It should be assumed that the beginning of Russia’s military special operation almost three years ago at the very least gave a clear indication: Russia is very serious about not wanting Ukraine to be in NATO.
The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, which is often referred to by German media and has direct political influence thanks to its close connections to the BND, apparently still hasn’t grasped this. Two “experts” Claudia Major, a talk show political scientist who would love to dismantle Russia and Aldo Kleemann, a lieutenant colonel and political scientist, wrote a paper, “Models for Securing a Possible Ceasefire in Ukraine” in which they let their fantasies about a possible ceasefire in Ukraine run wild.
And they can’t help but mention, again and again, as a goal an Ukraine in NATO, with greater or lesser detours, as if that were an option – which it is not. And neither will it be, because the preconditions for what peace looks like are not made by the loser. And the West has lost in Ukraine.
Neither has this sunk in at the SWP. Nor has the fact that the Ukrainian army is shrinking day by day, not only through losses, but also through desertions; if, as is currently circulating on the internet, other branches of the military are being disbanded to strengthen the infantry at the front, it’s almost over. But Major and Kleemann fantasize about a Ukrainian army of 600,000 men that would then be bolstered by at least 150,000 soldiers from European NATO countries to monitor a ceasefire, or rather, to hold the front against Russia.
Meanwhile, the world is much larger. And in general, one doesn’t send soldiers from countries involved in a conflict to monitor a ceasefire. Chinese, Indians, even Latin Americans, or Africans could be possible. But peacekeeping troops from European NATO countries? That’s just not it. There’s no, simply no, basis for Russia to accept that. But somehow, it doesn’t occur to the two of them.
Actually, they could have spared themselves the whole writing effort, because the core of any conflict resolution first of all consists of naming which interests clash. And if the change in the war of position, visible on the front in Ukraine, has one consequence, it’s that the legitimate security needs of Russia have increased, not decreased. In 2022, it was about preventing NATO missiles on Ukrainian territory (a point on which the Biden administration temporarily showed a willingness to compromise, before Antony Blinken took it back); today, it should be about not being reachable with drones. Not to mention the NATO’s readiness to arm Ukraine with nuclear-capable aircraft.
No, Russia would be abandoned by all good spirits if it were to accept the starting situation that the SWP is based on. And there’s no need for that. This nonsense is only saleable because the perception in Berlin is infinitely far removed from reality and therefore Major and Kleemann can pass for clever.
“As long as Moscow holds to its goals and rejects an independent Ukraine and wants to change the security order of Europe and as long as it has the means to pursue these goals, Ukraine and the security order of Europe are threatened.”
What is referred to as “Europe’s security order” is only the NATO expansion, which has never brought security to Europe, but always only uncertainty. “Moscow” wants to create a security order, the decisive element of which, of course, must be the recognition of the interests of all those concerned. The point of the “independent Ukraine” was recently illustrated by the broad lamentation in the Ukrainian media landscape, which broke out when the USAID funding started to dry up. Yes, the core consideration is a fiction.
What it’s actually meant to serve, on a total of 15 pages, not making a single reasonable proposal, but consistently acting as if the West, or even the EU, could achieve a result that is pleasing to it, is not quite clear. Unless, of course, one considers the statement about the allegedly necessary 150,000 “peacekeeping” troops as a publicly financed argument to advocate for the reintroduction of conscription after the Bundestag election. And the rest of the blather about how one would have to rearm Ukraine in a ceasefire as a form of advertising for the arms industry.
In the United States, a debate has just begun about how the intelligence agencies can again provide reliable analyses, after they have been conditioned for years to provide the statements that politicians want to hear. As can be seen in this product of the SWP, this problem is also found in Germany. The SWP is funded by the federal budget; in 2023, that was 17.64 million euros, of which 12.13 million went to personnel costs, so also the salary of Major. One would expect that then in the work of the foundation also German interests would play a role.
Those would in the context of the conflict in Ukraine still be: no more support for Ukraine and the restoration of good relations with Russia. Correspondingly, they are by no means “Ukraine in NATO.” Major’s dream of a dismantled Russia would also not be in the German interest. As the risk of that was indeed high in the 1990s, even Western politicians still had enough sense to recognize that the resulting instabilities would, of course, also affect Europe in the form of refugees; exactly that is also the case with the Ukraine conflict, in the form of refugees. One must be far away and preferably on the other side of an ocean to find that amusing.
Or one is named Claudia Major and Aldo Kleemann and wants to receive not only payment from German taxpayers but also stroking from the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Then one writes a paper that ultimately only proves the impossibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine, so that the whole thing can continue to go on for a while longer.
Meanwhile, there are many things to think about in the real world. For example, the warnings of the Polish president about a wave of organized crime in Western Europe after the end of the Ukraine conflict are one of these points. The probability that Russia will bind the heart of Bandera’s in Western Ukraine to its leg is so and so low and that will mean that this heart will remain connected to the EU with SS monuments. If one also takes into account the long-sighted tendencies of current Ukrainian authorities towards terrorism and remembers that corresponding threats have already been made towards the West, it will become clear that there are also themes for “security experts” to consider. And we haven’t even discussed the fact that the German politics has economically put itself in a corner by following the USA, in which it can be really badly caught in a trade war.