Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Wednesday that the West was tired of the war in Ukraine. “We have reached a point of exhaustion,” she said at a meeting of the Baltic Sea Council in Kristiansand, Norway.
She cited the rise in energy and food prices as the reason for this fatigue and went on to reiterate that this is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants with the conflict that began three months ago. “That’s why it’s important to support Ukraine,” she said.
The minister eventually compromised, but reinforced an argument that has gained traction in the West about the conflict’s global implications. At the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Kyiv should cede territory occupied by Putin and declare itself neutral.
The German position could become even more drastic if the report by the editorinchief for diplomatic affairs of the British newspaper The Guardian, according to which Prime Minister Olaf Scholz said in a conversation with journalists that he did not believe in a victory for Ukraine and that his country would support Kyiv until Putin announces the achievement of his goals. Scholz is in Africa, the Federal Chancellery has neither confirmed nor denied the statement.
war in Ukraine
The perception that Moscow is in an advantageous position stems from the fighting in Severodonestk and mounting calls in Kyiv over the situation in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass, which has been the scene of a civil war since 2014. The city is crucial for Ukraine’s takeover of the Lugansk region and hence the positioning of the Russians in the advance towards the remaining territory of Donetsk under Ukrainian control. The two provinces form the Donbass.
If the Russian is successful, he will not have overthrown the government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as he clumsily tried to do with the war’s first assault with complex and inadequate forces, but he will be able to win an important victory: the Ukraine is basically thrown off its intention to join NATO, and Donbass will be linked to Crimea, annexed by Putinheld territory in the south in 2014 and centered on Kherson.
Zelenskyy, of course, rejects this hypothesis and says he wants to meet with Putin to talk about peace if the Russians call off the war and withdraw. That’s not an option for the beleaguered Kremlin boss, because at this point it’s almost tantamount to an abdication. Moreover, after more failures than victories, Moscow is moving forward in its declared initiative to conquer Donbass.
Berlin can thus also refer to a golden exit bridge in the Russian President’s world siege, to use the image of the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu in the classic “The Art of War” (4th century BC).
Of course, this should not be read so unanimously. Alongside Ukraine, more assertive NATO members like the US, Britain and Putinafraid Eastern European countries will highlight the fact that Germany is ultimately unwilling to associate itself with increasing sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons Berlin has always depended on gas and oil from Moscow and therefore built great partnerships in the industry.
So far, with the Americans on the front lines, NATO has supported Ukraine’s war effort, but always within limits it deems safe to avoid the provocation of World War III. Red lines pointed out by Russia were pushed again and again, but that didn’t satisfy Kyiv.
Instead of this. The country’s chancellor, Dmitro Kuleba, was received in Davos on Wednesday and sharply criticized the Western military alliance, as he and his boss had already done. “NATO as an alliance, as an institution, is totally on the fringes and doing literally nothing. I’m sorry to say that,” he said.
He points to the more reserved members of the alliance, such as Germany itself, but fails to mention in his speech that two new countries, Sweden and Finland, could end the crisis as new members of the club.
Zelensky followed suit and in his daily speech criticized Kissinger and the European countries without naming names. “No matter what Russia does, some say: Let’s take their interests into account.”
Be that as it may, Kuleba returned to praise the European Union, which effectively mirrors NATO in its members. The bloc, which followed the US in imposing tough sanctions on Putin, made “revolutionary decisions” that it did not expect. Ukraine’s foreign minister also called Russia’s offer to open a humanitarian sea corridor in the Black Sea, allowing Ukraine to export its grain containing an estimated 20 million tons of wheat, one of the world’s largest stockpiles as blackmail. Odessa is threatening regions like North Africa with famine.
After all, the Kremlin made the proposal in exchange for some of the sanctions it is set to lift. The foreign minister’s complaints add to those of Zelenskyy himself and his government, which say it is having trouble getting arms from the West, whose camps are being attacked by the Russians. The President has already said that the situation in the east of the country is “hell”.
Meanwhile, Putin is consolidating Russification of areas already under his control in the south. It extended the simplified procedure for obtaining a Russian passport to residents of the Kherson and Zaporiya provinces, which are part of the DonbassCrimea bridge. He did the same in the selfproclaimed rebel republics of Donbass, which numbered 800,000 Russian citizens out of a population of 4 million before the war.