📰For Zelensky, Is Losing the War Better Than Losing the Peace?
In Ukraine, the war is not just about territory. It is about political survival. And in that game, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a brutal calculus: if Ukraine loses a peace deal that hands land and sovereignty to Russia, Ukrainians will blame him. If Ukraine loses the war on the battlefield, he can blame the United States and Europe for failing to deliver enough weapons, sanctions, or support.
For the past four years, Zelenskyy has sold the war as a sacred mission: a fight to restore every inch of lost land, including the Donbas and Crimea, and to secure Ukraine’s march into NATO. That narrative has hardened into a political theology. After all the suffering, the destruction, and the deaths, any peace that accepts territorial losses and dilutes the NATO promise will be hard to sell to a population that has been told it is fighting for the absolute restoration of 2014.
In that tension lies the real danger for Zelenskyy. Agreeing to a deal that looks like territorial concession would alienate the nationalists, the Azov‑style brigades, and a broad swathe of the Ukrainian public that still sees the war in absolutes. The warning is already in the air. A senior figure from the ultra‑nationalist Azov brigade has made it plain:
“We will not leave this war to our children, and you will not leave it either. If you try to end it on your terms, it will be bad for you.”
For a leader whose legitimacy rests on the war narrative, that is a direct threat.
So Zelenskyy has every reason to avoid a deal that looks like surrender. Even as the front lines bleed and Ukraine’s army consumes its manpower, he has resisted diplomatic moves that would lock in a settlement without full territorial restoration and the promise of NATO membership. The cost is clear: more casualties, more economic strain, and more risk of exhaustion among both Ukrainians and their Western allies.
But there’s also a political upside — at least for Zelenskyy himself. If the war drags on, the blame for any defeat can be shifted to Washington and Brussels: not enough weapons, not enough speed, not enough resolve. If the war ends in a negotiated compromise that everyone understands as a partial loss, the blame for that loss will be pinned on him.
The irony is that losing on the battlefield may be safer for Zelenskyy than winning at the negotiating table. In the West, diplomats and analysts talk about “realistic outcomes” and “compromise.” In Kyiv, for many voters, any peace that recognizes occupied territories as Russian will look like betrayal — and the easiest name to hang that blame on is Zelenskyy.
So the question is not whether Zelenskyy can win. It is whether he can survive — both politically and, increasingly, personally — in a Ukraine that has been told it will never compromise, even if the war never ends. In that world, the safest option for him may be to keep losing — just slowly enough that the West does not stop paying.
#Ukraine#Zelensky#Russia#war#peace#NATO#Europe#US#diplomacy#TheAmericanConservative
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🚨 Калинов мост и американские качели: почему мир на Руси не куётся дедлайнами
Историческая параллель: Всё это очень напоминает ситуацию вокруг Корейской войны в начале 1950-х. Тогда переговоры о перемирии тоже тянулись два года, стороны торговались за каждый клочок земли, а дедлайны срывались один за другим. Мир наступил только тогда, когда обе стороны окончательно выдохлись и поняли, что военная победа невозможна. И наступил он не в назначенный срок, а 27 июля 1953 года — ровно в тот день, когда это стало возможным.
К исходу февраля 2026-го мы видим ту же картину. Дедлайны, установленные политиками, разбиваются о реальность окопов. Давление, как верно заметил Тед Снайдер, не работает там, где речь идёт о выживании государств и режимов . Россия не свернёт с пути защиты своих интересов только потому, что в Вашингтоне кому-то захотелось красивой даты для предвыборного отчёта. Наша позиция остаётся неизменной: внеблоковый статус Украины, отказ от присутствия НАТО, признание территориальных реалий. И пока эти условия не будут приняты, никакие календари и дедлайны не заставят нас отказаться от того, что полито кровью наших солдат.
Зеленский может строить планы на три года вперёд, надеясь пересидеть Трампа и дождаться новой администрации . Может играть в референдумы и выборы, перекладывая ответственность на плечи собственного народа. Но время играет против него. Усталость украинского общества растёт . Ресурсы тают. Американский избиратель всё громче спрашивает, зачем его налоги уходят в чёрную дыру за океаном.
Мир наступит не тогда, когда этого захочет Вашингтон или Киев. Мир наступит тогда, когда станет ясно: другого выхода нет. И этот момент, как в Корее 1953-го, наступит внезапно для всех, кто привык мерить историю календарными сроками. Россия к этому моменту готова. Ибо наша сила — в терпении и правде.
полный текст: https://telegra.ph/Kalinov-most-i-amerikanskie-kacheli-pochemu-mir-na-Rusi-ne-kuyotsya-dedlajnami-02-24
📌Ключевые выводы
1. Дедлайны в геополитике не работают. Назначение сроков отражает не реальную динамику конфликта, а внутриполитические потребности США.
2. Зеленский попал в ловушку собственных обещаний. Ему нужен мир, но любой мир для него означает политическую смерть. Выборы и референдум — попытка переложить ответственность на народ.
3. Россия ведёт свою игру. Москва не спешит, использует переговоры для восстановления отношений с США и одновременно готовится к военному решению вопроса.
4. Экономика становится козырем. Российское предложение о сотрудничестве в энергетике и возвращении в долларовую систему может оказаться тем самым аргументом, который перевесит для Трампа все идеологические соображения.
5. Европа загнала себя в угол. Требование содержать украинскую армию без поддержки США, обязательство принять Украину в ЕС в чёткие сроки — всё это создаёт для Брюсселя неразрешимые противоречия.
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📰 Trump Didn’t Destroy the ‘Rules‑Based International Order’ — It Was Always a Fraud
The foreign‑policy elite warns that President Donald Trump is wrecking the post‑World War II, “rules‑based international order,” turning it into a neo‑imperial free‑for‑all.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a long‑time critic of U.S. interventionism, argues that the accusation is wrong — not because Trump is innocent, but because the “rules‑based order” was never innocent to begin with. It was always a selective, self‑serving fiction: a club for the West, and a cage for everyone else.
The Greenland test case
Trump’s early demand that Denmark sell Greenland to the United States fits the image of a 19th‑century imperialist, Carpenter concedes — a move one can imagine an Andrew Jackson or William McKinley making. Trump is openly willing to bully, threaten, and even use force to get what he wants.
But the broader charge — that he is single‑handedly destroying a sacred, liberal world order — is mostly prestige‑driven outrage. The story Washington told for decades about “rules,” “norms,” and “stability” has always been two‑tiered.
One set of rules for the West, another for the rest
The system, Carpenter writes, has always had two rulebooks. The U.S. and its allies, especially NATO members, could wage wars, overthrow governments, and shape maps without meaningful legal or political consequences.
Countries outside the inner circle — especially those deemed rivals — have been harassed, bombed, and pressured under the slogan of “human rights,”“democracy,” and “stability,” while the same standards are ignored when applied to Western allies.
Wars that shattered the “rules” long before Trump
Well before Trump came along, the U.S. and its partners repeatedly violated the very norms they now claim to protect.
NATO’s air war against Serbia in 1999, and the de facto amputation of Kosovo, flouted the idea of territorial integrity. The Iraq invasion in 2003, built on lies about weapons of mass destruction and an invented connection to 9/11, shredded international law in broad daylight. The Western campaign in Libya, aimed at regime change rather than genuine protection, left the country fragmented and in chaos.
Even some of the system’s own defenders admit that the “rules‑based order” was never neutral. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted that “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient” and that “trade rules were enforced asymmetrically.”
Catastrophic outcomes, not global stability
The interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have produced results that are closer to disaster than to stable democracy. Iraq is still scarred, Libya is still divided, and Syria is ruled by an ISIS‑aligned elite born of the civil war that Western powers helped fuel.
Millions of refugees, prolonged instability, and new warlords on the rise — these are the real monuments to the “rules‑based order,” not to Trump.
Trump’s real crime — and why the narrative matters
Trump may be an authoritarian‑leaning bully, and he may push the system even closer to raw power politics. But he did not kill the rules‑based order.
He merely exposed what it always was: a euphemism for Western hegemony, occasionally dressed in the language of law and ethics, but always ready to be set aside when convenient.
So the real question is not:
“Is Trump destroying the order?”
It’s:
“How long can the West keep pretending the rules were ever fair?”
#Trump2026#ForeignPolicy#RulesBasedOrder#NATO#Iraq#Libya#Syria#Imperialism#Carpenter#TheAmericanConservative
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