A New Order of Things (R)
A Comprehensive, Sustainable and Just Agreement
Wouldn’t THAT be nice?
I am gratified to see that my attempts in recent months to decipher the Russian position on negotiations over Ukraine are pretty closely aligned with the latest statements on this subject by none other than Vladimir Putin himself in an interview with the Chinese news agency Xin Hua, given prior to Putin’s upcoming visit to China where he will be travelling with a large delegation of senior Kremlin ministers and administrators that exhibits a very strong emphasis on economics and trade.
Putin delivers a blistering repudiation of the clownish, unarticulated, unpredictable “rules-based” order to which the US and its vassals have pinned their ideological justification for a continuation of US hegemony. He asserts Russian willingness to engage in dialog but insists that this must be a dialog that takes into account the relevant interests of all parties, including, of course, those of Russia, and that does so within a comprehensive, sustainable and just framework, one that addresses both global security concerns, and the necessity for a redesign of European security architecture, and that is backed by reliable guarantees - in other words, very much NOT the kind of unreliable, bad-faith agreements and treaties that have rendered US and European foreign policy both deceptive and meaningless, over the past thirty years.
This stance goes way beyond the scope of the failed Istanbul negotiations of 2022; it speaks about negotiation not with Ukraine but on or about Ukraine. While it invokes the two draft treaties of December 2021 that Putin then submitted to NATO and the US for consideration and which they blithely ignored (a significant trigger of Russia’s SMO launched two months later), treaties that would require the withdrawal of all NATO troops and jurisdiction to the boundaries of 1998, prior to NATO’s infamous eastern expansion.
Even these bedrocks of sanity must now be extended. How? I suggest that any negotiation must take account of the recent incorporation into NATO of Sweden and Finland, whose membership has all sort of implications, as were indicated in the WSWS article I referenced in a recent post, to not just the possibility of (certainly ineffective, and recklessly cavalier) future NATO aggressions against Russia across Nordic boundaries, but also to the post global-warming era of the Arctic and the clashes of interest between the major powers that these in turn introduce to the heart of the discussion.
Indeed, the notion of a sustainable revision or transformation of European security architecture is incompatible, in my view, with the continuing existence of NATO. Responding disproportionately to the fanatic impulses of some Baltic and East European nations, this has become a clumsy but hideous Frankenstein monster whose every stride threats the human species with annihilation.
A new architecture requires a new kind of institutional umbrella. This could be one that represents all European and Central Asian powers and in which all voices have a significant say but in which Russia, being the single largest power of them all geographically, would have a decisive voice.
But more appropriately and inclusively, I consider that the new institutional umbrella could most sensibly be a throughly rethought and of course reformed structure of the United Nations and the UN Security Council which should have its headquarters, by the way, almost anywhere other than Washington, Moscow or Beijing. Perhaps in the new capitol of a defrozen Arctic.
While that last thought is intended as a passing moment of anguished levity, there are so many reasons why the world should no longer tolerate the centering of this institution anywere in the US, further pandering, as it does, to official delusions of the US as a shining beacon of hope on a cursed hill. Small amongst them, but very recent, and indicative, are visions of the US chief diplomat Anthony Blinken playing the guitar at a rock concert in a pizza bar in Kiev as soldiers die each day on the battlefields of Ukraine in their hundreds and thousands, Washington threats to sanction India (now possibly the largest single country in terms of population) if it trades with Iran, and the words of Senator Lyndsey Graham calling for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on the long-abused, colonized, famished, tortured and suffering people of Gaza at the hands of a fanatic and US-funded cabal.
The Battlefields
The principal developments are as follows:
(1) It is now Kiev policy to withdraw its forces from the borderlands of the northeast down from Lyptsi and Vovchansk to a line of defense around Kharkiv. Note that this in effect secures Russia’s original aim, which is that of a buffer zone that might better protect the city of Belgorod, in particular, from Ukrainian attacks. If, indeed, Russia now appraises Ukraine’s strategy as one of significant weakness, the Ukrainian withdrawal might just force Russia’s hand in seizing the opportunity to move on to Kharkiv itself.
On the other hand, one should not discount altogether the possibility that Ukraine’s apparent lack of preparation on the border and its insufficient resistance to Russian advances south, is a feint designed to repeat the 2022 experience when Russia did indeed move into Kharkiv only to be bloodied.
Nonetheless, I would say that Kharkiv is now in a much, much weaker position of defense than it was in 2022, and that the position of both the UAF and the Kiev regime are extremely precarious by any standard. Further Russian advances southwards, additional hasty redeployments of fatigued and in some cases rebellious Ukrainian brigades (think the 79th who are virtually abandoned, without supplies, west of Novomikhailivka) from other conflicts along the combat line, coupled with sudden but decisive Russian assaults on and westwards of some of the following - Chasiv Yar, Umanske, Krasnohoriivka, Kostyantynivka and Vuhledar - or noth of Uzhaine, Staramaiorsk or Robotyne - would likely lead to a rapid disintegration of both army and regime.
(2) Will Blinken’s guitar strumming and pizza-gorging in Kiev make any difference? The promise of another $2 billion in aid to support what is plausibly the world’s most egregiously corrupt, greedy and stupid leadership (everywhere, all the time, all at once) is going to make no more difference than umpteen Patriot missile launchers, Storm Shadows, ATACMS, Leopard 2s, Challengers, Bradleys and all the rest of it have managed or failed to make. Blinken may be able to come up with a Patriot or two for Kharkiv; Spain’s arm is being twisted to send another; Germany has promised another - it is all, well, pathetic.
F16s are extremely unlikely to do anything very much other than possibly lead to Russia attacking their launch pads in Romania, or Poland or any other country foolish enough to take the risk of hosting the ancient machines. The US still has another couple of tricks it could introduce into the mix, including a new radar system, still in its infancy, that supposedly can track hypersonic missiles (whose fusilage absorb radio signals), or its latest FAAD air defense system - but at the high risk that these will be quickly captured and reverse-engineered by Russia.
(3) Russia has captured the north of Vovchansk and may now be moving on to the center over the Volche river, and has complete control over Hlyboke and Lukianski and has reportedly entered the northern end of Lyptsi. Ukraine, as noted, will move back to establish a new line of defense that will likely incorporate Tsyrkuny, Btenkove, Momotove, Oleksandrivka, Mykhailivka, Shestokove and Fedorivka. To the east of Vovchansk it has captured Tyhne, Buhruvatka and Starytsia. In Kupyansk Russian forces have entered Berezove and are clashing with Ukrainian forces in Serebriank. North of Chasiv Yar Russia has finally secured Bohdanivka and will inevitably move on to take the village of Kalynovka for an assault on the main sections of Chasiv Yar, west of the Kanal, from the north. It has strengthened its positions in and around Klishchiivka, from which Ukraine appears to be evacuating its forces. In Avdiivka area, Russia has completed its control over Soloviove and other settlements close to Ocheretyne, such as Novokalynove, Keramik and Arkhanhelske, and including the first buildings of Novooleksandrivka.
There have been some Ukrainian counter-attacks in the Avdiivka area on Ocheretyne and west of Umanske and on Pobieda to the south. These may be indicative of a Ukrainian effort to establish a new line of defense that would take in Karlivka and the reservoir, moving up through Skuchne, Mezhove, Novoselivka Persha, Yevhenivka, and Prohres. Dima of the Military Summary Channel even predicts an operational pause on the part of Russia whose troops have been fighting in this area for the past six months to a year. The Ukrainian counterattacks (particularly those that center on Pobieda, unsuccessful so far) may also be designed as part of a defensive strategy in the event, and it is inevitable, of a Russian move on Kostyantynivka and Vuhledar.
In Krasnohoriivka, Russia controls the entire settlement other than the northwest. Russia has finally taken Paraskoviikva which lies between Novomykhailivka, already taken by the Russians, and Kostyantynivka, already mentioned. Russian forces have entered the southern zones of both Staramaiorsk and Urozhaine, and have taken Robotyne in its entirety (yes that very same settlement of the infamous “Bradley Square” that cost Ukraine tens of thousands of its soldiers, without gain or even obvious purpose). In the Dnieper estuary area and the Russian bank of the Dnieper a little further up, around Koshi Laheri and Krynky, there is hardly any sign any more of Ukrainian soldiers