of its politicians are not rich. They probably actually aren’t paid enough why they are in office There are a few exceptions after they leave office, such as Tony Blair and David Cameron. It’s not true of Gordon Brown for example.
I have no idea what the answer to your question is! Yes, society, expectations and culture change.
Thatcher’s husband was quite rich, as I recall.
What does this kind of almost truism actually mean? Don’t almost all elites everywhere have some kind of privileges?. Do you think that Vladimir Putin and his entourage are like Robespierrian Incorruptibles?
On almost every measure Ukraine comes out better than Russia. It is had free elections. It is trying to become less corrupt. And in any case, Russia invaded it – not the other way round!. Poland was a military dictatorship in 1939 which didn’t mean to say it deserves to be carved up by two totalitarian neighbors at its and most of its military leaders and intelligentsia imprisoned or massacred.
On what metrics does Ukraine compare well to Russia? It’s equally corrupt, its opposition leaders are routinely arrested and suppressed, and its median income is a third of Russia… and not as a result of the invasion (you can see the stats pre 2014)
Furthermore, the West for decades has fostered Banderite ethnosupremacism leading to the Western Ukrainians being brainwashed into loathing the Easterners for being untermenschen Russians.
No wonder the Easterners no longer wanted to be ruled by Kiev.
Exactly! Nice to hear a voice of sanity on this forum! Now, who was it who invaded who, I forget….?!
The only “canny negotiation” Ukraine achieved was in March-April 2022, when they had a peace deal within grasp. Ukrainian negotiators broke out the champagne to celebrate the deal they got.
We torpedoed that deal.
But it starts before then. Zelensky was elected by a landslide on a platform of bringing peace to the civil war in Donetsk and Lugansk that had been raging since 2014. But Ukraine’s social nationalist (their terminology) militias threatened to string Zelensky up if he tried. These were the same militias that provided the violence to pull off the bloody Maidan coup in February 2014, that had done the bulk of the fighting in Donbass, and which senior US and Canadian officers hailed as their brothers in arms.
Zelensky would have needed the firm and vocal support of the US to implement his peace platform. It was not forthcoming.
So let’s stop blaming Ukraine or even pretending that Ukraine has any agency in this matter.
Ah yes this fantasy again, if you repeat it enough you’re hoping it becomes the truth?
Boris Johnson had such little authority he was able to be kicked out of Downing Street over a slice of birthday cake, yet you expect us to believe he was simultaneously so powerful he was able to scupper a peace agreement set up by the worlds major powers?
I never mentioned Boris Johnson.
Z has lost his mind. He seems to have been advised by Mrs Nuland to confuse the State Department before the Trump envoy arrives.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug
You know, while he had the podium, he could have said “Hey everyone, why don’t we all get on a plane and fly over to Ukraine, and settle this thing RIGHT NOW. Uniforms are on me. But if you have a favourite firearm, bring it!”
Of course not. He knew who he was speaking to – people who have the ability to help themselves to someone else’s treasure. Which he has asked for and received. And now he is asking for them to offer up someone else’s blood.
Good for France and Poland for saying no. If he can’t reverse the recent diaspora, why should anyone else come out? Exit stage left already.
Just had my apartment windows cleaned in NYC. One of the guys was a newly arrived Ukrainian in his 20’s and couldn’t speak a word of English. Why should American troops be sent to defend his country while he remains ‘cosy’ in NYC?
Donald’s transactional habits and his disregard for those who work for him could help cut a few Gordian knots.
For example, he could see that the big interests of US corporations in the parts of Ukraine now assimilated into Russia could be the basis of a workable new mutual security pact there. Open things up enough for these companies to do business and that makes them a more valuable hostage to Putin. A kind of deal your usual politically minded security analysts would never see.
If any US corporation trusts Putin, its directors are retarded.
Just give Ukraine nukes, to compensate them for the Soviet legacy ones they gave up.
They didn’t “give them up”, the warheads’ fissile material was reprocessed for use in nuclear power plants around the world and the Ukrainians were financially compensated.
Has it occurred to you that if Ukraine had kept its nukes, some of them would almost certainly have fallen into the hands of the rebels in the Eastern oblasts after the Maidan coup in 2014?
That would in my view be far less a problem than the fact that a whole heap of nukes are currently in the hands of Russia. Were it to have been up to me, I’d have dealt with it by nuking Russia before its own nuclear program had yielded fruit (namely in about 1948).
I can see Ukraine ending up as a modern day version of post ww2 Germany with all the associated issues. How long before the equivalent of the Berlin Wall is built only this time by the European side
Not a bad solution! I’m not sure exactly what “issues” you’re talking about since West Germany was pretty much a success story, at least for many decades.
East Germany, on the other hand, festered under Communism.
Time for the Ukrainians to depose Zelensky.
Which of course they might well do when there is a free election, as there will be in Ukraine but not in Russia!!
Putin has more democratic support than Zelenskiy, whose term expired in May.
Ukrainians are dying for a mirage
I entirely disagree with most of the comments on UnHerd on the Ukraine Russia war. I see a remarkable convergence between left and right on their endless blaming of the West (or Victoria Nuland!) for Putin’s active aggression, such as their dislike of modern liberal progressive Western governments or whatever It’s too late now but for a change here is another point of view. Putin may not be Hitler, but his extremely aggressive expansionist foreign policy by stages is remarkably similar to that of Germany’s in the 1930s, using almost exactly the same grievances about Russian minorities as Hitler did about German ones.
The anti Western critics naively take Putin’s his word on trust that his “special military operation” is being carried out because of NATO expansion. Is it? I know that Britain isn’t going to invade Russia; I know the France isn’t going to; I know that the United States isn’t going to and I know that Poland isn’t going to. So I assume that the rather effective Russian intelligent services know exactly the same thing! There is absolutely no political or public will for an act of military aggression against Russia.
I’m instead with Niall Ferguson. What the West should have done is to sufficiently rearm, including with the basic armaments that we have been failing on, such as ammunition and shells, to rearm Ukraine to the teeth. This would be have been by the way,
at a tiny fraction of the cost, by the way of the covid, overreaction. The United States alone has an economy at least 10 times larger than Russia’s. Russia would have been defeated, by which I mean pushed right out of Ukraine. (Of course noone would have supported an insane Napoleonic plan of invading Moscow). Far fewer Ukrainians, and indeed Russians or North Koreans, would have died. Perhaps Crimea could then have been negotiated from a position of relative strength.
But in any case the West was divided and nothing like this has happened. Every bit of military hardware has been grudgingly provided, at least by Europe. Germany in particular is increasingly pacific; it just wants to sit back and sell stuff, and is rather guilt ridden about its invasion of Russia in 1941. (Note that the Bundeswehr was quite an effective military force for quite a while and the 1950s and 1960s, until there was a big overreaction to the crimes of the past especially by young people and the Left). The Wests own self doubt empowers authoritarian governments, who gleefully stoke our divisions.
It is true that there might have been an opportunity to negotiate peace, once the initial Russian thrust on Kiev had been pushed back, but unfortunately the massacre at Bucha probably changed Zelensky’s mind. I’d really how can you negotiate with any confidence with an opponent who lies, lies and lies again (we have experience in the UK of that over the Salisbury near poisoning).
So I feel remarkably sorry for the people of Ukraine, including the ones who have fled (I don’t blame them), whose country has been devastated through the actions of an aggressive neighboring state. (This could easily have happened, I suppose to Britain in 1940, in which case people would be excoriating Churchill). It did of course happen to Poland. It must be a terrible position to be in. I wouldn’t sanguinely agree to Britain becoming a puppet state of its neighbour under duress, so ethically I don’t see why the Ukrainians should. But it looks like they probably now will have to.
I agree with pretty much all of what you say. The Russians have been broadly the same since Ivan the Terrible was the Tsar – a barbaric people led by a tyrant. It is incumbent on all free people to “put Russia back in its box” and keep it there.
What “extremely aggressive expansionist foreign policy by stages”?
2008, in the war Georgia started, the Russian Army was on the outskirts of Tbilisi. They subsequently withdrew to their positions before the war.
In 2014/15, the self-declared republics of Lugansk and Donetsk had the remnants of the Ukrainian Army cauldroned in Debaltsevo. Russia urged them to let them go.
Subsequently, both Lugansk and Donetsk beseeched Russia to be allowed to become Russian. Putin consistently refused, until 2022, when it became obvious that Ukraine was gearing up for an all-out assault on the two territories.
Between 2014 and 2022, Russia insisted that the Minsk Accords were the way forward – accords which had the force of international law and would have resulted in both Lugansk and Donetsk remaining part of Ukraine. Instead, it was the West which – according to the express admission of all key players – treated the Minsk Accords as nothing more than a breathing space allowing Ukraine to gear up for war.
BUT CRIMEA!!!!
Again, the Western narrative that Russia invaded Crimea is wrong. The “little green men” without insignia were Crimea-based units of the Ukrainian Army pledging allegiance to Crimea, not Russian.
Propaganda is all well and good, but if you start believing your own propaganda, bitter disappointment follows.
… and let’s not forget the CIA-sponsored Maidan coup which was the violent overthrow of Yanukovich (a democratically elected president) enabling the installation of a succession of Western puppets who cracked down on the rights of the people living in the Eastern oblasts, and Russian speakers generally.
I feel very sorry for the average Ukrainians and Russians caught up in this war, but there’s no question that Nuland and Co knew that their policies would lead to Russia invading.
Europe’s acquiescence to this Anglo-American meddling is leading to the de-industrialisation of Germany, Europe’s “economic powerhouse”.
As for Andrew Fisher’s claim that he “knows” countries XY&Z aren’t going to invade Russia, how many people anticipated the West invading Afghanistan before 911?
NATO may be a “defensive” alliance (though I’m not sure how “defensive” its intervention in ex-Yugoslavia was) but it comprises the most aggressive and adventurist countries on the planet. The Russians are right to see its encroachment and the endless attempts at Colour Revolutions in its neighbours as being intended to weaken it, as per MacKinder’s Heartland Theory.
Yanukovyich now lives in Russia, thus illustrating that he was always a Russian stooge.
Faulty logic.
Just as well it illustrates that Russia is a safe refuge for the politically persecuted.
Not saying it’s so. Just pointing out that your logic is faulty.
Yeah. I note that Russia is the No.1 destination for asylum seekers worldwide.