Countdown in Ukraine has begun as Russia will win a battle of attrition

The real victims here are of course the unfortunate Ukrainians, who have suffered up to a million battle casualties and seen their country destroyed.

By Shiva Kumar 

“Nyet means no,” William Burns, then US Ambassador in Moscow told the State Department in a now famous memo in 2008. Burns, now director of the CIA, was speaking about Russian sentiments on the expansion of Nato eastwards, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He went on to say it was not just President Vladimir Putin, but the entire Russian political class was vehemently opposed to the idea “Ukrainian entry into Nato is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite, not just Putin.”

This did not deter US policymakers in the least, and despite US commitments made to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 by Secretary of State James Baker that Nato [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation], would not move one inch eastwards. This promise was broken during the days of the Clinton administration itself and US foreign policy under successive administrations sanctioned the steady enlargement of Nato, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, a counter-grouping of communist states.

Nato first expanded to include the nations of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999, followed soon by the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia [part of the USSR] in 2004 along with former Soviet satellite states Romania and Bulgaria. It is now a 32-nation grouping, aligned in an arc around Russia, with Sweden and Finland the latest to join.

This enlargement is at the heart of the present Ukraine war, running since February 2022, but which is now approaching its denouement, and is likely to end sooner than later with what is clear will be on Russia’s terms: Moscow retains the Russian-controlled territories of the Donbas and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine and a declaration of Ukraine’s neutrality to keep it out of the Nato ambit.

This will happen despite fervent protestations by Washington and Western capitals of their total commitment to an Ukrainian victory; it is likely to happen fairly quickly if Donald Trump wins the presidential election [Trump says he will end the war in a day if he wins, without offering details; his running mate Vance is already on record saying that the US would be willing to live with a truncated Ukraine, with Russia keeping the territories it has captured, and Vivek Ramaswamy, another prominent Republican saying the same thing].

If the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris wins, it may take longer, but the issue is no longer in doubt because it is being decided on the battlefield, where the Russians are poised to win a battle of attrition. Ukraine has no realistic hope of prolonging the war as it is running out of men, material and funds. Its power grid has been almost completely destroyed by Russian attacks, and it faces the prospect of a grim, cold winter.

Kiev is unlikely to sustain its defence much longer, as is quite evident from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called victory plan which called for immediate admittance to Nato and permission to use weapons to strike deep inside Russia, both of which are completely out of the question, for the obvious reason that no western nation, and that includes America, wants to cross the nuclear red line that Putin has drawn.

So, how will this endgame play out? Zelensky gets a call from the CIA or MI6, its British equivalent, to get on a waiting plane to take him to exile and a life of luxury in exile, as acerbically described by Col Douglas Mcgregor, a decorated US veteran and a vociferous critic – like many others such as professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, and the former US arms inspector to Iraq Scott Ritter. Mcgregor calls him a reliable stooge of the US, who enriched himself with the massive funds flowing in to help keep the war going, at the expense of his countrymen.

Be that as it may, the writing is on the wall; it will inevitably end, just like the US withdrawals from Vietnam in 1975 and Afghanistan in 2021.

Washington will wash its hands of the whole affair without too much soul searching. The real victims here are of course the unfortunate Ukrainians, who have suffered up to a million battle casualties and seen their country destroyed, because of the hubris of the American neocons and their irrational dream that the war would somehow force Putin out of office and break up Russia.

Two years of the most wide ranging sanctions failed to do so; in fact they had the opposite effect. Putin is more popular than ever and the Russian economy has grown stronger, its factories are humming and store shelves are bursting with goods. In good measure, Russia has also solidified its ties with China and India, two of the most populous and growing economies.

In the end, it’s also a cautionary tale. All the fine words about democracy and choice in which the neocons dressed up their cynical project did not take into account the existential threat felt by the Russians about Nato being on their doorstep, especially in Ukraine, with which they have an almost symbiotic relationship. Nyet means no, indeed.