The dawn of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks is still hard to see under the western ＂fatigue＂
Xinhua News Agency, Moscow, December 10th(International observation) The dawn of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks is still hard to see under the western "fatigue"
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhao Bing
In the past, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continued, and Ukraine’s continuous counterattack failed to effectively break through the Russian defense line. With the coming of the severe winter, the war is at an impasse. At the same time, western countries began to "feel tired" of helping Ukraine, and there were rumors that Russia and Ukraine had secretly started negotiations.
Analysts believe that despite the "Ukrainian fatigue" in the West, there is still a willingness to continue to support Uzbekistan. Due to the fundamental differences between Russia and Ukraine in terms of negotiation conditions and peace vision, the prospects for negotiations between the two sides are still slim, and there is no dawn of restoring peace in the short term.
The war is deadlocked.
Recently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has continued to drag on, and the battlefield situation has been deadlocked. Russian troops continued to block the Ukrainian offensive in Kupiyansk, Hongliman, Donetsk, Hellson and Zaporoge. The Ukrainian army, on the other hand, has been forced to turn from active attack to defense since late October due to the unfavorable progress of the summer counterattack and the reduction of western aid. The two sides began to use long-range weapons such as missiles and drones to launch attacks more frequently.
According to the Russian notification, from December 3 to 8, the Russian army used high-precision weapons and drones to carry out 30 cluster attacks on Ukrainian arsenals and other facilities, and also attacked Ukrainian armed forces and foreign mercenaries. In a week, the Ukrainian army lost more than 1,400 people and 1,500 people respectively in the direction of Hongliman and Donetsk, and dozens of armored vehicles and artillery were destroyed, and five planes and 224 drones were shot down.
According to Ukrainian media reports, since November, key facilities in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and many places in the west and south have been continuously attacked by Russian drones. At the same time, the Ukrainian army has stepped up its air strikes against Crimea in the past month, aiming at reconnaissance and collection of Russian military information to launch a larger-scale operation. In addition, the Ukrainian military said that the Russian army assembled more than 40,000 soldiers to attack Avdeev Card, an important town in Donetsk, which suffered serious losses, but the offensive continued unabated.
Russian Defense Minister shoigu said a few days ago that the Ukrainian army has lost more than 125,000 people and 16,000 weapons and equipment in the so-called counter-offensive in the past six months, and the "desperate actions of Ukraine and the West have not changed the battlefield situation". Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, admitted in an interview with The Economist that the conflict was "deadlocked, which may last for several years", and that the Ukrainian army could not break through the Russian defense line and was "in fact in trouble".
The spread of "fatigue" in the west
As the battlefield situation continues to stalemate, "Ukrainian fatigue" is spreading in western countries.
The United States is the main supporter of Ukraine, but after the outbreak of the new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the United States’ great military aid to Israel diverted its aid to Ukraine. Domestic partisan strife has also affected US aid to Ukraine. On the 6th, the US Senate failed to pass the White House’s application for special funding including more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine.
According to a recent report released by the Kiel Institute for World Economics in Germany, from August to October 2023, western countries promised a total aid plan to Ukraine of 2.11 billion euros, a decrease of 87% compared with the same period in 2022 and the lowest since January 2022. The report said that there are great uncertainties in the aid plans of the European Union and the United States.
The EU will hold a summit from 14th to 15th to vote on the 50 billion euro aid plan for Ukraine, but EU officials said that it is "very, very difficult" for member countries to reach an agreement. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban openly opposed the aid plan to Ukraine and the EU’s initiation of Ukraine’s accession negotiations. Slovakia’s new Prime Minister Fizo also explicitly opposed military assistance, saying that he was only willing to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. Polls in Poland show that people are tired of aiding Ukraine, and the relationship between Poland and Ukraine is also cracked due to the ban on food imports from Ukraine. Italian Prime Minister Silvio meloni, despite publicly expressing her stance against Ukraine, admitted in a prank phone call that all parties were "tired" of the Ukrainian crisis.
Nevertheless, aid to Ukraine is still "politically correct" in the west, and some countries still have strong willingness to aid Ukraine and are trying to strengthen its military production capacity. The United States recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Ukraine for joint production and technology sharing. Rheinmetall plans to establish an armored vehicle production line in western Ukraine by the end of this year.
In addition, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken publicly stated on the 7th that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine is beneficial to the U.S. economy. In this regard, Timofei Bordachev, project director of Valdai International Debate Club, a Russian think tank, believes that the West should not be expected to reduce or even interrupt its aid to Ukraine.
The peace talks are temporarily difficult
Seymour Hirsch, a well-known American investigative journalist, recently revealed that the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks led by gerasimov, Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation Armed Forces, and Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, seem to have started. According to Hirsch, the conditions for restoring peace that the two sides are negotiating may include that Ukraine can join NATO, but NATO promises not to deploy troops and offensive weapons in Ukraine, while Russia will keep Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk. Part of the territory.
In this regard, some Russian experts pointed out that it is impossible for Russia to accept such a transaction and will not believe NATO’s above commitments. Some Russian experts believe that this may be an information war between Ukraine and the West. Senior officials, such as Podolyak, adviser to the President’s Office of Ukraine, publicly stated that the topic of negotiations should not be hyped, the Russian side has not changed its goal, and Uzbekistan’s position has not changed.
Analysts generally believe that the exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine shows that there are communication channels between the two sides. However, due to the fundamental differences in the conditions for resuming peace talks and the vision for the future peace order, the prospects for resuming peace talks between the two sides are still slim.
Jonathan Finn Na, Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs, said publicly a few days ago that the United States hopes to force Russia to negotiate according to Ukrainian conditions within 2024. In this regard, peskov, Russian Presidential Press Secretary, bluntly said that the remarks that Russia can negotiate according to Ukrainian conditions are "totally unrealistic". Ambassador-at-large of Russian Foreign Ministry Rodion Miroshnik also said that the key issue is whether Ukraine and the West are really ready for negotiations. He said that at least for now, Russia will continue to work hard to achieve the goal of special military operations. (Participating in reporters: Li Dongxu, Zhang Zhang, He Fei, Wang Lili, Deng Xianlai)