The War Will Stop Soon Because the West Cannot Help Ukraine

Russian troops met very strong resistance from Ukrainian armed forces on the ground, but not in the air, so they resorted to the well-tested (in Aleppo, Syria) and in Grozny, Chechnya) tactics. There Russians destroyed cities by airstrikes, artillery, and did not allow the inhabitants to leave the territory. Yes, this is inhumane, but Putin doesn't seem to care about the Russian soldiers, much less anyone else. Putin deliberately creates a humanitarian disaster and uses it to bend the enemy to peace on his terms. This is exactly what is happening now in Ukraine.

City of Mariupol is partially destroyed, сorpses lie in the streets and several agreed-upon "green corridors" for population withdrawal were shelled by Russian troops. The defenders of the city are doing the best of themselves, but it looks like the city will have to surrender soon. A similar picture is observed in a bigger city of Kharkiv which is also almost surrounded and there is a serious potential of eastern Ukraine eventually being overrun as far as the Dnipro river line. City of Kherson in the south has been taken over by Russian troops, as well as the Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl nuclear power plants. Now Putin can blackmail Europe also by the threat of a nuclear explosion right in Ukraine.


Ukrainians beg the West to close the sky to prevent more bombing or provide the proper weapons or combat aircrafts. And they are really given a lot of antitank weapons and man-portable air defense systems recently, but… It is complicated to get the aid into the country when ports are blockaded and airfields are under attack, it takes time to distribute the systems within the country when lines of communication are under interdiction and units are deployed in front-line positions or surrounded, to train crews on new weapons that are complicated by their being in under fire, etc.

And the West couldn’t agree transfer to Ukraine Russian-made combat aircrafts from Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia, saying the intelligence community assessed it would be a "high risk" move that could increase the chances of a Russian escalation with NATO. Yes, maybe, but the more concessions you make to the criminal-blackmailer, the more you owe.

Ukraine cannot fight with the bare hands against armed Russians who are also destroying civilians with bombs and missiles. The West itself does not want to fight (obviously fearing Putin's "nuclear button" or an explosion at one of the captured nuclear power plants) and does not give weapons to Ukraine, which would be more than happy to fight instead of the West. So Ukraine will have to accept the Russians' terms rather sooner than later. At the end of February, Russia informed that it will stop the war “in a moment” if Ukraine meets certain terms.

These terms are: to cease military action, change the constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, recognize the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states. The next steps of Russians may be the request of the lifting of sanctions because the subject no longer exists since Ukraine has acknowledged everything.


A meeting is scheduled for today (March 10) of Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers in Antalya (Turkey). They will apparently begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine on Russia's terms. Ukraine will surely demand guarantees that Russia will fulfill its obligations like it did in 1994 at the time of the signing of the memorandum in Budapest. Russia will sign everything and then break its commitment again some time later. Nothing can be done, Mr. Putin is a liar and a war criminal, not a man of his word. The West, too, will sign everything and do nothing again when Russia violates its commitments.

Ukraine cannot be condemned for signing such a document, they fight great against a superior enemy. It is a pity, though, that in such case at least several thousand Ukrainians and probably more than 6 thousand Russians died for this worthless piece of paper.


P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov