After a two-hour telephone call between the presidents of Russia and the United States on Monday, President Vladimir Putin said:
“I would like to emphasize once again that the conversation was very constructive, and I rate it highly. The question, of course, is for the Russian and Ukrainian sides to show maximum desire for peace and find compromises that would suit all parties. At the same time,I would like to note that Russia’s position is generally clear. The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis.”
It should be no mystery to Western leaders, media and the public what those root causes are, as Moscow has been repeating them ad nauseam beginning 30 years ago and especially in the run up to Russia’s 2022 intervention in Ukraine’s then eight-year old civil war.
The problem is the West appears too full of itself to bother listening to what its adversary has to say, which in itself has been one of the root causes of the conflict.
Unlike consumers of mainstream media — the majority of the population — readers of independent news outlets, like Consortium News, are well aware of what those root causes are. For doing its job by reporting on the causes of the conflict, CN and other alternative media, have been branded Russian propagandists.
The root causes bear repeating here. 1) NATO expansion; 2) Forward deployment of NATO troops and missiles in Romania and Poland; 3) NATO training and equipping Ukraine as a proxy with the intention of bringing Ukraine into NATO; 4) the 2014 unconstitutional change of government leading to attacks against Russian speakers in the south and east of Ukraine; and 5) the outsized influence of Neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine.
[For a detailed discussion, see: Ukraine Timeline Tells the Tale]
Many useful analogies have been made about a Russian-backed overthrow of the Mexican or Canadian governments and Russian missiles pointed at the U.S. being deployed in either country. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis showed how the U.S. reacted when missiles were deployed near its borders.
Meanwhile, establishment media have worked overtime to root out the root causes from the public’s mind.
They bury them by airbrushing out of the story a) NATO expansion; b) the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Ukraine in 2014; c) Ukraine, with NATO backing, starting the war against ethnic Russian Donbass the same year; d) Ukraine and the West’s failure to abide by the Minsk accords in 2015 to end the war; e) Ukraine pulling out of the Istanbul agreement in 2022 under U.S. and U.K. pressure; and f) ditching its 2014 coverage of the role of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis in this.
After the Phone Call
The big questions emerging from today’s telephone conversation are 1) After two hours of, no doubt, careful explanation by Putin to Donald Trump, did the American president finally allow these root causes to penetrate his mind? Is he prepared to instruct U.S. negotiators to address these causes in a final peace agreement?
Trump has made fleeting remarks before that seem to indicate some sort of understanding of the Russian perspective, such as when he said in January:
“A big part of the problem is, Russia – for many, many years, long before Putin – said, ‘You could never have NATO involved with Ukraine.’ Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone. And somewhere along the line [Joe] Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”
What’s required is a full, sustained comprehension that Trump may be incapable of. He must be prepared to stand up to (or dismiss) the hardliners on his team — namely Gen. Keith Kellogg and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and to use U.S. leverage to press Ukraine to accept that these root causes must be resolved to bring peace.
The early reaction from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, particularly about Russian demands that Ukraine cede territory to Moscow, shows Trump would have his work cut out for him.
“Ukraine will not withdraw troops from part of its own territory and will not succumb to Russia’s ultimatums,” Zelensky said Monday. “I asked him [Trump] not to accept any things about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
But without addressing the root causes, the Kremlin has made clear it is prepared to continue the war until they are resolved. The sacrifices it and Ukraine have made otherwise make little sense from Russia’s viewpoint. Moscow’s chief negotiator in the Ukraine-Russia talks that began in Istanbul last week said Russia had fought Sweden for 21 years in the 18th century and was in for the long haul in Ukraine.
Russia sought in December 2021 to avoid its intervention and an escalation of the war when it offered treaties to the United States and NATO that would see the withdrawal of NATO troops from former Warsaw Pact countries; the removal of missiles from Romania and Poland; and an assurance of Ukraine’s neutrality, i.e., that it does not join NATO. The Kremlin said if the treaties were rejected it could resort to technical/military means to resolve the issues.
The U.S. rejected the treaties, preferring the military response in the misguided and now dashed hope that a Russian intervention would lead to the collapse of Putin’s rule. Only a revival of these treaties and Trump’s determined willingness to negotiate them will bring the war to a close.
The situation could not be any clearer: Ukraine can only hope to win the war and recover its territory if NATO directly intervenes against Russia. As NATO leaders understand this could lead to nuclear annihilation they will only keep the fiction alive that they could still help Ukraine win, thereby preserving their own political careers and reputation, but doing nothing to effect events on the ground.
The longer Ukraine refuses to make compromises, the worse deal it will get in the end unless Trump understands this and uses the power he has to make Ukraine accept reality.
Source: Consortium News.
