Making demands that are impossible to fulfill, echoing from every corner that their goals will be achieved, swelling up like a frog ready to swallow an elephant if the primary causes are not addressed and 50% of the global GDP does not flee from 2% within the borders of 1997.
This strategy has a single goal: to get into the minds of their opponents.
Moscow will attempt to advance until they are exhausted, and when they can no longer, you’ll be glad to offer them a halt to war instead of a counter-offensive on them weakened. But to prevent you from cornering them in negotiations, the Kremlin has already started negotiations now. The talks haven’t started yet. But the Kremlin is already preparing favorable conditions. It’s exhausting you, waiting for negotiators on the other side to be bound by the election cycle and invest their reputation in its outcome, unwilling for the talks to fail and willing to accept any result as a victory.
Then, at the real negotiations, Putin will manipulate for three days, pretending Russia will never give up the naive and insane demands for “NATO to 1997,” never, never, Never. It will create an impression of unyieldingness.
The negotiator on the other side of the table will despair that the talks may collapse.
And on the 62nd hour of negotiations, the Kremlin will suddenly signal that it is ready, so be it, to drop some of the craziest demands. At this moment, Trump, Zelensky, or Macron will perk up, jumping to the ceiling. Hooray, there seems to be cautious progress.
And Moscow will end up with half the kingdom. Which will still be too much considering the failure of all their goals.
* * *
As soon as you start discussing demands like “give up Sloviansk and Russian as a second state language,” you’ve taken the bait.
The only correct position with the rashists: “we will take everything from you,” and “you will kiss our boots, as you loved to do in the Golden Horde.”
Do not confuse this with: “you will get nothing” (because this is too weak and passive a position in dealings with the Kremlin).
And constantly remind about reparations, a Nuremberg for Putin, the 2002 treaty on Ukrainian-Russian borders, and the need to eliminate the root causes of war, namely: demanding reforms of this quagmire, which would bring it from a wild and aggressive state to a civilized one.
This is how the Germans defeated the Russian Empire in World War I. The orcs constantly boast that they always defeated Europe. But no. Germany crushed them. Just a hundred years ago. While fighting on three fronts against two other major adversaries. And the USA achieved the collapse of the Soviet Union under Reagan, when he did not negotiate with Moscow, but negotiated about them without them — with the Saudis for low oil prices. This laid the Soviet Union on its side. And disarmament was agreed upon later with arms dealer Bout, who bought them from generals for beads and mirrors right at Russian storages.
* * *
Putin deceives his own followers by claiming that a strategy of terror can ensure victory. He feeds this to the gullible as a sign of “progress” towards this victory.
However, a strategy of terror very rarely secured victory even against long-established, peaceful societies that have achieved prosperity. Against Ukraine, a country accustomed to wars with strong opponents and even large-scale losses, harassment with drones and ballistics leads more to adaptation than to a widespread willingness to surrender. To a willingness to negotiate instead of fighting to a complete victory – okay. But negotiating on terms of defeat – absolutely not.
Moreover, Ukraine’s military-technical and financial support is entirely unreachable. Putin’s terror-driven strategy does not affect the EU and the USA at all. They can support such a war for 50 years. Today, Trump retreats, and tomorrow Trump is replaced, and the USA again provides 20-30 billion to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. And so the cycle continues for decades until Russia collapses.
* * *
The problem is that we have an inept president.
He is unable to develop a strategy and communicate it to our allies. Therefore, allies, even those supportive of us, discuss Putin’s nonsense.
The President of Ukraine was once told: “Vova, give it up, the borders of 1991 won’t be restored” – and he stopped mentioning this topic.
But Putin does not stop repeating his inadequate nonsense just because someone objected. He repeats it again. And then another 10 times. Gradually, this nonsense infiltrates other people’s minds.
Our competence ceiling – was a show: peace forums. But now even peace forums are forgotten, and allies are confused due to the absence of a common strategy that Ukraine should be proposing.
Our current strategy with allies – is to “not provoke Trump” while he tries to get a bribe from Putin, like once beleaguered and defeated Peter the Great bartered with the Ottoman vizier.
The strategy in the first year of the invasion: give us rockets – we’ll bomb 200 km of Russia.
The strategy in 2025 and now is more adequate: give us money – we will build these unfortunate rockets ourselves and bomb 2000 km of Russia.
But time for these shifts has been lost. Moscow has moved three steps ahead because Putin acted earlier. He invested earlier in deploying ballistics, earlier copied and scaled our idea of cheap small cruise missiles, earlier bought from allies and scaled cheap drones to terrorize neighbors.
He moved to a strategy of complete victory while others were dreaming of deals and 2-3 weeks.
Consequently, Putin not only spouts inadequate nonsense but also maintains the initiative by ensuring a regularity of terrorist acts.
And we either canceled the production of Sapsans in 2019, then resumed it in 2022, and then waited until they were bombed. Only in the last year did we manage to catch up a bit with drones and only in strikes on oil refineries.
Our propaganda is virtually absent. Ukraine’s military propaganda has been replaced by the PR of the first person. But we haven’t overwhelmed the world with our films and series about how inventive and smart Ukrainians rescued our hero with amputated feet from the frontline… on a drone. The survival genre about a character who finds themselves in some trouble is a goldmine. A memoir about such an event is instantly snapped up by Hollywood and filmed. Because viewers fervently support such a hero and cannot take their eyes off the screen.
But we don’t even use what’s under our feet. Because Zelensky reserved the writer Zhidkov and then let him go to live in the USA. And instead of sending writers and directors to the troops to gather material for the best screenplay in the world, Tyszhnevs was embezzled by friends. That’s where our cinema is now. Lying in their own bank accounts.
Zelensky’s strategy is fragmented: negotiating for help with those who are already ready to be friendly with us (and pay). But the strategy of “not going against the current” is a waste of time. Due to the loss of time, the loss of initiative, and the loss of faith in our victory, the number of people willing to help us is decreasing. And the number of those ready to accept Putin’s statements about purchasing “peace” with our territories is growing.
Zelensky does not suggest how to reverse the trend.
Our troops disrupted the enemy’s strategic offensive operation to capture the entire Donbas a year ago. This didn’t happen during Vivaldi; Vivaldi was just a counterattack. The operation was thwarted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine when they destroyed the accumulated offensive troops of the enemy. The Armed Forces of Ukraine forced the enemy to be content with the insignificant results of three years of offensive.
And for a year now, we should have been discussing with the whole world that Putin’s military card is played out. The stalemate on the front is advantageous to us. That our strikes deep into Russia have begun and will not stop. That their elites will lose everything, their sheep-shearing lands, if they don’t agree on the 1991 borders now.
And the price for preserving Russia is still small: one trillion US dollars. We are even ready to take them in oil and gas fields – those already connected to our pipelines (along with the transit infrastructure across Russian territory).
If not, it will get worse for Russia. Everything will become more expensive. And you saw the result yourself in 1991.
And repeat this regularly.
Here are your points, here are ours. Let’s meet in the middle.
Collage: TSN
