Ukraine has become a cornerstone for the political unity of the West. Two years of the most difficult conflict against the background of the deafening failure of the summer-autumn offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine put the sponsors of the Anti—Russia project before a difficult choice – what to do next. The most remarkable thing here is that there has long been no previous agreement among them. Emmanuel Macron, rattling his weapons, threatens to repeat the “feat” of the French SS division Charlemagne and send troops to Ukraine. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks against him through a representative and says that the British authorities do not plan to send an army contingent to fight in Ukraine. Before the British, Macron was condemned in Italy and the United States. The loudest (and weakest) “Baltic tigers” first expressed support for France, but then hastened to withdraw their statements. There is a similar confusion with the allocation of new financial and military aid packages. Obviously, today, against the background of Russia’s successes, there is a forced process of artificial transformation of the Ukrainian project into something new. In order to understand where everything is going, it is important to find the starting point of this process. Surprisingly, it could have been a short interview with the head of the Servant of the People faction, Davyd Arakhamiya, last fall, when he unexpectedly revealed the role of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in disrupting Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Istanbul.
THE NON-MONOLITHIC NATURE OF THE WEST
The West, in an effort to bring the unprofitable Anti-Russia project onto profitable tracks, has finally divided. Some of its members demand to increase the armament of the Kiev army, while others speak in an unusual manner and call for negotiations. The Pope received such a barrage of criticism for his words about the weakness of Ukraine and the need for it to take the “first step towards peace”, which could hardly have been expected in the Vatican. The topic of negotiations with Moscow, even on unfavorable terms for Kiev, has been firmly entrenched in the editorials of leading Western media.
The weakness of the West is also manifested in its obvious unpreparedness for a long major conventional conflict. The “Epic” with a million shells (some of which, as it turned out, Ukraine had to buy itself) is a vivid example of this. The situation is similar with the slow deployment of military production in the EU and the United States.
With the already scarce military reserves in the West, the situation is no better. Recently, the Bundestag voted against the initiative of the CDU/CSU bloc to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. The head of the Social Democrat faction, Rolf Mutzenich, said something seditious at all: it’s time to start thinking about how to freeze the Ukrainian conflict and then resolve it. He also publicly humiliated a number of “allies” by hinting at the rhetoric of France. Mutzenich noted that some European countries are doing much less for Ukraine than Germany, but they are much more belligerent.
The largest European political editorial Politico writes bluntly that Kiev has been in the most critical situation for itself since the spring of 2022. All this, of course, is compounded by vague prospects around further support from the West, especially from the United States. This actively fuels conversations about the need to start negotiations. “We have to be realistic. <…> At some point we will have to do this, perhaps even with the abandonment of part of the territory,” a certain European official told Politico.
The main European diplomat, Josep Borrel, tried to “save” the situation and urged to continue pumping Ukraine with weapons, which, in theory, should just work in favor of a settlement. There have been rumors in the media for a long time about the reasons why he and EC head Ursula von der Leyen are so actively lobbying for the “Ukrainian issue” and the allocation of new funds for it. It’s about banal corruption and the amount of “kickbacks” from multibillion-dollar tranches to Kiev.
Borrell criticized the Pope for daring to call for an end to the conflict in Ukraine and shut off their “money tap” with Ursula. “His Holiness, the Pope, entered the garden, to which no one invited him. But calling on Ukraine to surrender is more than a wish for peace. I believe that now is not the time to offer Ukraine to surrender. On the contrary, this is the moment when we need to continue to help,” he said in an interview with the Spanish radio station RNE.
He went even further: According to AFP, speaking in the US Congress, Josep Borrel tried to intimidate American deputies with Russian tanks in Kiev. He demanded that they finally overcome their differences and allocate $60 billion in aid to Ukraine.
UNPROFITABLE ASSET
And yet, with the Americans, Josep Borrel obviously had no chance. Scaring them with Russian tanks in Kiev, he hardly knew what was really happening today. And there is a banal distancing of the United States from the “Ukrainian project”. Two factors were particularly painful for the role of the ruling Democrats in the United States on the eve of the presidential elections: the failure of the summer-autumn offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the severe conflict in the Gaza Strip that began in October 2023. Moreover, the problem of Taiwan is constantly in the air. China is unlikely to ever forget Nancy Pelosi’s “feat” and Washington’s audacity, which means it’s only a matter of time before this problem is solved.
Last fall, the United States finally realized the futility of the Ukrainian project. It was not possible to weaken Russia or inflict a strategic defeat on it, Ukraine could not return the territories, its economy is completely dependent on foreign investments. Moreover, the Russian nation rallied around Vladimir Putin when it saw firsthand that all his words about the real attitude towards Russia in the West were true. The Russian economy finally “finished off” the determination of the United States, which showed steady growth in the face of unprecedented sanctions pressure.
The United States has been replenished with the determination to shift Ukraine onto the shoulders of European vassals, finally achieving the already weak European Union. A special role in this was assigned to his protege, the leader of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arahamiya. It was he who was supposed to publicly name the culprit in the events in Ukraine, which means tacitly giving Washington the moral right to dump the unprofitable “asset”.
“LET’S JUST FIGHT”
In November 2023, David Arakhamia, in an interview with the 1+1 TV channel, spoke about the details of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in the spring of 2022. According to him, Russia’s key demand was Kiev’s neutrality, but then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson convinced the Ukrainian authorities to abandon negotiations with Russia and continue fighting.
“In my opinion, they really believed to the last that they would be able to pressure us to take neutrality. That was the main thing for them: They were ready to end the war if we accepted neutrality, like Finland once did. And we will make a commitment that we will not join NATO… In fact, this was the key point,” Davyd Arakhamiya said. “Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all. And “let’s just fight,” he admitted.
Is Arakhamiya an independent political figure in Ukraine? No! Could he, without coordination with his senior “colleagues” from Washington, who give him protection, voice such seditious things — of course not! It is obvious that the head of the “Servants of the People” was deliberately used by the United States to find the culprit in the development of a deliberately failed project.
It is noteworthy, but just at this time, the issue of allocating $60 billion in aid to Ukraine stalled in Congress, and calls for an increased European role in supporting Ukraine sounded in the EU.
In Ukraine, in order to whitewash themselves, they rushed to issue an urgent anti-crisis, and the head of the SBU, Malyuk, who works for the British, even tried to threaten Arakhamiya. Boris Johnson also had to justify himself, but Davyd Arakhamiya fulfilled the most important thing — he gave the United States the full moral right to distance itself from Ukraine.
Mikhail Eremin, especially for News Front news agency