This is about the sentence: “According to Trump’s plan, Ukraine today agrees to the loss of about 18% of its territory, “ending the war” is nothing more than gaining strength for the next act of this drama. Moscow.”
Vitek (we have known and liked each other for many years, so there is no point in looking for rhetoricians like a dear colleague) gives three reasons for his disagreement with this opinion. I will tackle each of them.
PAP/EPA/DAVID JENSEN
Donald Trump
Why didn’t Witek accept what I wrote?
“First of all, because Trump’s plan is no different from Biden’s and Harris’s. “Otherwise, Ukraine would have gotten more weapons a long time ago,” he writes.
I will answer. Yes, these two plans differ significantly, as shown by the facts and words of both politicians. Trump’s plan calls for a quick end to the war while maintaining territories currently controlled by Kiev and Moscow. In April, The Washington Post wrote about this, citing private conversations with Donald Trump. According to the former US president, giving Russia Crimea and the currently occupied territories would allow both sides of the war to “save face”.
The plan was formally presented in early July by Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleets, two key advisers to Trump and the chiefs of the US National Security Council during his presidency.
Biden’s plan is so different that it can be called a plan. It is a general strategy for long-term weakening of Russia’s military and economic potential at the hands of the Ukrainians, but without a specific idea of ending the war. Biden has never announced U.S. goals for defeating Russia, and has always limited himself to general phrases like “how long it takes.”
At the same time, his administration’s Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said the most important words quoted by the world media on April 25, 2022, two months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A conference at Jasionka, near Rzeszów, where he stopped on his way back from Kiev.
Asked by a journalist about defining American goals in this war, he said: “We want Russia to be so weakened that it can’t do what Russia did by invading Ukraine.” He said that Russia “cannot recover very quickly” the forces and equipment lost in Ukraine in this way.
Unofficially, people close to Biden later said the president was angry with his defense secretary for excessive media transparency about U.S. targets. Well, the milk is spilled.
So we see two different plans for war in Ukraine.
In addition, Vitek, while defending the consistency of the two programs, writes: “Otherwise, Ukraine would have received more weapons a long time ago”, there is a serious difference between Trump and Biden on this issue.
Trump is ready to completely disarm Kiev if it does not agree to his plan. It must be honestly admitted that the same Trump declares that he will “flood” Kiev with weapons if Moscow does not agree to his plan. That’s the unpredictable Trump. However, the question is: since the latest phase of this war has already given up a fifth of Ukrainian territory, why should Moscow not agree to this plan? In response to Witek’s last argument this is not the conclusion.
Biden’s track record in the arms delivery industry is mixed. As I have written several times, Ukraine is providing them to Kiev in levels that can defend itself, but cannot win, implementing the US strategy of “weakening” Russia but not defeating it. Although it is worth recalling that Republicans contributed greatly to the delay in the delivery of the last tranche, Kiev blocked aid in the amount of $60 billion in the Senate for several months.
So yes, the two politicians have different plans for this war and those closely associated with them have different plans for supplying weapons.
Witek’s next argument:
“Secondly Because, in our view, Trump, who is certainly less favorable than a Biden presidency and Harris’ future tenure, is not the man who wants to dismantle the American empire,” he writes in his comments.
This argument has nothing to do with the sentence Witek quotes from my text that he argues. After all, I never said that the United States, under Biden or under Trump, would completely abandon our region and give up American influence there. On the contrary, in his last speech “War in Ukraine. Hangover after Joe Biden” I wrote that our interest in maintaining influence in the region, and letting go of Ukraine is a sign of weakness, would encourage China to attack Taiwan, for example.
I summarized the text: “The United States cannot afford to cede more spheres of influence, including economic ones. However, it can weaken other world powers with the help of its allies. This is what is happening on the Russian-Ukrainian front.”
PAP/EPA/EVAN VUCCI / POOL
Joe Biden
Russia’s plan is clear and specific
Finally, my opponent’s last argument…
“First, I disagree with Marcin For a third reason. “He thinks that Russia will prepare for another war if Ukraine does not recover all the occupied territories – on this point he agrees with the majority of Polish commentators,” Widek writes.
These words are a gross misrepresentation of everything I’ve been writing about this war since the day Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Yes, in an ideal world it would be reasonable for Ukraine to regain all its territories, but in our world this is not possible. That’s why I’ve written many times that Russia’s strategy toward Ukraine is to dismember it in past, present, and future invasions of this country, and each dismemberment leads to another.
It’s not like Vitek writes that Ukraine needs to “defeat” Russia and “recover all occupied territories” to provoke Russia into “another war.” This means that Russia will be ready for another attack if it does not recover even an inch of its land, but ends the current phase of the current war. This is what the history of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict teaches us.
The first act of this drama was not the war in Donbass in 2014, but Budapest Accord of 1994. Nobody today remembers that Russia has already implemented the same. Method of actionHappens during ongoing motion battles.
Russia’s goal at the time was to pressure Kiev to return to Russia the nearly 1,900 people who remained on Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union. nuclear weapons and 2.5 thousand tactical nuclear weapons units. This made the country the third nuclear power in the world, but – most importantly! – It provided Ukraine security guarantees.
What did Russia do then? She started the so-called separatists in Crimea and Transnistria, recalling the unresolved border issues between the two countries. Washington put additional pressure on Kiev, fearing that Ukraine could turn into a “nuclear-weaponized Yugoslavia”. I describe that situation in more detail in the speech, “Donald Trump Promises to End War. In Fact, He Will Drag Us into an Even Greater One.”
As a result, Kyiv gave up its nuclear weapons. In this way, Moscow – still unprepared for a serious military offensive after the collapse of the Soviet Union – put its Ukrainian neighbors in a favorable position to strike in the future. And Ukrainians have no illusions about it. “If the Russians invaded Crimea tomorrow, no one would raise an eyebrow,” Ukraine’s then-president Leonid Kuchma said after signing the deal.
Therefore, Ukraine does not have to “defeat” Russia in any way to prepare for an armed attack.
This happened in 2014. Again the same boring repetitive pattern. First, separatist movements – in Crimea and Donbass – and then an armed attack on Ukraine. Kiev then lost 7 percent. their territories. He did not “defeat” Russia by any means, but instead signed the humiliating Minsk agreements. Did it stop Russia? In any case.
At this point, I will allow myself an eyewitness account of those events. Many less informed observers believe that the signing of the Minsk agreements led to the so-called. Cooling of enmity. If we assume that hypothermia meant that instead of thousands of people, hundreds died every month, then yes.
The final agreement, known as Minsk II, was signed in February 2015. I spent the spring and summer of that year on both sides of the ongoing war. The summer of 2015 was the last time I was allowed into the separatist republics. Sitting at night in a Donetsk motel, months after the formal end of hostilities, I heard a series of artillery shells.
The next day, I was on my way from Donetsk to the Ukrainian side, near the airport to the Ukrainian-captured village of Pisky. During the night, the Russians hit the village with Grad rockets, and in the morning I was filming the Ukrainian mortar response. This is the end of the war.
The situation did not change in the following years. In February 2017, I landed in “peredowa”, that is, in the first front line under the then-controlled Avdijvka. The entire area was riddled with 152mm artillery shells, which were formally banned by the Minsk agreements.
So… Russia did not have to lose, on the contrary, subsequent territorial gains encouraged it to further aggressive actions.
If this is what the history of the Russo-Ukrainian war teaches us, why would a formal “end of the war” and an actual “ceasefire” prompt Russia to leave? It wasn’t her plan.
Russia’s plan – no matter how far it goes – is to occupy Ukraine, because it will once again become an empire in its own sense. It is no coincidence that Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” And again – in the understanding of Russia, which thinks in imperialist terms.
A month before Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine, Moscow demanded the withdrawal of NATO troops from countries that joined the alliance after 1997, from all of Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland. Russia’s plan is clear and specific. It is difficult for us to accept it.