It is very interesting to watch how the corporate-state media is managing the public discourse around the end-game in the Ukraine war. This has been going on for some time, at least several months, though now it is more open. The task of the media (I am talking here really about the UK media) is to “sell” whatever outcome the elites settle on to the public. They need to present it, of course, as some kind of victory for the West and a loss for Putin. The current stage we are at is that there will be a deal in 2025 and Ukraine, armed to the teeth, will extract significant concessions from Russia. Thus Ukraine will, in some way, have been protected. This is going to fail. Russia will insist on Ukraine not joining NATO. (I can’t see any idea of a lengthy moratorium being accepted by Putin; contrary to Western delusions-propaganda he sees it as his job to protect Russia, not his personal position). Crimea is not going back to Ukraine. And Russia will hold onto large chunks of territory in the East. The only space for concessions I detect from the Russians is just possibly a compromise over Zaporizhian and Kherson provinces – maybe some kind of independence rather than being annexed by Russia, but I think this is an outside chance. Also; Russia will demand an end to sanctions, the return of their seized assets, and so on. The West is still so hubristic that they think they can dictate terms. But on the battlefield, Russia is, essentially, winning, and usually it is the winning side who dictates terms.
The West may believe that they can use sanctions relief and the unfreezing of seized assets as a negotiating lever. The problem with this is that Russia has had nearly 3 years of working around sanctions and they are getting quite good at it. I doubt this will be a very strong lever.
As Putin pointed out at the start, any deal that Ukraine gets now will be (far) worse than it could have got before this started, in March 2022 or subsequently. The Western media will probably manage that by simply not mentioning it. They rely on their readers having short memories.
The next stage in this “slow-motion collapse” will be when the West (political elites and media, who work in sync) have to face the reality that Ukraine is not going to join NATO and that Russia is going to hold onto large amounts of territory. It seems that one face-saving measure being planned by the West is for the West to continue to arm Ukraine to “deter against future Russian aggression”. They like this because a) it means they don’t have to turn off the tap by which they launder public money through arms companies to their share portfolios, b) it makes them look “strong”, which compensates for the fact that they lost, and c) it sustains the fiction of “Russian aggression” in the public mind. Thus, this is likely to play a big part in Western attempts to wriggle out of this conflict they started in a face-saving way. However; this plan is going to come into conflict with the key Russian demand that Ukraine demilitarize. If they stick to it it means they are aiming at, and would prefer, a frozen conflict and ceasefire, rather than a negotiated settlement. (Perhaps, so they can start again in a few years time). I am not even sure Russia would stop fighting if this is what is on offer.
In short; as the “slow-motion collapse” continues it will be interesting to see how the Western political elites shift their position, trying to escape from their disaster in such a way as to save face and it will be interesting to see how the media works to manage public opinion to accept these shifts. Especially given they are up against an intransigent Russia who is, due to their military position, not needing to make significant concessions on their core demands.
This is an article in the Guardian which typifies the current stage of the messaging and management of public opinion. A British Parliamentary Committee sets the new tone:
International support is crucial for achieving a just peace. The victory plan is aimed at ensuring that the war does not last indefinitely and that it ends on fair terms, with Ukraine’s sovereignty ensured and Putin’s plans failed
The “victory plan” is Zelensky’s delusion pitch. Recall; it apparently included a massive uptick in arms and permission for long-range strikes on Russia, and guaranteed NATO membership. All of that seems to be off the cards. If by “sovereignty” they mean either that Ukraine will not have to give up land or that Ukraine will not have to accept that it cannot join NATO, which is what sovereignty has meant all along, then this Parliamentary Committee is still living in dream land. Still; this is a necessary stage they have to go through. Already; they are admitting that there will be concessions; “fair terms”. A long way from the collapse of Russia and the “defeat of Russia in Ukraine” we were being promised two years ago. But they have a way to go yet to get even close to reality.
Of course; one role of the media in all this will be to distort the roots of the conflict. There are a number of media tactics; omission of context, endlessly repeating official narrative lines so they come to seem true just by endless repetition, selective quoting, and, of course, outright lying; as here:
The nature of any security guarantee is key for Ukrainians, who fear Moscow would exploit a weak deal to prepare for another attack. In 2022, Putin declared that the Minsk Accords, negotiated after Russia seized Crimea and its proxies took parts of eastern Ukraine, “do not exist”, and launched an invasion.
This a nice example of simply inverting the truth. In reality it is Russia who needs to be wary of Ukraine preparing to renew hostilities. Kiev’s dream is undoubtedly to get accepted into NATO and then provoke a war with Russia – with NATO now obliged to join the fight. This is one of the key reasons why Russia launched their operation on Ukraine in 2022; to obviate this possibility. I do not know the context for the claim about Putin saying that the Minsk agreements were “dead” and, typically, no checkable reference is provided. Most likely he was simply pointing out that they were, indeed dead. They had existed since 2015 and no progress had been made on them. Recall; when Zelensky was elected he made a genuine effort to implement them, but was thwarted by the Azov battalion in 2019 who threatened a second Maidan. [1] After that Zelensky made no further substantial efforts to implement them. Indeed, in the run-up to Putin’s “invasion” in February 2022 political figures in Kiev were increasingly making statements that the Minsk agreements had been made under military pressure and so were not binding. These attempts to get out of Minsk were, naturally, being amplified by various Western commentators and messaged to the Western publics by Western think tanks and the Western media. [2] Recall too, Merkel’s claim that she never believed in Minsk and only supported the agreements in order to buy time for Ukraine to arm. [3] (She probably didn’t really do this, and was probably saying this to make herself look good when public opinion was at its anti-Russian height, but, nonetheless, this is what she said. And there was no public attempt by European capitals for push Kiev to implement Minsk). If Putin said that Minsk was dead, he was simply making an objective observation. But the Guardian twists that 100% to make it look like Putin was aggressively abrogating the agreements. This works (in as much as anyone is actually fooled by it) because they omit all of the relevant context, some of which I mention above.
And so, in parallel to the slow-motion collapse on the battlefield we are going to have to watch Western political and media classes evolving their narratives to accompany changing reality, trying to sustain the fiction that this has been anything other than a terrible disaster and tragedy for which the West is almost entirely responsible. They will do this right up to the end – and beyond.
Notes
- 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!’55 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. Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the far-right National Corps and first commander of the Azov Battalion, accused Zelensky of ‘disrespecting’ veterans and of acting on behalf of the Kremlin.56 Zelensky met Biletsky and other militia leaders in an attempt to convince them to surrender their unregistered weapons and accept the peace accord. They refused, and the referendum plan collapsed – and with it any realistic chance of peace in Donbas. Matthews, Owen. Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine (p. 149). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
- For example: “Minsk Deals Will Never Bring Peace to Ukraine. Forcing Ukraine to implement the Minsk Agreements will only cause harm. The US should recognize the danger of any such policy.” – from Center for European Policy Analysis – a US think tank. https://cepa.org/article/minsk-deals-will-never-bring-peace-to-ukraine/ – The funders for this think tank include some familiar faces: Lockheed Martin, Google, National Endowment for Democracy (US funded ‘democracy’ promotion) and so on. / “The Kremlin’s exasperation at Kyiv’s seven-year-long failure to implement the Minsk accords, which it imposed on Kyiv at the barrel of a gun, may lead it to use …” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – another US think tank. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/12/ukraine-putin-s-unfinished-business-pub-85771
- https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-russia-may-have-make-ukraine-deal-one-day-partners-cheated-past-2022-12-09/