Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
Do you support the right to self-determination for Ukrainians in the Donbas region? Do you support their right to live in peace, free from artillery bombardment and being terrorized by far-right paramilitary groups? Or do you only support the rights of Ukrainians that the state department tells you to care about?
I don’t think that is in any contradiction w/ my comment whatsoever.
I think a peace deal involving referendums in these areas (not under military occupation-creates unfair and unfree conditions for a referendum e.g., as in Crimea!) would identify the actual will of the people in these parts of the Donbas. I expect heavily that Crimea above all would vote to leave Ukraine and I think it has every right to do so ethically-speaking, though I do not think the referendum was carried out in free/fair conditions.
Ukraine had even better terms than that under the Minsk agreements. They refused to hold to the terms and stop shelling Donbas, even after they signed a ceasefire twice. After the invasion there was another attempt at peace talks, it ended with Ukraine dragging their own negotiator into the street and shooting him in the head. Late last year Zelensky signed a decree making it illegal to negotiate peace with Putin. The few times Ukraine has retaken a major area they immediately begin purging “collaborators and traitors”. If Russia pulled back it’s military Ukraine would just immediately invade those areas, regardless of any agreements they signed.
I’m not philosophically opposed to your idea, it really would be the best outcome. It’s just impossible to actually implement.
Edit: I forgot to mention that this would also be impossible in Ukraine-held areas. Zelensky has banned all left-wing opposition parties. Oddly enough the right-wing parties were all left alone, including the far-right Svoboda party.
I think that is just a fundamentally one-sided understanding of why the Minsk Agreement failed to be honest. It was a poorly-written, unimplementable deal that neither side took seriously. It’s not like the D/LPRs and Russia were saints here. Indeed, there also isn’t much reason to believe the D/LPRs were, beyond the first year or so, really representative of the people in the region’s desires, since the original independent-minded leaders were replaced by those much closer to Russia. FURTHERMORE, the Minsk agreement was simply too unpopular in Ukraine for any government to survive implementing it. Ukrainians largely viewed the D/LPRs as Russian proxies (to what extent they are is arguable, but they certainly were less so as time went on and never were even to start with) and, in large, abhorred this sort of Russian influence.
It wasn’t just because Ukrainian state was war-mongering and poor baby Russia was forced to step in. This is not to say at all that the Ukrainian Government made no mis-steps in the build-up to the war-yes, they definitely did, and the Ukrainians simply didn’t believe Putin would be rash or stupid enough to launch such an invasion until very close to the time so never really backed down from a maximalist NATO position and didn’t prepare properly for early-war defences. But it’s not like you are saying. Both sides caused the failure of Minsk, and neither side was ready to adhere to it.
Then why did Ukraine sign the two separate Minsk agreements if they never intended to follow them?
Peace with Donbas was popular with Ukrainians. In the most recent elections the candidate that ran on a platform of peace with Donbas won the election and became president. Zelensky then went to the front and gave his “I’m not some loser” speech to Ukraine’s militants on the front to try to deescalate the war. Once he failed to reign in his paramilitaries he began agitating for more war.
You are correct that it’s unlikely that a Ukrainian government could survive implementing peace with Donbas. This isn’t because it was unpopular with the people of Ukraine but because it was unpopular with the people in power. After the US-backed coup far-right elements were placed in positions of power in the Ukrainian government, especially in the police and military. If that failed, the US could have once again opened the floodgates of money from NGOs to anti-government protestors and replaced whoever the Ukrainian people elected with a more “pro-democratic” leader.
You’re right that overall the central Ukrainian government wanted war too much to abide by the ceasefire treaties they signed. I just don’t think that excuses them. Wanting war too much to do peace is literally what I’m criticizing Ukraine for.