LEFT: The President of Ukraine (Volodymyr Zelenskyy) met with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Poland. February 1, 2022. Photo courtesy of the office of the President of Ukraine. RIGHT: Russian President Vladimir Putin listens as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during their bilateral meeting focused on Syria and Ukraine at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on March 24, 2016. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
- Ukraine cease military action,
- change its constitution to enshrine neutrality,
- acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and
- recognize the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.
However, on his blog, Buchanan.org, Pat Buchanan suggests that Russia’s aims are much broader than their limited demands at the negotiating table. He writes:
Yet, Russia’s strategic goals, manifest in its unfolding military action, seem to go far beyond the moderate demands of Peskov.
Three weeks into this war, what do Russia’s goals appear to be?
First, besiege and bring down the Kyiv government of Zelensky and replace it with a Russian client regime.
Second, divide Ukraine along the lines of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country north to south, and create an East Ukraine as a pro-Russian state.
Third, seize and occupy the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, turn it into a Russian lake, and capture all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from the Donbas to Mariupol, Crimea, Kherson, Odessa and Transnistria, the last a slice of seceded Moldovan land Moscow now controls.
This would leave a landlocked rump state of west Ukraine, which would be a buffer between NATO nations Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — and Russia-backed East Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Russia’s realization of these goals would be tantamount to victory in Putin’s war:
“A Ukraine divided in two, with Russia in control of the east, and a rump, Western Ukraine cut off from the coast might look like a victory to Mr. Putin — especially if sanctions are removed in some cease-fire agreement.”
With this kind of peace in hand, Putin could then warn the NATO nations that if they attacked East Ukraine directly, or indirectly by arming insurgents, they would face “consequences you have never seen.”
As no NATO nation risked war to save Georgia from Russia in 2008, or to save Ukraine from the Crimean and Donbas amputations of 2014, it is not likely NATO would risk war with Russia, and a potential third world war, if Russia declared a truce once it got full control of eastern Ukraine.
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