Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to the secretary general of NATO, has come under heavy criticism after he discussed possible options for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine that did not envision a complete Russian defeat.
“Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to the secretary-general of NATO, recently had his knuckles rapped when he commented on possible options for an end to the war in Ukraine that did not envision a complete Russian defeat.
‘I’m not saying it has to be like this, but I think that a solution could be for Ukraine to give up territory and get NATO membership in return’, he said during a panel discussion in Norway, according to the country’s VG newspaper. He also said that ‘it must be up to Ukraine to decide when and on what terms they want to negotiate’, which is NATO’s standard line.
But the damage was done. The remarks provoked an angry condemnation from the Ukrainians; a clarification from his boss, Jens Stoltenberg; and ultimately an apology from Jenssen.
Western allies and Ukrainians themselves had hung much hope on a counteroffensive that might change the balance on the battlefield, expose Russian vulnerability, and soften Moscow up for a negotiated end to the fighting, which has stretched on for a year and a half.
Even the most sanguine of Ukraine’s backers did not predict that Ukraine would push Russian occupiers fully out of the country, an outcome that appears increasingly distant in light of the modest gains of the counteroffensive so far.
With the counteroffensive going so slowly, and U.S. defense and intelligence officials beginning to blame the Ukrainians, Western governments are feeling more vulnerable after providing so much equipment and raising hopes, said Charles A. Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and a former U.S. official.
The American hope, he said, was that the counteroffensive would succeed in threatening the Russian position in Crimea, which would put Ukraine in a stronger negotiating position. That has not happened. ‘So the political atmosphere has tightened’, he said, ‘and overall there is still a political taboo about a hardheaded conversation about the endgame’.
Kupchan and Richard N. Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs in April, urging Washington and its allies to come up with ‘a plan for getting from the battlefield to the negotiating table’, and were widely criticized for doing so.
‘Any open discussion of a Plan B is politically fraught, as Mr. Jenssen found out the hard way, as do we who try to articulate possible Plan B’s’, he said. ‘We get a storm of criticism and abuse. What was somewhat taboo is now highly taboo’.
If the counteroffensive is not going well, now would be the time to explore alternatives, he said. Instead, he suggested, Stoltenberg and others were simply doubling down on slogans like supporting Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’.
Of course, negotiations require two sides to talk, and right now neither President Vladimir Putin of Russia nor President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine are ready to negotiate anything.
Putin’s forces seem to be holding their defensive lines, and most analysts suggest he thinks that the West will tire of supporting Ukraine. He may also hope that Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Trump has promised to stop U.S. support for Ukraine and finish the war in a day. Even if he is not reelected, he could be a strong voice in pushing the Republican Party to limit its support for Ukraine.
But it is also not clear that Zelenskyy, after so much Ukrainian sacrifice, would feel politically able to negotiate even if Russia were pushed back to its positions when the war started, in February of 2022”. -Steven Erlanger, New York Times
A negotiated surrender with Moscow is seemingly by far the best feasible option remaining for the overcome NATO-backed Kiev regime.
However, it may not be in the best interests of the Kremlin to agree to a negotiated surrender, seeing how it will allow the NATO alliance to recuperate and rearm Ukraine, as it was able to do following its breach of the Minsk agreements.