Deliberations on the War in Ukraine: The U.S. Naval Embassies of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
During internal conversations about the war in Ukraine, America’s top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, has in recent weeks led a strong push to seek a diplomatic solution as fighting heads toward a winter lull.
The result is a growing debate inside the administration over whether Ukraine’s recent gains on the battlefield should spark a renewed effort to seek some sort of negotiated end to the fighting, according to officials.
Since Ukraine took back Kherson, Milley has been pushing for peace in the public. In comments at the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday, Milley praised the Ukrainian army for fighting Russia to a stalemate, but said that an outright military victory is out of reach.
While administration officials were not surprised by the comments, some were concerned that the administration was divided in the eyes of the Kremlin.
The internal debate comes as senior US officials – including Sullivan – have in recent weeks been urging Ukraine to signal that it is still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia, even after Zelensky signed a decree in early October ruling out negotiations with Putin.
In internal deliberations, officials said Milley has sought to make it clear that he is not urging a Ukrainian capitulation, but rather that he believes now is an optimal time to drive toward an end to the war before it drags into spring or beyond, leading to more death and destruction without changing the front lines.
That view is not generally held by the administration. One official explained that the State Department is on the opposite side of the pole from Milley. Military brass are more focused on diplomacy than the US diplomats because of that dynamic.
Milley’s position comes as the US military has dug deep into US weapons stockpiles to support the Ukrainians and is currently scouring the globe for materials to support Ukraine heading into winter – such as heaters and generators – which has raised concerns about how long this war can be sustained, officials said.
A US official said the US was trying to find weapons for the high-intensity battles in Ukraine and that they intended to buy 100,000 rounds from South Korean arms manufacturers. As part of the deal, the US will purchase 100,000 rounds of 155mm howitzer ammunition, which will then be transferred to Ukraine through the US.
The Case for Diplomacy: Joe Biden’s WNBA-Star Trade with Viktor Bout in Ukraine and a Trump-Russian War on Crime
State Department spokesperson Ned Price would not say Thursday whether the State Department agrees with Milley’s position. Instead, Price deflected to a position that US officials have often made in recent months: the US sides with Zelensky who has said that a diplomatic solution is needed.
Immediately, our engagement was taken over by the threat to Ukraine and Russia’s demand for guarantees from the United States and NATO. The Russians didn’t seem to have any intention of negotiating in good faith.
Comments by DeSantis and other Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has warned against a “blank check” to Kyiv, show that while Biden can promise the US is with Kyiv for “as long as it takes,” he cannot guarantee it. The United States may be in a better position than Ukraine in the election in four years.
Swapping an American jailed for a minor drugs offense in Russia for one of the world’s most notorious arms traffickers known as “The Merchant of Death” might seem like a lopsided deal that could fuel dangerous national security precedents.
But President Joe Biden’s decision to exchange WNBA star Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout goes beyond the exchange’s bottom line. It represented a humane resolution to a painful dilemma that came after tortuous talks with a Russian regime that treats people as geopolitical pawns every day. The Biden administration was able to demonstrate the gulf between its morality and that of the Russian president who is currently abusing Ukrainian civilians, because of his inhumanity.
But the tragic counterpoint to this diplomatic triumph – Biden’s failure to also secure the release of Paul Whelan, another American incarcerated in a Russian penal colony – underscored the unforgiving moral conundrum he faced. And it prompted top Republicans to charge that he had prioritized a basketball superstar over an ex-marine who benefited from a vocal political pressure campaign on Biden.
Saudi Arabia was part of the deal and helped to facilitate the release of the US citizens who were captured fighting in Ukraine earlier this year. Whether the kingdom, which has relations with both Moscow and Washington and is seeking to increase its global leadership role, might emerge as a mediator over Ukraine remains to be seen. The recent smoothing of US- Russia exchanges might cause Biden to change his mind about coming to the country earlier this year to greet its ruthless crown prince with a fistbump.
Ultimately, it’s impossible for there not to be a sour aftertaste when dealing with an adversary as inhumane as Putin. But it is the job of a president to weigh these competing dynamics within the context of America’s national goals and duty to its citizens.
The harsh truth for Whelan is that Russia refused every inducement the US could offer to include him in an exchange package, leaving Biden’s capacity to free him in short order in doubt.
CNN first reported exclusively in August that the Russians had requested that Krasikov be released along with Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who was serving a 25-year sentence in the US, in exchange for Whelan and Griner.
This adds another layer of complication for Biden as he seeks to get Whelan free, since it involves another government and would require German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to potentially agree to supersede his country’s own legal system. Whether the new German leader has the political capacity to do so is unclear, as is the kind of Russian concession Berlin might require.
A senior administration official said on Thursday evening that there is a recognition in the White House that the US needs to make available “something more, something different” from what they have offered to the Russians so far, CNN reported.
While Biden is being castigated by some political opponents in Washington for doing a bad deal, administration officials insisted that he got the best one on offer.
This was not a situation where we had to choose which American to bring home, that’s for sure. The senior administration official said that the choice was between bringing home a particular American or not.
Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, told CNN she thought Putin was never going to hand over Whelan and all along wanted to swap only Griner for Bout.
Putin told a lie that the invasion was necessary to de-Nazify Ukraine. He said that Russia was going to be attacked by Russia and Ukrainians were going to be engaged in a genocidal war against Russians.
She said that there was hope for Whelan because the exchange showed the Russians would make a deal if they thought it was in their interests.
A torrent of political anger erupted after the release of Kira, along with a backlash on social media, as conservatives questioned her patriotism.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was relieved Griner was free but raised questions about the wisdom of such exchanges and whether they could endanger other Americans.
“I think the challenge this points to is these regimes know this. This is the reason why Nicolas Maduro wanted to trade five Citgo executives for his nephews who are convicted drug traffickers.
The Iranians, Taliban, and Putin continue to take Americans hostage because of the concessions that we’ve made. When do we start to dictate the terms to the regimes?
Whelan’s family reacted with great dignity in welcoming Griner’s release, despite their devastation that their brother did not come home. Elizabeth Whelan says hostile foreign countries are using cases of hostages to stir dissent in the US.
We look at what Russia is getting out of this. The American is going back home. It’s something to celebrate.”
The official said that the Russians refused what had been offered to secure the release of their client, and that they responded by discussing which options were available to them.
The US would not make concessions on the war in Ukraine because of that, according to the official who was involved in the negotiations.
“We’ve obviously thought about why that might be the case” that the Russians didn’t float it, the official said, “and I think we credit it to the fact that we’ve been so crystal clear, so consistent, that it is not for us to negotiate how that horrific situation gets resolved.”
The official said that it was not for bargaining if it were raised. The defense of democracy against autocracy is not a bargaining strategy.
The Russian-Russian Prisoner-Swap Agreement at the Kremlin Scale: A Report by Vladimir Whelan
Whelan told CNN on Thursday that “the President and his team are going to have to look at what they have that is valuable that these people want, and hopefully give it to them, or I’ll be here for a long time.”
An official said that there was a willingness on the part of the President to pay a big price. “We have made clear to the Russians that we at least are open to talking about that which is at our disposal, that which we could actually deliver. We would have someone in our custody.
The US made several other offers to the Russians, sources said, to try to get them to agree to include Whelan in the swap. Among the names floated by the US was Alexander Vinnik, a Russian national extradited to the US in August on allegations of money laundering, hacking and extortion. The US also offered to trade Roman Seleznev, a convicted Russian cyber-criminal currently serving a 14-year sentence in the US, sources said.
A lawyer for Seleznev did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Frédéric Bélot, a lawyer who represented Vinnik before he was extradited to the US, told CNN that he was not aware of any current discussions regarding a potential prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington.
The National Security Council wouldn’t say anything. The Russian side had repeatedly demanded someone not even in US custody even as the US made a number of different proposals according to a senior Biden administration official. The Russians asked for the same thing the US couldn’t deliver on, according to the official.
U.S. Foreign Minister Vladimir Kuleba: a rejoinder of the group of 20 peace summit and his commitment to the United Nations
The foreign minister of Ukraine said on Monday his government wants to have a peace summit at the United Nations by the end of February or around the anniversary of Russia’s war.
He said that Moscow would need to be indicted for crimes against humanity at an international court if they were to invite them to the summit.
He said President Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. last week was a success and the U.S. government had made a special plan to put the missile battery in place. The training usually lasts a year.
During an interview with the Foreign Ministry, Kuleba said that he will do everything he can to win the war.
The United Nations is the best place to hold this summit because it isn’t about favoring a single country, he said. “This is really about bringing everyone on board.”
The release of prisoners, the withdrawal of Russian troops and the restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity were all part of a peace formula presented by Zelenskyy at the Group of 20 summit.
He has proven himself to be an efficient mediators and an efficient Negotiating, and most importantly he is a man of principle and integrity. We would be happy with his active participation.
High-energy missiles of Zelenskyy: How the U.S. will try to remove Russia from the Security Council and from the world body
He said that they frequently say they are ready for negotiations, but everything they do on the battlefield proves the opposite.
Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. was his first foreign trip since the war started on Feb. 24. Kuleba said that the significance of the visit was appreciated.
“This shows how both the United States are important for Ukraine, but also how Ukraine is important for the United States,” said Kuleba, who was part of the delegation to the U.S.
He said that the US developed a program for the missile battery to complete training quicker than normal without affecting the quality of use on the battlefield.
Kuleba didn’t mention a specific time frame, however, he said it would be less than six months. He said the training will be done outside of Ukranian.
During Russia’s air and ground war inUkraine, Kuleba has been second only to Zelenskyy when it comes to carrying out the message and needs to be seen by an international audience.
On Monday, Ukraine called on member states of the U.N. to remove Russia from the UN Security Council and from the world body. Kuleba said that they had prepared for this step, which would uncover the fraud and deprive Russia of its status.
The Foreign Ministry said that the Russian didn’t go through legal procedure for membership in the U.N. after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The European Military Forum on Crimes Against Humanity: U.S., Europe and the Cold War – Report of the Ukraine’s 2001 World War II
The conference attracts top military and diplomatic officials from around the world.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine set the tone of the three-day conference by urging Western leaders to act rather than talk, calling via videolink for the speedy deliveries of weapons and warning of dwindling supplies on the battleground.
This year, the U.S. made its presence at the gathering felt with a record number of delegates, including significant bipartisan and bicameral representation from Congress.
Even though delegations were from all over the world, and even though the conference was in Europe, the geopolitics of the entire world were at play.
As the war enters its second year, it remains to be seen whether dialogue with President Vladimir Putin will be possible at next year’s conference. The US is preparing to see Russian leaders stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Harris described how Russian soldiers are deliberately targeting civilians, citing evidence of “widespread and systemic” rape, torture, execution-style killings, beatings, electrocution and deportation, including children who, she said, have been cruelly separated from their parents.
She urged delegates not to look the other way, saying: “Think of the four-year-old girl who the United Nations recently reported was sexually assaulted by a Russian soldier.”
The U.S. Secretary of State said in a statement released at the conference: “We reserve crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes.”
The play of China is launching itself into the brouhahaha: China sends its top diplomat to Moscow over a Russian spy balloon feud
China’s play is injecting itself into the brouhaha. It sent its top diplomat Wang Yi – his ears ringing with US warnings not to send Russia arms to use in Ukraine – to Moscow for high-level talks, even as a Sino-American spy balloon feud simmers.
Even as it confronts Russia in Ukraine, the US is seeking to dampen its latest crisis with China – over what Washington says was a Chinese spy balloon that wafted over the continental US earlier this month. The two showdowns came closer to a linkage this week as the US warned China not to supply Russia with arms that it could use in the war in Ukraine and as Wang headed to Moscow.
After much “will they, won’t they”, Blinken and Wang sat down together on the last night of the conference, in the first high-level meeting between the two countries since the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon.
The US State Department stated that Wang was told that the US was not seeking a conflict with China but that Beijing was warned against giving any material support to Russia.
While Wang Yi called for peace in Ukraine – without elaborating how to achieve it or what peace in the region means – Europe’s leaders committed to investing more in weapons.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has stated that member states should work with the defense industry to speed up production of weapons for Ukraine, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claims they are using them quicker than Europe can.
The Chancellor of Germany asked the Europeans to follow up on their pledges to deliver battle tanks to Ukraine. He joked during a Q&A that it was ironic that he was having to make others deliver the Leopard tanks quickly after they had pressure on him to do so in previous weeks.
Scholz’s new Defense Minister Boris Pistorius continued in the same vein and pushed for higher military spending within Europe and NATO. He called on the alliance to agree on 2% as a minimum commitment in order to reach the NATO target. Germany is not expected to achieve 2% for another couple of years, despite an additional 100 billion boost to the budget by the government.
Scholz remained tight-lipped about requests from Ukraine to send fighter jets, having publicly said no on several occasions. He said Germany’s support for Kyiv is resolute but warned against hasty decisions and the dangers of escalation.
The Russian War on Europe: John J. Sullivan and the Clinton-Russia War on February 24, 2021 (The New York Times Spectator)
Prominent Kremlin critics were offered seats, but not the ones they wanted.
The chairman of the conference said that he did not want the conference to serve as a podium for Russian propaganda.
Heusgen – who served as former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s top foreign policy aide – admitted in an interview earlier this week that he left last year’s conference convinced Russia would not invade Ukraine. Four days later, the invasion began.
Editor’s Note: John J. Sullivan was US Ambassador to Russia from December 2019 to October 2022. He was previously US Deputy Secretary of State. He is a partner and a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read the opinions on CNN.
Russia’s war ended its relations with the United States and many other countries. We found out that February 24 changed the course of history, and that it had not ended. This was not just a brutal war on Ukraine, it was a war on Europe.
For weeks, I had been telling everyone I could reach that Russian President Vladimir Putin was going to launch a war on the continent of Europe, the scale of which had not been seen since World War II.
I was disconsolate despite my confidence in my pre-war assessment. For two years, I worked hard as the US ambassador to hammer out a few compromises with the Russians that could lead to a dialogue.
My approach was reaffirmed following President Joe Biden’s meeting in Geneva with Putin in June 2021. Everyone in the US delegation at the meeting agreed that it was in the interest of the US to try to reach an agreement on any issue.
Russian interlocutors read from their talking points and would not engage in a real dialogue. Minders from the Russian security services monitored every meeting and phone call. The Russians were doing a trick to prepare for an invasion that Putin was going to launch. When was the only question.
Grain markets and energy markets were affected by the invasion. And most tragically, it slaughtered thousands of innocents and caused unspeakable suffering for millions of Ukrainians because of a policy choice by Putin in his quest for empire.
The economic toll is staggering and will only get worse until it is stopped and reversed so that it protects its sovereignty and security.
It might be the case. Putin made it very clear in his speech that the war wouldn’t end soon. In telling Russians the conflict was critical to their own nation’s existence and part of an effort by the West to attack Russia, he set the stage for months more bloodshed and narrowed even further already distant avenues for some kind of face-saving exit if Russia does not prevail.
Only then will the Russian government realize that the goals of its Special Military Operation cannot and will not be achieved. The Russians will only negotiate in good faith. Only then can peace return to Europe.
WARSAW — When President Vladimir V. Putin announced at the end of a 100-minute speech on Tuesday that he would suspend Russia’s participation in the New START treaty — the last surviving arms control agreement between the two largest nuclear-armed powers — it was one more indication that the era of formal arms control may be dying.
The treaty puts limits on the number of deployed intercontinental-range nuclear weapons that both the US and Russia can have. It was last extended in early 2021 for five years, meaning the two sides would soon need to begin negotiating on another arms control agreement.
The United States and Russia can inspect each other’s weapons sites under the key nuclear arms control treaty. However, the Covid-19 outbreak halted the inspections since 2020.
Russia isn’t completely withdrawing from the deal, but it appears to be formalizing its position. US officials have been frustrated by Russia’slack of co-operation.
Blinken said President Joe Biden’s administration remains ready to talk about the nuclear arms treaty “at any time with Russia, irrespective of anything else going on in the world.”
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does, we’ll of course make sure that in any event that we are posturing appropriately for the security of our own country and that of our allies,” said Blinken. “I think it matters that we continue to act responsibly in this area … it’s also something the rest of the world expect of us.”
A session of the Bilateral Consultative Commission on the treaty was slated to meet in Egypt in late November but was abruptly called off. The US has blamed Russia for this postponement, with a State Department spokesperson saying the decision was made “unilaterally” by Russia.
The Director of the Nuclear Information Project questioned whether Russia will stop exchanging data with US counterparts after Putin announced that the treaty was on life support.
In December, Putin warned of the “increasing” threat of nuclear war, and this month, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, threatened that Russia losing the war could “provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war.”
Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts which can have a negative effect on their fate. This needs to be obvious to everyone. A Western politician who has at least some trace of intelligence may be the exception.
He made clear that the United States wouldn’t be inspecting Russian nuclear sites, as a requirement of the treaty. At a time of escalating confrontation with the United States and NATO, he seemed like a leader who was done with arms control.
It’s possible that someone sitting in the White House will see a world similar to the one of a half-century ago, when arms races were cranking up around the globe and nations could fire missiles without fear or favor.
Vladimir Putin meets the West in Kiev: What can they teach us about democracy, how to fight it, and what can we learn from it?
He wouldn’t allow inspectors to survey those facilities because they could pass their findings on to the Ukrainians to launch more attacks. He said that it is a theater of the absurd. “We know that the West is directly involved in the attempts of the Kyiv regime to strike at the bases.”
A new era of confrontation with nuclear rivals Russia and Chinese is being highlighted by President Joe Biden’s trip to mark the anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
In the latest highly significant move in a week of diplomatic symbolism, Putin welcomed Wang and told him relations between Beijing and Moscow were “reaching new milestones.”
The two nations are often in crisis and chaos, but there are always opportunities to get out of it, Wang told Putin.
The idea of a global contest between democracies and autocracies seemed theoretical and intangible when Biden voiced it while running for president. Now it is all too real.
This new and complicated foreign policy picture is a problem for everyone. Rising challenges abroad as well, as the depletion of US and Western weapons stocks as arms are sent to Ukraine, pose questions about military capacity and whether current defense spending is sufficient. The Republicans accuse Biden of ignoring voters who are facing economic problems even as he tries to convince them Democrats are protectors of working Americans.
President Putin will fail to get land and power in the end, and the Ukrainian people will love their country, said Biden.
But dismissing Putin’s conspiratorial claims and sense that the West is engaged in a long campaign to topple him would be a mistake. While conventional win may be beyond Russia, Putin may be able to live with a long war that causes destruction in more countries, costs Western governments billions and makes them wonder if they should pull back.
“The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that, and steamrolling, that has not even come close to happening,” DeSantis said on Fox. “I think they have shown themselves to be a third-rate military power.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/21/politics/president-biden-vladmir-putin-china-ukraine/index.html
First Face-to-Face Interaction between the United States and Russia since the U.S.-Russian War in February 2022
Biden’s trip also demonstrated that the estrangement between the US and Russia – a factor that will shape global politics for years – is almost complete.
Given that its economy is struggling, and its conventional forces are under extreme pressure, Russia also lacks resources to ignite a new nuclear arms race with Washington. The collapse of one of the last building blocks of a post-Cold War thaw between Russia and the US is a stark example of how little communication there is between the rivals.
The Biden administration’s accusation last week that Russia has committed crimes against humanity ensures there will be no return to normality between Washington and Moscow even if the Ukraine war ends.
China, which has its own economic problems, may be unwilling to risk US sanctions that could result from sending arms to Moscow. But Beijing may also have an interest in the war being prolonged in the belief that it could distract the US and its military resources from Biden’s growing efforts to respond to China’s dominance in Asia.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that such a step would cross a US red line but did not specify what consequences could result.
The Secretary of State of the U.S. and his Russian counterpart met on the fringes of the Group of 20 meeting in India. It’s the first face-to-face interaction between the countries’ two top diplomats since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
The United States and the Soviet Union were just as effective at controlling weapons of mass destruction as the two countries are today.
He had urged Moscow to accept the proposal to release Paul Whelan, a former US Marine.
On Thursday, he said, “We’re determined to bring Paul and every other American citizen who is unjustly detained around the world home. We won’t rest until we do.”
Ukraine and the G-20 summit: what will we learn from the G20 ’30 – 20 years after the announcement of nuclear assistance to Ukraine?
The news came after the U.S. announced another large amount of weaponry for Ukraine, and after the Treasury Secretary pledged more aid to the country.
India, which holds the rotating chair of the G-20 this year, hoped the war in Ukraine would not dominate proceedings at the meetings of the group’s foreign ministers.
Climate change, food security, inflation and debt relief are some of the issues that the host country wants the event to focus on.