As the true scale of the disaster that has overtaken the USA’s proxy war against Russia penetrates even the thickest bourgeois skulls, some of the bitterest mutual recriminations now being vented concern allegations that, were it not for interference by Nato, Washington, the European Union and Boris Johnson, the whole bloody affair could have been wrapped up in the first weeks of the war on terms far better for Kiev than anything remotely on offer now.
Instead, Ukrainian actor-stooge president Volodymyr Zelensky’s apparent softening of stance, renouncing Nato and embracing neutrality, was unceremoniously dumped by the so-called ‘friends of Ukraine’.
The authors of a damning report released in October provide a blow-by-blow account of just how it was that early talks between Kiev and Moscow, talks which arguably could have formed the basis of a workable peace treaty, saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars, were instead deliberately sabotaged by the USA and its Nato sidekicks.
The report concludes: “Based on the publicly available reports and documents, it is not only plain that there was a serious willingness to negotiate on the part of both Ukraine and Russia in March 2022. Apparently, the negotiating parties even agreed on a draft treaty and referendum.
“Zelensky and [Russian president Vladimir] Putin were ready for a bilateral meeting to finalise the outcome of the negotiations.
“Fact is that the main results of the negotiations were based on a proposal by Ukraine, and Zelensky courageously supported them in an interview with Russian journalists on 27 March 2022, even after Nato decided against these peace negotiations. Zelensky had already expressed similar support beforehand in a sign that proves that the intended outcome of the Istanbul negotiations certainly corresponded to Ukrainian interests.
“This makes the western intervention, which prevented an early end to the war, even more disastrous for Ukraine.” (How the chance was lost for a peace settlement of the Ukraine war by Michael von der Schulenburg, November 2023)
And, need one add, this prolongation has likewise been catastrophic for the collective west and its thwarted dreams of regime change in Moscow.
The co-author of the report, retired General Harald Kujat, had been the highest-ranking German officer of the Bundeswehr and at Nato, so let nobody accuse him of being a peacenik or soft on Russia. But his intervention gives us a valuable insight into the vicious in-fighting now besetting global ruling circles, and is worth reading in full.
We can take it as read that such voices as Kujat’s are no less hostile to Russia than are those of anyone else in the establishment. Such critics of the way the war was conducted have no fundamental quarrel with the goal of the proxy war: to balkanise and weaken Russia, making her easy prey to oppression and exploitation by imperialism.
What sows division in the imperialist camp is disagreements over the best way to achieve this. Had the war gone well for the west, all disagreements over ways and means could have been smoothed over, and the criminal stupidity of US president Joe Biden, UK prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg and the rest of that sorry crew would soon be relegated to history and nobody would have bothered to read Kujat’s report.
But the war did not go well for the west.
