De-escalation, not ceasefire, will be the best we can expect in the present?

 

The door to diplomacy is the main way forward for both sides. On Ukraine’s side to accept neutrality status coupled with international guarantees.

by Victor Cherubim

Russia and Ukraine negotiators have ended their first direct face to face talks in Istanbul yesterday 29 March 2022, after 35 days of incessant shelling of military targets and civilian properties all-round the eastern borders of Ukraine.

British sources who have continued to supply Ukraine with all forms of tactical weapons, now admit that President Vladimir Putin’s forces having continued to suffer heavy losses taking over the whole of Ukraine, have scaled back some of the military operations. British intelligence maintains Russia is struggling to sustain more than one significant “axis of advance”.

According to the Russians stated offensive focus all along was that their intrusion in Ukraine was a “special operation” and their move now is to “increase mutual trust” for face to face peace talks to continue”. It has announced it would drastically reduce combat areas both around Kyiv and Chernihiv, two areas where its troops have struggled to gain ground.

What happens in all wars?

We have seen in all wars, there is a beginning and an end, but the end is mostly dragged out for tactical reasons. We saw that in the Korean War, later in the Vietnam War, the Sino-Indian War Oct.Nov.1962 and the Yon Kippur War06 Oct.1973“hoping to win back territory lost to Israel in earlier wars”.This is nothing new?

The door to diplomacy is the main way forward for both sides. On Ukraine’s side to accept neutrality status coupled with international guarantees. On Russia’s side to, perhaps, regroup its war machine fully operational, which has always had a pretty fearsome reputation. 

Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has refused to lift sanctions based on a loose promise of ceasefire. The words that have become part of our war vocabulary are “maximum leverage”, “feeling of total war” against Russia in trade, in economy, in seizing properties, funds, blocking financial relations, and “distancing”. We became used to social distancing but now UK is distancing itself from President Joe Biden’s unwarranted and “dangerous” Putin comment.

What we do not know?

What we know about “what we don’t know”, is that any war is a tax on working people, a drag not only the enemy, but also on all innocent people. Accordingly, Russians are calculating if this cost is worth getting their borders extended?

Could you blame them for the West ostracising, stigmatizing Russia, over the years, removing them from the G7 years before any war and provoking this conflict? 

In the West, simultaneously, the cost of sanctions is slowly but steadily sinking in?

It is all well and good to seize a Russian Oligarch’s yacht in London, but who pays for its upkeep, its maintenance, its security, whilst in custody? The whole affair looks like a comedy?

The first yacht £38 million, “Phi” to be detained in UK waters hours before it was due to leave Canary Wharf, east London, by the so called “Anti-Kleptocracy Squad” of the National Crime Agency. Now that it’s being held, it won’t go anywhere? 

When you see what the war is doing to ordinary people’s lives, not only Russian and Ukrainian people, but people the world over, it is a shambles! 

Russian citizens in particular have been targeted by the West. The World has a duty to demand an end to this war and a reparation. With the end of restrictions for COVID-19, will it be back to normal if and when this war ends?

Of course, uncertainty and volatility can create opportunities for some, but that does not make the headlines?