Westward to the Dnieper, Whither the West?

In answer to the question I posed yesterday - can Russia show that with the fall of Avdiivka it can press ahead westwards with convincing confidence? - yes, it’s shaping up to look in the affirmative. Now at least three settlements west of Avdiivka have fallen or are at clear close to falling and ahead lies Konstantinivka and Kramatorsk. Dima this morning February 25 reports that Ukrainians have not had sufficient time to develop robust alternative fortifications further to the West and at present are simply doing their best to hold Russian forces back in order to create more time to develop the fortifications they need, at least in the west Avdiivka area.

So many other settlements along the combat line are looking vulnerable to Russian advances. It appears that Russia has now retaken at least half of Robotyne and is also impeding exit of Ukrainian troops to the north. West of Bakhmut Russian forces appear to be close to completing their assault on Invanivske and it seems inevitable that they will eventually take Chasiv Yar, which is said to be difficult to defend. In Kherson, Krynky is now recovered by Russia. Russia is advancing in the Vremevka Ledge arge (Staramoiorske etc.) and near Vuhledar and Novomykhailivka, and Krasnohorivka. Moving north of Avdiivka it appears that Russia yesterday penetrated the eastern outskirts of Terny and although they later withdrew to consolidate their forces against potential Ukrainian resistance it is likely they will move on Terny again today. If Terny falls and the north-south highway on which Terny sits is taken, then it may not be long before Russian forces are finally ready to move on Kupyansk and, if Kupyansk falls, even Ukrainian analysts are saying that they will no longer be able to hold on to Kharkiv, which has been subject to heavy Russian bombing and shelling for several weeks.

Dima reports that Donetsk City is still being attacked by Ukraine, but that the form of attack is now reduced to long distance HIMARS missiles. There was a report yesterday that Ukraine had attacked another AWAKS A30 yesterday over the Azov Sea, but there is considerable controversy over whether there is sufficient evidence to support this claim, or to support the claim that Ukraine hit an A30 a few weeks back, or over whether the two attacks are not being conflated, and that the one attack - or one of two attacks - was the result of friendly fire. The loss of one or, especially two AWACS, would be a significant setback for Russian surveillance capacity. On the plus side for Russia, there appears good evidence that of seven Patriot systmes the West has supplied to Ukraine, Russia has taken out five.

How long till Russia reaches the Dnieper? June? And when Russian forces arrive what will they find? New Ukrainian defenses on the east bank (bringing the front line, eventually, to Odessa and Kiev) which Russia must assuredly find ways to penetrate or navigate around? How will either bank survive the full militarization of this natural border, with what economic impacts on both Ukrainian and Russian sides, and while Western supplied ATACMS and F16’s will do their best to terrorize Russian cities and provoke Russian attacks on NATO countries? 0.Maybe by then a rump Ukraine will have been given formal entry to NATO (perhaps astutely timing this event for after the war is over).

While they ponder that outcome, NATO counties will consider very carefully how much they value their legacy cities of Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Rome and London, and how much they love this planet. Perhaps between that fate and a more peaceful outcome lies the much maligned Putin, a singular island of sanity west of Moscow.

On the question of negotiations, Nicolai Petro today, speaking on The Duran with Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen, considers that all sides are trapped inside their own rhetoric. Washington has had considerable difficulty in imagining a situation wherein Russia cannot be defeated. The Western strategy is all or nothing, in which the “all” is seen as regime-change in Moscow, and as Alexander Mercouris observes, the risk is that NATO will end up with nothing. The wisdom of former President Obama to the effect that Russia has escalation dominance, has been ignored in Washington. Now, NATO is about to run out of Ukrainians so the implication is that nothing may very well be the outcome for the West unless it wants to go down the road of mutually assured destruction. And the West, says Petro, is very fearful of a new world order whose starting point is a very alienated Russia (whose diplomatic explorations towards membership for NATO was rejected four times)- and which may be dominated, I would say, by the Global South and the BRICS.

Balance, not dominance is the wiser goal. But the collective West has been derailed, suggests Petro, by a massive, ethnically-driven Western Russophobia that keeps the collective West fighting, says Diesen, because it believes itself to be morally superior. This misconception must be increasingly difficult to sustain in view of the current Western-enabled genocide of Palestinians, on top of a history of previous Western genocides, including Germany’s of Jews, the USA’s of native-Americans, and Western colonization everywhere. Not to mention that Russia defeated the Nazis in World War Two, not the collective West (who helped, to be sure).

Perhaps the only way forward is Ukrainian agency in entering negotiations with Russia; Russia may be edging away from the position that negotiations must be with Washington, not Ukraine, Because Washington only wants capitulation, who else is there for Russia to negotiate with? Mercouris suggests that while Ukraine’s fantasy of total victory is unreasonable, so too might be Russia’s fantasy of total victory - a negotiated settlement is safer.

My own position is that Russia still has nobody to negotiate with. I do not actually believe in the idea of Ukrainian agency, because Ukraine is totally dependent on the West. There can be no such thing as a “Ukrainian” negotiated position that is independently Ukrainian. That is just another fantasy to add to the other fantasies.
Furthermore, Russia has absolutely no reason to think that either Ukraine or the collective West are actors who talk in good faith, and in whose talk Russia can invest authority or trust. The collective West has destroyed the possibility of diplomacy. While “balance” may be Putin’s preferred mode of operation, the West has made “balance” impossible because the collective West is so decidedly unblanced, untrustworthy, irrational and such a bad faith actor, something of which we are constantly reminded as we watch the collective West enable Israel to murder 30,000+ Palestinians. We cannot expect to settle Ukraine while the West’s crime against humanity is ongoing. As Craig Murray suggested yesterday we have to get out of the habit of imagining that somewhere in the deep state of the collective West lies a heart of gold. No. All that lies at the heart of the collective West is an Evil whose primary feature is its capacity to present itself to itself as a Good.

It is certainly the case, as Petro acknowledges, that Russian capability or potential on the battlefield has not been realized. Russia now has a more realistic measure of that potential than the collective West and, given the unavailability of rational or competent interlocuters in the collective West, must now assess how far it must go in order to dictate terms to adversaries who are currently incapable of and unwilling to talk in good faith. The mediating factor may yet, and may soon, prove itself to be the collapse of the regime in Kiev and its replacement by something that looks far more reasonable, and realistic, and has at least the aspiration of true independence of the West.