I could pick one hundred of these articles. It just amazes me; the Western liberal (or neo-con) narrative on the Ukraine war quite literally doesn’t stand up to any serious criticism, that is rational analysis with reference to a plausible theory and reference to facts in the actual historical record. Any undergraduate history or politics student should fail if they produced work so at odds with reason and empirical data as we see all the time from Western academics on Ukraine. Let alone an International Affairs student. But, here we go. This is piece in the Guardian by a Rajon Menon, who is said to be no less than “professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York”.
But the Ukrainian army isn’t about to unravel, and neither is Putin close to fulfilling his original objective: conquering the four Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. [1]
As the author concedes, Ukraine has serious manpower shortages. The respected international relations scholar John Mearsheimer points out in a war of attrition, what matters is not taking land, but causing casualties. It is horrible to think about, but the fact is that Russia is, even according to Western sources such as the UK’s MOD, managing to replenish its battlefield losses, but Ukraine is really struggling. And this is with forced conscription in Ukraine and no new conscription since the 300,000 in 2022 in Russia. Is he sure that the Ukrainian army is not about to unravel?
What is remarkable, given Ukraine’s disadvantages, is the scale of Russia’s losses: more than 1 million casualties according to the UK Ministry of Defence, nearly 150,000 confirmed dead, and more than 23,000 pieces of equipment destroyed or damaged.
Leaving aside the accuracy of the casualty figure, as we have already pointed out, the MOD also states that Russia is recruiting 30,000 new troops a month – volunteers. [2] So, beyond a rather vicious celebration of enemy deaths, this won’t help Ukraine. The Russian army is in fact getting bigger; at least according to this Reuters report from the end of 2024. [3] And the Ukrainian army is not. Surely you don’t need to be an Emeritus Professor to figure out which side that looks bad for? And, as concerns equipment; Russia is outpacing NATO – according to no less than the Secretary General of NATO. [4]
Witkoff and Kushner may be shrewd business negotiators, but they have scant diplomatic experience and even less knowledge of Ukraine. (Witkoff has recited Kremlin talking points after meeting Putin.)
‘Reciting Kremlin talking points’ is the charge when anyone expresses a point of view that concurs with the Russian point of view. For example, if someone says, “the main cause of this war was NATO approaching Russia’s borders” it appears to be enough to say that this “is a Russian talking point” and considered it dismissed. The acute reader will notice that no actual argument has been presented. This is pre-rational; it is operating purely at the level of propaganda and slogans. The logic is circular. If this line is applied to any point raised in Russia’s favour then any consideration of Russia’s positions is short-circuited.
Russia had long expressed concerns about Nato expansion; President Boris Yeltsin objected in the mid-1990s, well before Putin took the helm. But acknowledging Russia’s concerns is different from claiming Ukraine’s Nato membership was imminent in 2022. Between Nato’s 2008 Bucharest summit – where it vaguely promised eventual membership – and the invasion, Ukraine made no concrete progress toward accession. Had Nato truly wanted Ukraine in, it could have moved swiftly, as it did with Finland and Sweden.
The author is a paid Professor of International Relations. He is at least supposed to keep up with major treaties, such as the 2021 US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, which emphasised Ukrainian membership of NATO: “Guided by the April 3, 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration of the NATO North Atlantic Council and as reaffirmed in the June 14, 2021 Brussels Summit Communique of the NATO North Atlantic Council, the United States supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.” [5] The same document also resolutely affirmed that Crimea belonged to Ukraine. This document was signed 3 months before the “invasion”. It is absurd for people to argue that “Russia should not have worried about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO because, even though we kept affirming it and putting it in various statements and Treaties, we didn’t really mean it”! If they didn’t mean it, why keep affirming it? The analogy with Finland and Sweden is not serious; these countries joined NATO once the war had started. There was a dangerous period between their announcing their intention to join and their actually joining; when they could have been attacked with no Article 5 guarantee to protect them. This is why they joined swiftly. An Emeritus professor?
The plan also demands Ukrainian de-Nazification, validating Russia’s absurd narrative that Ukraine is riddled with Nazis – something any visitor can see is false.
That’s odd. The US Congress at one point refused to fund Azov battalion due to their fascist links. [6] Before the current war, when Azov has been rehabilitated as ‘brave warriors’ by the Western liberal media it was in fact quite fashionable to write stories about their Nazi associations. E.g. “Foreign Policy magazine has characterized the 1,000-man Azov Battalion as “openly neo-Nazi” and “fascist.” Numerous other news …”. [7] After the Maidan coup, far-right figures came to prominence, taking positions in Ukraine’s parliament. [8] The problematic relations of Ukraine’s national hero Bandera with the Nazis is well-known. Ukraine has a problem with the extreme far-right. Indeed, given Azov’s role in blocking the attempt by Zelensky in 2019 to implement the Minsk accords, it is simply a matter of historical record that ‘fascists’ in Ukraine played a key role in provoking this war. [9] From a point of view of scholarship the idea that Ukraine has a problem with Nazis is not something which can be dismissed as ‘false’; a serious approach in International Relations would weigh up all the factors and come to a balanced assessment. This complex historical-political matter simply can’t be assessed as ‘true’, or ‘false’.
Some who rightly criticise Israel’s conduct seem oddly indifferent to Russia’s war crimes.
A rather nasty link. Israel has been condemned by multiple respected NGOs, international and Israeli, as committing genocide. A UN Commission has characterised their actions as genocide. At least 60,000 civilians have died in Gaza – the vast majority civilians. According to some reports 15 out of every 16 casualties are civilian. [10] Just in terms of scale the cases are different. And, there is, as far as I know, nothing even resembling the case against Israel, namely that the Russian leadership has been ordering their forces to commit war crimes as a matter of policy. Israel, on the other hand, has been openly starving Palestinian children and announcing it as state policy. The “odd indifference” lies not in those who fail to equate Russian ‘war crimes’ with Israeli war crimes, as with those who do. Apart from that, the problem with “Russia’s war crimes” is that the claims for “Russian war crimes” are probably based on narratives produced by the combined forces of Ukrainian intelligence and the anti-Russian liberal media, and therefore any specific claims, as yet untested by credible investigations, are suspect. But; perhaps more to the point, the political danger of this emphasis on war crimes, is that Kiev too will have a case to answer. Unfortunately war crimes happen in war. This is why the initial peace plan put forward by Trump proposed a blanket amnesty to both sides.
This kind of article is shallow, shows little evidence that the author has been following recent political events in the field, shows little evidence that the author understands battlefield dynamics, and leans heavily on simply repeated narrative ‘talking points’; without any actual empirical evidence or credible argument. If I was Mr Menon’s employer I would ask him to consider some retraining, or at least make some kind of an effort.
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/24/donald-trump-peace-plan-kremlin-ukraine
- https://zamin.uz/en/world/148878-nato-intelligence-30-40-thousand-people-are-being-recruited-into-the-russian-army-every-month.html
- https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-army-bigger-than-two-years-ago-quality-has-decreased-says-nato-official-2024-11-25/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ammunition-production-nato-mark-rutte-2025-6
- https://2021-2025.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/
- https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/house-amendment/492
- https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-161/issue-92/house-section/article/H4117-2
- https://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
- “But the most passionate opposition to Zelensky’s initiative came from hardline Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of protesters gathered on Kyiv’s Maidan Square under the slogan ‘No capitulation!’ More menacingly, several Ukrainian nationalist militias, including the Azov Battalion that was then fighting in the Luhansk region of Donbas, refused to accept the agreement.” Matthews, Owen. Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine (p. 149). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/19/civilians-made-up-15-of-every-16-people-israel-killed-in-gaza-since-march-data-suggests