After hundreds of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, American officials have reportedly begun quietly pressuring Ukraine to open peace talks with Russia amid growing concerns about dwindling manpower.
Despite Moscow’s overwhelming military advantage over Kyiv in terms of manpower being apparent from the outset of the war — with Russia having three times the population to draw on than Ukraine — officials in the United States are apparently finally realising the impossibility of the former Soviet state defeating Putin’s forces.
According to a report from NBC News, citing an unnamed current senior U.S. official and a former senior U.S. official familiar with the matter, backdoor discussions took place last month to pressure the Zelensky government to enter into peace talks with the Kremlin amid growing concerns from President Biden about Ukraine’s ability to maintain an effective fighting force.
“Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” one U.S. official told the news outlet, explaining that even if the Biden administration could supply Ukraine with additional weaponry, “if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good”. It has been estimated that Ukraine has suffered upwards of 200,000 casualties since the invasion last year.
Nevertheless, President Biden is continuing to push Congress to approve an additional $61.4 billion in aid to Ukraine on top of the $113 billion already committed. The White House has attempted to link the funding for Ukraine to emergency funding for Israel to pressure some Republicans to drop their opposition to the latest funding package to Kyiv.
The once-heralded Ukrainian “Spring counteroffensive” largely failed to deliver on pushing Russian forces back from their heavily entrenched positions in the East of the country and winter weather conditions will make further fighting difficult. American military officials have therefore reportedly said that Kyiv only has until the end of the year to make gains before serious demands about entering peace talks with Moscow will be made of Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president has maintained that he would not even entertain peace talks with Putin except on the condition that his country’s 1991 borders are re-established, meaning that Russia would have to vacate its positions in the Donbas as well as from Crimea, which Putin illegally annexed in 2014.
This would likely be a non-starter for the Kremlin given the strategic importance of Crimea being home to one of the only warm water ports under Russian control and therefore critical to international shipping of resources, notably exports of the oil and natural gas that serve as the backbone of the Russian economy.
However, should the United States threaten to cut off the billions being sent to prop up the proxy war effort against Russia, it would likely force Zelensky to come to the table. Whether the Ukrainian leader would accept ceding land to Putin, or indeed perhaps more critically give up on aspirations of joining the American-led NATO military alliance — another red line for Moscow — remains to be seen. So far, the White House has also refused to confirm that it has pressed for peace talks.
The reported inclination of the Biden White House to finally push for a peace process comes after over a year and a half of intense fighting that not only devastated large swaths of infrastructure and cities across the country but has also seen staggering numbers of dead on both sides of the conflict. In August, U.S. officials put the casualty total for both forces at nearly half a million. According to NBC, some U.S. military officials have begun to use the phrase “stalemate” to describe the war.
Critics have questioned why President Biden refused to try to come to a peace deal last year, given that the billions of American taxpayer dollars sent to the country since last February have not been able to stop Russia from taking control over large areas of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Zelensky’s government has come under increasing scrutiny over growing corruption scandals, with an unnamed senior Ukrainian official telling Time magazine last week that people are “stealing like there’s no tomorrow“, leading to Republicans in Washington questioning sending more money into the country.
Much of the loss of life and the treasure already spent by Western allies may have been preventable, with former German Chancellor and confidant of Vladimir Putin Gerhard Schröder revealing last month that Kyiv was pressured by the Biden administration to walk away from early peace talks with Moscow last year.
“The only people who could settle the war against Ukraine are the Americans,” the former chancellor said. “At the peace negotiations in March 2022 in Istanbul… the Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”
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