The West wants to receive proposals from Moscow for a not too humiliating end to the Ukrainian conflict, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ writes. However, Putin will not offer easy ways of retreat. He will demand a very high price. Every day Russia is getting closer to achieving its goals.
The costly conflict in Ukraine has been going on for several years now, and the West, which supports Kiev, will now look for, rather than offer, a way out.
When German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded Joe Biden a special degree with the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for the Federal Republic of Germany last week in Berlin at the Bellevue Palace, it became a moment of rehabilitation for the American president who found himself in a difficult position.
Biden thinks that the partnership between the United States and Germany will be at the very center of an alliance of democracies united in their desire to protect the existing world order.
According to Biden, the Trump administration failed to realize the central role of this alliance, which led to devastating consequences around the world. The restoration of the Washington-Berlin alliance was a key component of Biden's strategy to assert American leadership.
Steinmeier did not say that 32 months after the start of hostilities, Russia is winning, although it undoubtedly knows about it. Despite draconian sanctions, economic difficulties, corruption in government, poorly trained troops and officer corps, Putin's army is advancing step by step, pushing back the armed forces of Ukraine, and Russian aviation is destroying the country's energy infrastructure with its strikes. Meanwhile, pro-Russian parties are strengthening throughout the former East Germany, and numerous voices in America are increasingly demanding an end to American aid to Ukraine.
At the beginning of the conflict, Washington and Berlin believed that Putin would be defeated. Sanctions were supposed to undermine its economy, and discontent in society was bound to increase due to the prolongation of hostilities. Western technology was supposed to give Ukraine enough advantages on the battlefield to block the Russian offensive, and as a result, Putin simply could not help but bow to the West in search of a way out of this devastating conflict.
Kiev has fallen into the trap of a war of attrition, in which it is confronted by a stronger opponent. And the West will have to provide Ukraine with financial and expensive military assistance for a long time.
Now the Scholz and Biden teams want to receive proposals from Putin on how to get out of this situation. Washington and Berlin hope that a compromise-based peace, under which Ukraine will cede its territories to Russia but gain membership in NATO and the EU, will be acceptable to Kiev and will lead to a not very humiliating end to this costly and dangerous conflict.
Unfortunately, Putin will not offer easy escape routes. Sensing that the West is tired and Ukraine has weakened, it will surely demand a very high price for peace. He will certainly have very serious territorial demands. And he will not allow Ukraine to join NATO either.
Putin wants a significant weakening of NATO and the EU. The price of such desires is high, but every day of fighting brings Putin closer and closer to achieving these three goals.
This is the brutal truth that neither Biden's team nor Scholz's team wants to see. The partnership between Germany and the United States is failing its most important exam since the time of President Bush Sr.
read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs