This is Why it Would Be Highly Dangerous to Agree to Putin's Demands to End the War in Ukraine
“You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.
I know some people disagree, some vehemently, but I truly believe that giving in to Putin would be as dangerous as our appeasement of Hitler in the 1930’s proved to be.
I know Russia and Ukraine well, first hand. I was a NATO special forces instructor on Russian tactical doctrine, I’ve held talks and discussions with generals and ministers in both countries, worked with the Secretary General of the organisation tasked with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Final Act, Budapest Memorandum and NATO/Russia Act (the OSCE), and with the Deputy Secretary of NATO. I’ve been on the front line in Ukraine. I predicted the Russian Invasion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia five years before it happened. I predicted the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2015 and then accurately described Russian objectives and scheme in my Substack in January 2022.
I expressed my concerns that the Minsk Accord would be impossible for Ukraine (which only signed it because the then German Chancellor - Steinmeier - held a diplomatic gun to Kyiv’s head) to comply with and correctly predicted that the Accord would then be used by the Kremlin as a pretext for war. Furthermore, from my own first hand knowledge I can tell you that Kremlin claims that Russian speakers in Ukraine were oppressed and that the Ukrainian security forces are full of Nazis is crap.
The reason I’ve pointed out the above is to demonstrate that I’m no armchair general sitting in my living room speculating. My credentials for saying the following are solid.
THE POINT
Now for the point… if anyone were to persuade Ukraine to cede territory to Russia (in violation of international law and Russian treaty obligations), which Trump could do, just as Steinmeier did with Minsk, Russia would not stop there. There’d be a period of relative calm, but Russia would regroup, rearm and reorganise its armed forces in light of lessons learned, would consolidate depth capabilities and would then have another pop.
Why? Why did Napoleon seek to dominate Europe and why did Hitler annex Austria, invade the Sudetenland and go into Poland?
You may say that if that happened NATO would stop Putin. Yes, NATO could, but would we go to war if Russia declared Transnistria , which part of Moldova but somewhat pro-Russian and hosts Russian “peacekeepers” as being part of its territory? I honestly wouldn’t bet that we would.
And what if Russia drove into the Suwalki Gap to link Kaliningrad with Belarus? Poland and Lithuania would have no choice but to respond, but we don’t know what Trump’s response would be. Would he support a NATO response to further Russian irredentist aggression? Or would Europe be on its own. Do we want to give Putin what he wants now and risk that happening, just crossing our fingers that it won’t?
Also, consider this, Putin’s December 2021 demands amount to the dismantling of the European security architecture that has kept us safe since the 1940’s, including, practically speaking, the dismantling of NATO.
That matters because if, to end the war in Ukraine, we agree to his demands, we’ll fundamentally undermine our ability to respond effectively if he were to go into Transnistria, the Suwalki Gap or anywhere else.
THE ALMOST INEVITABLE RESULT OF GIVING PUTIN WHAT HE WANTS
No… if we did that we’d not only be ignoring his violation of international and treaty obligations we’d be inviting Russian dominance of the continent and a future conflict that could be far worse than what’s happening in Ukraine.
I am no hawk. I’ve experienced first hand the very worst suffering and destruction that war can deliver. Nobody can lecture me about its horrors. It is because of my experiences that I’m so keen that we don’t exercise naivety and hope at the expense of preparation. I actually believe the Kremlin already sees itself as being at war with us.
As Anthony Eden said:
“You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.