Melik Kaylan, Forbes:
"Moscow’s Hidden Plans For Exploiting A Ceasefire With Ukraine
There’s been a great deal of talk about backstairs peace negotiations
for halting the war in Ukraine. To the allies, the picture looks gloomy
as Russia relentlessly gains ground in the East, destroys Ukrainian
settlements and kills civilians while the Ukrainian army remains
outgunned and over-stretched. Not least because Western partners like
America and Germany haven’t provided sufficient timely support. So the
electricity grid has collapsed, winter looms without heat, the
population is fleeing abroad and things look bleak for Ukraine.
The mooted ceasefire allows Russia to keep the occupied territory,
for now, while Moscow agrees that Ukraine gets to join NATO. This column
is about the feasibility of even that defeatist deal staying stable and
the secret dangers built into the alleged negotiations. As pieces of
interchangeable blocks the agreement looks straightforward. But, Moscow
well knows, the devil is in the details, the hidden interstitial gaps.
Because, in reality, with Putin pushing at the cracks, the deal can be
obstructed at every stage.
By treaty law, NATO doesn’t accept new members that are in
mid-conflict or even in a frozen conflict. As a result, accession will
take time and Russia will not stand still. Even supposing Ukraine gets
into NATO, what guarantees that its members, if called upon, will
actively engage in a direct military confrontation with Russia when they
won’t now? And what happens if Trump is President? Sadly, however you
look at it, there’s a real possibility that any sort of compromise now
will simply lead to bigger trouble down the line. If the chances of a
Russia-forced peace look bleak , they’re even bleaker than you think.
What the seasoned Kremlin-watcher knows is that the Kremlin has made
plans for this situation in the kind of detail that the West cannot
match - a regimen self-evident to anyone who heeds the details of
Moscow’s post-Soviet revanchism. All one needs to do is look at the
highly revealing experience of Armenia and Georgia. When the Russians
invaded Georgia in 2008, they consolidated their hold on Georgia’s
separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia’s then
President Saakashvili, seeing the weakness of Western resolve, announced
a unilateral ceasefire, withdrew from the front lines, and saved his
country from being flattened as Ukraine has been.
The peace conditions offered by Moscow to Tbilisi, relayed by French
President Sarkozy, were so one-sided that Saakashvili turned them down
saying - and this is important - ‘there will be a popular coup against
me if I accept them.’ Putin had demanded that Georgia let go the
separatist zones for good and Saakashvili step aside, among other
things. Instead, Moscow made do with occupying the separatist zones and
withdrawing troops elsewhere. How did that work out for Georgia? Russia
kept creeping further onto Georgian land and also engineered regime
change in 2013 by interfering in the national elections and getting a
conservative nationalist oligarch elected in place of Saakashvili.
That Tbilisi oligarch, Ivanishvili, is still in power, a puppeteer
behind the scenes but now also an openly pro-Moscow partisan. A
nationalist AND pro-Moscow? How is that democratically possible in a
country that hates Russia? This same Ivanishvili, with the October
elections impending, has publicly declared that Georgia should apologize
for the Russian invasion. Yes you read that right. He had originally
got into power by offering a quiet life to Georgians, relief from strife
and confrontation, by reviling the West’s fickle support and values, by
floating a kind of non-aligned Georgia-first mirage. Instead,
inexorably, he gifted Moscow his country’s independence. Perhaps you see
inklings of how things might work in Ukraine if Moscow is allowed a
favorable peace deal there?
But first let’s look at Armenia. After winning the first
Nagorno-Karabakh war against Azerbaijan in 1992 and declaring a kind of
Armenia-affiliated republic, the veterans of that victory gradually came
to dominate Armenian politics as a whole. The tail wagging the dog.
They grew cliquish and cronyist and self-dealing, perfect candidates for
being inveigled into Russian dark money influence, military weapons
kickbacks and easy power. They ended up as proxies of Moscow in Armenian
affairs. In effect, Armenia slowly lost its independence and any
semblance to a democracy. So the most militantly ultra-nationalist
faction, heroes of war, impossible to stand against politically, became
the most corruptly oligarchic and sold out to Russia.
It wasn’t until the populace grew so utterly sick of the pro-Russia
faction’s shenanigans that in 2018 they successfully elected a true
democrat, Nikol Pashinyan, despite all the obstacles. He promptly and
regularly chided Russia for dominating Armenian affairs. As a result,
Armenia was soon punished in 2020 when Russian peacekeepers did nothing
to help defend the Armenian side during the second Karabakh war. Moscow
was treaty-bound to do so. It did nothing. Instead, this time Azerbaijan
emerged victorious. Moscow had got its revenge for Armenia’s democratic
intransigence...
How does all this relate to the putative peace-deal in Ukraine? The
Kremlin’s plan goes something like this. Zelensky is forced to cede the
occupied territories pro-tem in exchange for promises of joining Nato.
By the time Nato proceeds and implements, ultra-nationalist elements of
the army revolt and stage a coup against Zelensky for giving away Donbas
and Crimea. The West objects strenuously, thereby alienating the
military putschist leaders. Putin inundates Ukraine’s airwaves with
propaganda about the West’s perfidy, the West’s agonizingly slow and
insufficient support of Ukraine, the West’s seeming willingness to bleed
Ukraine as a proxy, Zelensky’s anti-democratic centralization of power,
and the like.
Remember that Saakashvili had refused the Kremlin’s terms of ceding the
separatist areas because there would be a coup against him. That could
happen in Ukraine after a peace deal. In Armenia, the ultranationalists
were suborned by Moscow. That too will happen to any military Putsch
clique in Ukraine. And in the long run? They will not get the West’s
support and won’t attempt to restart hostilities. All this, Moscow has
gamed and maneuvered before.
It all starts with the temptation and delusion of easy peace. In
Georgia, a populist authoritarian regime took over by promising relief
from punishment and fear. The Georgian populace has long since been
cowed by Moscow’s carrot and stick message. Be docile, be ruled by
oligarchs and Russian money, you will be safe in a long national sleep.
Russian protection. Coherence. Continuity. As opposed to Western
neglect, indecision, distraction, disappointment, the chaos and
polarization of freedom. And so it will be with Ukraine. In the wake of a
peace deal."
