Jan 20, 2023 10:06 p.m
general a D. Harald Kujat spoke in a Swiss magazine on questions of war guilt and Ukraine’s prospects of winning the war. The announcement from “reliable sources” that Boris Johnson intervened in April 2022 to prevent the Ukrainian-Russian peace treaty that had already been negotiated is sensational.
The general a. D. and former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr Harald Kujat said in an interview with the Swiss magazine published on Wednesday Current affairs in focus Statement on the current situation in the Ukraine war and in the conflict between Russia and the political West.
The longer the military phase of the conflict lasts, the more difficult it will be to reach a negotiated peace. The territorial changes that Russia made at the end of September are “difficult to reverse,” the general said. They are also a consequence of the fact that Ukraine had previously broken off the promising negotiations mediated by Turkey. At that time, Ukraine would have had to give far less in return:
“Ukraine had committed itself (in the negotiations in Istanbul at the end of March 2022 – ed.) to renouncing NATO membership and not allowing the stationing of foreign troops or military facilities. In return, they should receive security guarantees from states of their choice. The The future of the occupied territories should be resolved diplomatically within 15 years, with the explicit renunciation of military force.”
Ukraine had been warned at the time that breaking off negotiations would result in territorial losses, but ignored those warnings. “According to reliable information,” Kujat describes the circumstances of the failure of the negotiations, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “intervened in Kyiv on April 9 and prevented a signing.” According to the General, his reasoning was that “the West is not ready for an end to the war”.
rt had reported in March and April last year on the back and forth in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Istanbul. At the end of March, Russia had made advance payments by withdrawing from the suburbs of Kyiv and the entire north of Ukraine, but the further progress expected in the peace negotiations did not materialize. Instead, Ukraine went on the offensive with propaganda reporting on the alleged “Bocha massacre,” which Russian officials describe as a staging. At the time, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said publicly that the West was trying to disrupt the peace talks.
The US, British and Ukrainian media reported extensively on these events, the ex-inspector general reminds, Russian President Vladimir Putin also mentioned them several times, but the information available on the subject was never included in German reporting, which is “outrageous”. be.
Kujat also criticizes the reporting of the Ukraine conflict in German mass media. The Ukraine war is not only a military conflict, but also an economic and information war. In this information war, Germany is also becoming a participant in the war because the German media “appropriate information and arguments that they can neither verify nor judge on the basis of their own competence”. “Moral or ideological motives” also played a part, according to the general. In the media, it is mostly “experts” who “have no security policy or strategic knowledge or experience” that have their say. These give out opinions on expertise that they obtain from publications by other “experts with comparable expertise”. This also puts political pressure on the federal government. The debate about the delivery of certain weapon systems shows the intention of many media “exceedingly clearly” to do politics themselves.
Kujat, who has many years of active service behind him, among other things as Chairman of the NATO-Russia Council and the NATO-Ukraine Commission of the Chiefs of Staff, finds it particularly annoying that “German security interests and the dangers to our country through an expansion and escalation of the war so little attention”. That, says the general, is evidence of a “lack of a sense of responsibility.” In the United States, the handling of the Ukraine war is “much more differentiated and controversial, but always guided by national interests”.
Russia’s aim in the conflict is to prevent the “geopolitical rival USA” from gaining a strategic superiority that endangers Russia’s security, “be it through Ukraine’s membership in the US-led NATO, be it through the stationing of American troops, the relocation of military infrastructure or joint NATO manoeuvres”. The deployment of US ballistic missile defense systems in Poland and Romania is also “a thorn in the flesh” for Russia. Russia is convinced that the USA could also use these launching facilities to disable Russian intercontinental strategic systems and thus endanger the strategic nuclear balance. Kujat on to the causes of the war:
“The Minsk II agreement also plays an important role, in which Ukraine has committed to granting the Russian-speaking population in Donbass minority rights, as they are standard in the European Union, by the end of 2015 through a constitutional amendment with greater autonomy for the region . There are now doubts as to whether the US and NATO were prepared to seriously negotiate these issues before the Russian attack on Ukraine.”
According to General a. D. Kujat “one of the triggers for the war”. German and French politics played a particularly inglorious role in this:
“Merkel confirms that Russia (with the Minsk agreements – ed.) was deliberately deceived. You can judge that however you want, but it is a blatant breach of trust and a question of political predictability.”
The general rules out the possibility that Ukraine can reconquer the “occupied territories” with further deliveries of arms from the West. Kujat cites the view of the US Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, that Ukraine has achieved the maximum of what it could achieve militarily. More is not possible. That is why diplomatic efforts should now be started to achieve a negotiated peace.
Further arms deliveries to Ukraine will “pointlessly prolong the war”, with “more casualties on both sides and the continued destruction of the country”. They would also mean that “we will be drawn even deeper into this war”.
more on the subject – Russia has made its decision: The “Ukraine” project is finally history
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On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would launch a special military operation in Ukraine together with the armed forces of the Donbass republics to protect the population there. The goals are to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Ukraine speaks of a war of aggression. On the same day, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy declared a state of war across the country.
The West condemned the attack, reacted with new deliveries of weapons, promised help with reconstruction and imposed sanctions on Russia.
Scores of soldiers and civilians have been killed on both sides of the conflict. Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of various war crimes. Thousands of Ukrainians have fled their homeland.
