Ukraine Can Achieve Its Goals Only if Russia Suffers a Strategic Defeat, Something West isn't Ready to Inflict, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 11 – The possibilities of ending the war in Ukraine by negotiation can be understood only if one is clear about the declared and undeclared but nonetheless real goals of the three parties most immediately involved -- Russia, Ukraine and the United States, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
    The London-based Russian analyst says that the Russia’s declared goals are “the defense of ‘the Russian world’ and ‘the liberation’ of Eastern Ukraine.” Its undeclared ones  are  “the infliction of a non-strategic defeat on the West in Ukraine o as to change the balance of relations between Russia and the West” (echofm.online/opinions/czeli-vojny-i-graniczy-kompromissov).
    Among these desired changes is the establishment of red lines that the West cannot violate regarding countries within what Russia insists is within its zone. “For the Kremlin,” Pastukhov continues, “the very fact of the recognition of ‘red lines’ [by the West] means more than how and where they will be drawn.”
    Ukraine’s declared goals are very different. They include the reversal of Russian occupied and annexed territories and the restoration of Kyiv’s control up to the borders of 1991. Its undeclared goals is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, one that would eliminate Russia as a threat in the future.
    In both cases there are problems, Pastukhov suggests. Ukraine’s declared goals aren’t achievable; and even if Kyiv somehow did manage to do so, such an achievement by itself
not only would not lead to an automatic end of the war but more likely will lead instead to its escalation.”
    And that explains why Ukraine has an undeclared goal of promoting the disintegration of the Russian Federation or at least a revolution in Moscow. Only one or both of these things would give Ukraine the victory it really seeks; but unfortunately, neither Ukraine nor the current position of the West makes such an achievement likely.
    As for the West and above all the US, their declared goals are “helping Ukraine achieve its own declared goals” of recovering territory; but these allies of Ukraine are not interested in inflicting on Ukraine more than a non-strategic defeat lest that destabilize the international system even more than now.
    Despite what some in Moscow say, the West does not have the strategic defeat of Russia as a goal and did not provoke the war in Ukraine to achieve that. But at the same time, the West “did not take any particular measures to prevent this conflict” by using its influence in Moscow or Kyiv.
    “In a certain sense,” Pastukhov continues, “Zelensky is right that no effective pressure was put on Russia before Moscow began to bomb Kyiv. But at the same time, Putin is partially right as well: Kyiv did not have ‘the rules of the game’ explained to it; and as a result, the story of the Budapest memorandum was repeated.”
    “The West was ready to help Ukraine with arms and money but not prepared to fight itself and doesn’t intend to do so in the future.” Had that been clear to all parties, the war might not have taken place but Ukraine would have had to accept a status it does not want, the London-based Russian analyst says.
    What does all this mean? “The goals of the war for Russia and for Ukraine are antagonistic but for Russia and the West, they are not antagonistic.” And that in turn means that “the goals of Ukraine and the West in this war correspond only at a superficial level,” Pastukhov says.
    “Ukraine is seeking the strategic defeat of Russia at a time when the West has put as its goal only its non-strategic defeat.” And that more than the subjective stances of Trump, Zelensky or Putin is going to play a key role in any negotiations or in the future course of the war, Pastukhov argues.
    Specifically, “any negotiation process in which Putin appears as a subject and not as an object … will mean the achievement by Putin of his undeclared goals of the war, the return of subjectiveness to Russia, and the non-achievement by Ukraine of its undeclared goals of the de-subjectivization of Russia.”
    And there thus exists “a serious risk that the West, the goals of which in this war are ambivalent will make a deal with Putin behind the back of Ukraine.” The question only is how long Zelensky and Ukraine will “permit themselves to ignore this risk” because it is for better or worse very real.