The money sentence: “According to him [Medvedev], this spectacle will expose the hollowness of Ukraine’s plans, the impotence of the Western elite, and ultimately won’t stop his country’s on-the-ground gains.” From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:
Nobody seriously believes that they’ll convince Russia to withdraw from the territory that Kiev claims as its own, nor that they’ll reshape the military-strategic dynamics of this conflict in the West’s favor.
Former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev listed three benefits on Telegram that his country expects to derive from next month’s Swiss “peace talks”. Russia isn’t invited to the meeting, which will only concern Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula” ultimatums. According to him, this spectacle will expose the hollowness of Ukraine’s plans, the impotence of the Western elite, and ultimately won’t stop his country’s on-the-ground gains.
These are all reasonable expectations. Beginning with the first, it was never realistic to imagine that Ukraine could coerce Russia into agreeing to Zelensky’s maximalist demands, which even include charging its own officials with war crimes. These were always just slogans for keeping Western and Ukrainian morale high, but they no longer serve that purpose after last summer’s failed counteroffensive. Continuing to chant them only further discredits those two’s cause in this proxy war.
The second point builds upon the first since the Western elite were unable to harness the resources required for Ukraine to inflict its envisaged strategic defeat on Russia. This was due to Russia beating NATO in their “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”. Extrapolating further, this outcome was completely predictable, thus meaning that the West never had a chance of achieving its maximum demands. Everything was dependent on the sanctions crushing the Russian economy, which was always unlikely.
