Ceasefire in Ukraine will benefit only Moscow

 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."