Ukraine, Kyiv, and a menacing ultimatum for Ukraine could not be worse.
As civilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia hear new, harrowing notes in their almost nightly cannonade, the sound of heavy gliding bombs, Russian troops, drones, and fog-generating robots have slammed the southeast of the front line.
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As the sun sets at 4 p.m. and the night temperatures drop below freezing, Russian shelling continues to destroy Ukraine’s transmission and power infrastructure, causing hours-long blackouts.
Following overnight Russian attacks in Kyiv, at least six people were killed, and Ukraine was in a state of mourning again on Tuesday. At least three people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the southern Rostov region in Russia.
Trump’s strategy, which favors Russia’s involvement in the war, is a bitter reality check and a squandered opportunity, in the eyes of some Ukrainian service members.
Bohdan, a Ukrainian drone operator on leave from the eastern front, told Al Jazeera that the collective West’s “helplessness and cynicism are endless.”
He said, “They kept withholding military aid, couldn’t agree on how to respond, and we kept paying for their indecisiveness with our blood, the blood of our children,” while keeping his last name under wraps, as per rules of the wartime.
He maintains some optimism, stating that Moscow’s potential is limitless.
They seized 1% of our territory three years ago, and it resulted in a million soldiers being killed or wounded, according to Bohdan.
Russian forces withdrew from areas in the east and south of Kyiv, northern Ukraine, and all of its regions in the wake of overwhelming successes in early 2022.
Every town they seized since then is said to have cost them tens of thousands of service members.
He sarcastically joked, “At that rate, they will have wasted every Russian man, and it still won’t conquer us.”
The US “wants us to capitulate.”
Ukraine has been roiled by a corruption scandal involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s closest allies, who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket.
Ukrainians were gutted and betrayed when Trump threatened to freeze military aid if Kyiv refused to sign it by Thursday, November 27 when he offered a 28-point peace plan.
“Everything is against us, everyone is against us.” And now, the White House’s halfwit wants us to capitulate. Yevheniya Demyanenko, 42, a seller of seeds, pots, and fertilizer in southeast Kyiv, said, “Again.”
She questioned Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been huddled in a warm overcoat, about having “something so disgustingly compromising on]Trump] that he betrays everything that America is built on as a gasoline-fueled power generator rattled outside her shop while a pale lamp, a small heater, and electronic devices.
Later, Washington claimed that the deadline was “fluid.”
According to a Kyiv-based analyst, Trump’s plan resembles the Kremlin’s wish list, with few security guarantees for Ukraine and short, vague clauses.
In the event that Ukraine “attacks” Russia, Kyiv forfeits its undefined security guarantees. Another requirement that Ukraine make clear in its constitution is that it disband NATO.
The plan, according to a former Russian diplomat, is a triple success in terms of Ukraine, Washington’s diplomacy, and Europe’s entire security structure.
Boris Bondarev, who resigned from his position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in protest of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, claimed that the plan “restricts Ukraine’s sovereignty, offers no credible security guarantees, and signals Washington’s willingness to give ground to the Kremlin.”
Putin sees it as a case in point for the US’s weakness and as a chance for NATO to reform its entire security structure, he said.
The proposal’s “victim and the aggressor were equal,” said Mariia Kucherenko, an expert with the Come Back Alive think tank.
Has Ukraine ever attacked Russia? Or do they refer to “efforts to reclaim occupied Ukrainian territories”?
She also criticized a provision that stated that Washington would “de facto recognize” the Donbass and the southeast of Luhansk and Donetsk as being Russian.
About three-quarters of Donetsk and the majority of Luhansk are controlled by Russia, and Kyiv wants to cede the rest, including fortified fortifications and commanding heights that might lessen Moscow’s influence in Ukraine.
Moscow agrees to halt northbound isolation and freeze the southern front-line.
Kucherenko claimed that the plan does not go into great detail about the safeguards that underlie Russia’s “de jure” control.
She also criticizes a laconic provision that doesn’t specify “after what” for the phrase “holding elections in 100 days” in Ukraine?
If there are sanctions for violating a ceasefire, and who would oversee and enforce them? She pondered.
There won’t be a ceasefire, according to Kucherenko, “until there are… answers to these questions.”
She added that any elections held after a ceasefire rather than a full peace settlement run a high security risk for the electorate.
Another query is looming. Who will secure the votes of Ukrainian refugees living abroad or in occupied regions?
Most of the people in occupied areas were forced to obtain Russian passports by Moscow-appointed “authorities,” who would then compel them to resign from their jobs and provide them with medical and legal services.
Kucherenko remarked, “There are many questions and there isn’t a single answer.”
The plan, according to her, resembles a “classic” intelligence operation because it publishes Moscow’s wish list without taking into account Kyiv’s or the European Union’s positions, she continued.
The publication was based on Ukraine’s political and energy crises and the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, which erupted on November 21, 2013, and established a pro-Western government.
With all of this in mind, Kucherenko said Ukrainian diplomats “need to keep our heads cool, communicate with European partners, and define the Ukrainian position firmly, calmly, and consequently.”
Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, stated on Monday that Kyiv would not consent to granting the country’s 600, 000-strong military vetoes and that it would not accept its recognition of its occupation.
Any peace, according to Kyiv, should be “dignified” and “lasting,” and the plan needs to be updated and refined.
Meanwhile, leaders in Europe predicted that the strategy should include a ceasefire right away, allow Kyiv to eventually join NATO, and use frozen Russian funds to bring Ukraine back.
The response to the US proposal from both the Ukrainian and European countries was described as “a pure ” leave-us-alone ” declaration, ” said researcher Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University.
The EU has a chance to accept five to seven million Ukrainian refugees from frozen cities, he said, and Russia has good chances of reaching the outskirts of Zaporizhia and Dnipro by spring.
Source: Aljazeera
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