“Ukraine fatigue is a real thing”

A few days after the war started on February 24, the first negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place on March 3 of this year. On March 29, the first ceasefire agreement – ​​drafted by Ukraine – was presented, and at the end of April Russia followed suit with its own draft. However, no agreement was reached. In early October, further talks with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin (70) were barred by Ukraine due to the phased “annexations” of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhya.

As the “Washington Post” now reports, the United States now wants to get the negotiations back on track. According to anonymous sources familiar with the talks, the Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to show their willingness to negotiate with Russia and to give up their public refusal to participate in peace talks unless Putin is removed from power. put.

Since the summer there has been radio silence between the warring parties

Due to radio silence between the two warring sides since the summer, fierce fighting has almost completely replaced peace talks. Although warlord Putin repeatedly emphasizes his willingness to negotiate with Zelensky, Zelensky does not take it that way. But if you want to negotiate, don’t let people die in the “meat grinder,” Zelensky said Friday evening in his daily video message distributed from Kiev. “We are now ready for a peace, a fair and just peace. We have often explained the formula for this,” says Zelenski. Above all, under UN law, Russia must respect Ukraine’s borders and its territorial integrity.

However, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak (50) recently reiterated on Twitter that a diplomatic solution to the conflict is out of the question for Ukraine. “When someone talks about ‘diplomatic agreement’, they are actually suggesting that Ukraine fulfills Russia’s ultimatum: ‘cede territory, concede defeat’. The Ukrainian people will never agree to this. So one request: stop offering a surrender to Ukraine, disguised as ‘diplomacy’.”

According to the Washington Post, US officials do not want Ukraine to feel compelled to find a diplomatic solution. Rather, it is a calculated attempt to gain the support of other countries for the Kiev government, which has feared war for years. “For some of our partners, fatigue is a real problem in Ukraine,” a US official told the newspaper. Especially on the African continent, in Latin America, but also in parts of Europe, there are concerns about the availability and cost of food and fuel.

Support for Ukraine is also declining in the US

The United States is one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine with $18.2 billion. According to a poll published by The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 3, 48 percent of Republicans believed the United States would do “too much” in support of Ukraine, up from 6 percent in March. As the country struggles with rising inflation, President Joe Biden (79) and his party are facing headwinds ahead of the November 8 midterm elections. A certain fatigue with Ukraine is also spreading in the US.

A change of power in the House of Commons even threatens to end military aid to Ukraine. “The Democrats have ripped our borders wide open,” Republican MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, 48, said at a Trump rally in Iowa. “But the only border they care about is Ukraine,” Greene told the crowd. “Not America’s southern border. Among Republicans, not a cent goes to Ukraine. Our country comes first.”

The wish is there, but a solution is still far away

However, experts do not assume that Ukraine and Russia will sit down at a common table in the near future. The ideas about peace are too different. “If Russia wins, we will experience a period of chaos: tyranny flourishes, wars, genocides, nuclear races,” Podolyak tweeted Friday. “All ‘concessions’ to Putin today – a deal with the devil.”

Ukrainian officials also point out that a 2015 peace deal in the eastern Donbass region — where Moscow supported a separatist campaign — only gave Russia time before Putin launched his large-scale invasion this year. They question why a new peace deal should be any different, arguing that the only way to prevent Russia from attacking further is to defeat its army on the battlefield.

Russia, which is in a bad position on the battlefield, has proposed negotiations but has shown in the past that it will accept nothing more than Ukraine’s surrender. Just last month, he reiterated that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, arguing that Russia can be “the only real and serious guarantor of Ukraine’s sovereignty, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“Cynically, Russia and its Western supporters are holding an olive branch. Make no mistake: an aggressor cannot be a peacemaker,” Andriy Yermak, 50, head of Ukraine’s presidential government, wrote in an op-ed recently in the Washington Post has been published – further blurring hopes for peace talks.