Robert Clark – The Telegraph July 18, 2023
Donated by the West, Ukrainian Army tanks on the battlefields of Ukraine. Click to enlarge
Since Putin’s tanks crossed into Ukrainian territory last year, three options have been on the table for how this war would end: victory for one side or the other, a frozen conflict or a negotiated settlement. The public comments made this week by Oleksiy Arestovych, a former advisor to Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, appear to indicate the last may be more likely than previously thought.
Arestovych raised the prospect of Ukraine making territorial concessions in return for the rest of the country receiving the most cast-iron security guarantee there is: Nato membership. These comments have proved highly controversial. Not only would such an outcome be unpalatable to many in Kyiv and other European capitals, raising it as a possibility highlights a growing uncertainty about the long-term sustainability of the war – particularly amongst Ukraine’s western backers.
Arestovych’s suggestion comes at a crucial time. The long-planned counter-offensive, now in its second month, has run into several problems – not least that Kyiv is still waiting for approximately half of the western military equipment promised earlier in the year. Meanwhile, its forces are under increasing pressure to commit its reserves as Russian troops – despite reports of low morale across the front – remain dug-in, seemingly committed to defending every inch of Ukrainian ground captured since last year.
As Russian minefields take their toll on western-supplied tanks and Ukrainian sappers, their forces have so-far retaken approximately five miles of the sixty miles they need to split the land-bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. The land between Mariupol in the east and Melitopol to the west is seen as the vital ground to achieving this.
It is incredibly tough going for the Ukrainians. They lack the air cover and advanced jets to protect their ground forces from Russian attack helicopters and fighters. Their soldiers, meanwhile must negotiate miles of minefields, tank-traps and then ultimately the heavily dug Russian trench networks.
This gruelling endeavour was always going to take longer than the occasionally impatient international audience was prepared to wait for. It is a military effort of immense proportions, where mass, manpower, morale, equipment, stocks, logistics, grit and luck all play vital roles. So far, the Ukrainians are displaying all of these military qualities.
The variable that isn’t on their side is time. In war, time is perhaps the cruellest factor one cannot change. We saw this in NATO’s operation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban took great delight in the retelling of a famous Afghan proverb; ”you may have the watches, but we have the time”.
Summer will soon begin to roll into autumn. Indeed, we are already half-way through the season. The fighting will begin to grind to a cold halt as the freezing winter saps troops’ ability to conduct high-intensity warfare. This will only give Russia more time to further build up its defences, as it did last winter.
By this point in the West, meanwhile, all eyes will be on the upcoming US election, with more political attention diverted by the UK’s general election. Kyiv knows it has a shortened window of opportunity to capitalise on its battlefield initiative and take back as much ground as it can.
If Kyiv fails in its battlefield endeavours to split that land bridge, and retake much of its own territory by winter, then vocal calls of territorial concessions for marginal political outcomes will likely become far more prevalent – not just in Ukraine but likely from western capitals, as so-called “war-fatigue” begins to bite, international stockpiles of equipment and ammunition wither and politicians begin to worry about domestic budgets ahead of national elections.
While much fighting remains to be done across Ukraine’s southern farmlands over the coming months, governments across the west must be prepared for the grim prospect of territorial concessions as one potential political outcome of a failed counter-offensive. Whether a Putinist Kremlin would respect such a deal if Kyiv were to receive security pledges short of full Nato membership is extremely doubtful.
Regardless, this would surely be a favoured outcome for China’s ruling “wolf warrior” foreign policy elite. Beijing would be utterly delighted if the war were to end with Ukraine divided, Russian troops permanently in the Donbas harassing Kyiv and Europe, and Nato fractured on political lines. Such an outcome would be a gift to China as Xi Jinping begins to ramp up his own imperialistic and extra-territorial ambitions across the Indo-Pacific – and a devastating defeat for the West.
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Robert Clark is the director of the Defence and Security Unit at Civitas. Prior to this he served in the British Army
If Russia doesn’t dismantle every part of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi government its losers will commit terrorist atrocities in Russia under US-led western instruction, arms and intelligence. Another Gladio operation.
Fluffy pillows springs to mind, or woolly thicko sheeple presstitutes.
Territorial concessions are one thing, but they are meaning less when Russia wants so much more.
Russia wants NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe, and that includes Sweden and Finland. If Russia decides to not take Western UKraine, they will demand that whatever remains of UKraine, it will be demilitarised, and it will never join NATO.
The Telegraph muppet can’t even contemplate beyond 30% of the problem.
And less says the Nazi NWO wants to talk. Who the feck can Russia trust? There’s absolutely no one, and even if some person were to rise up from nowhere. The Nazi deep state won’t allow them a chance of power.
This isn’t Korea, or the Berlin Wall, where there’s a defined and vaguely respected border and a buffer zone, because the NWO Nazis don’t want this, even if they agree to it, they will still want Russia destroyed and broken up so the City Crime Cartel vultures can feed on Russian resources.
Of course, the Russians know this. So judging by the very sophisticated Russian defenses, it appears Russia wants a very long war of attrition where UKrainian Nazis and NATO Nazis get killed, because at the end of the day, denazification was the primary objective after protecting native Russian speakers in Eastern UKraine.
Mr Clark is a total wanktard. Where are the Nazi Challanger tanks? Nowhere to be seen, cus the UK Nazis are crapping themselves because of the moment one gets blown up.
This is not a proxy war. This is Russia fighting Nazi NATO, and it’s just a question of time, when it goes official.
So the Telegraph has now fully dropped its ‘Ukrane s winning’ lie! It was only yesterday that its chief liar’s article allowed in not a few readers’ comments that laughed at him. The worm has turned at long last.
This particular worm would not have turned if it thought it has any ground at all to support the lie that NATO-proxy Zelenski’s Ukraine has even an outside chance of any sort of success in the Donbas, or anywhere.
It’s difficult to know where to start in deconstructing this false-narrative delusional gibberish… and doing so – point by point – would only result in a diatribe as long as the original article!😅
Suffice it to say, that it should come as NO surprise that the “former British Army” author is now plying his “expertise” at THICK Brit “Think Tank” Civitas 🤣
If the Russians accept anything less than total wipeout of modern Ukraine (‘wipeout’ could include a reduction of Ukraine to a its true historical border – a minor rump state of absolutely no importance or value), they will be fools. If any form of modern Ukraine is allowed to survive, it will be used by the West as a base for endless war.
Ukraine is not being defeated by Russia, but by the Jews, because they are White. This is true also of nearly all the other White nations, which are killed, these days, less brutally (but we had all that in the period 1914-45 or so)
“Arestovych raised the prospect of Ukraine making territorial concessions in return for the rest of the country receiving the most cast-iron security guarantee there is: Nato membership.”
First, subsequent to the illegal, unconstitutional and immoral U.S. “government” fostered coup d’etat of Feb. 2014, there’s no such thing as “Ukraine” – in the sense that this author uses the term. IOW the illegitimate dictatorial regime of the Satanic jew clown Zelensky and his handlers and enablers cannot be called “Ukraine.” Second, to claim that NATO membership (for whatever geopolitical entity exists in the lawless territory after the Russians have achieved their objectives by way of military victory) is “the most cast-iron security guarantee there is” – is a laughably absurd falsehood.
demilitarised neutrality or swallowed by russia .
HEIM INS REICH !
@Lewis Jones
You are so right.
All wars are for Jews, they are the sole beneficiary of every war because corpses piling up on either side are banquet for the necromancing vultures whose only reason for creation by their g-d Lucifer is to butcher the gentiles and capture their souls to his everlasting bondage … one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them (JR Tolkien was a devout, thinking Catholic and knew exactly what he had in mind and was talking about in that allegorical work).
And the goyim, who either by direct betrayal for worldly power and comfort or through cowardly appeasement (please don’t call me antisemite, it hurts my butt) are participants in this democide and deicide, are just as guilty and liable to share the Jew’s ultimate desserts.
I’m not going to name the commentor, but I can’t understand why they quote the fake news and use is as fact in their comment.
Stop seeing UKraine as some sort of sovereign state. The US are paying all the bills, & NATO controls the war against Russia. Do not say the Telegraph has dropped their xyz. When you refer to UKraine, you automatically distance the Nazi NATO sect from the war.
This is a war between Nazi NATO and the free world, a world which does not want to use the US Dollar, or live by NWO Nazi rules. Sure, the Russians are fighting, but China knows they are next, and same for India.
Both China and India have substantially more geneiuses and more high IQ (if that’s a thing) sheeple. The Nazi NWO has the debt, the free world has the brains. China and India have even started their economic pomp.
This notion that Europe is superior is a myth. As sheeple kind developed, Europe was the sweet spot, with perfect geography, perfect climate, and a coastline predisposed to safe anchoring, navigation, and inland waterways. Many parts on the world don’t have these enablers, and if they have some, they are dangerous.
Now they are catching up. Watch Think Skool on YouTube. Their economic analysis is on a different level, and this suggests there’s a lot of latent power in India, and I suggest it’s the same in China, but I don’t speak Mandarin, and no one in the Nazi NWO is interested in anyone else’s point of view.