Urging peace with Russia, top US general challenges DC’s proxy war
Urging peace with Russia, top US general challenges DC’s proxy war
A series of leaks, including a call for diplomacy from Gen. Mark Milley, show that some US officials are ready for a settlement in Ukraine.
November 12, 2022
“When the Congressional Progressive Caucus was bullied into withdrawing a letter urging diplomacy with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, everyone from neoconservative pundits to Sen. Bernie Sanders came forward to scold them. But now the same call is coming from a source that cannot be so easily ignored, and intimidated.
“A disagreement has emerged at the highest levels of the United States government over whether to press Ukraine to seek a diplomatic end to its war with Russia,” the New York Times reports. Leading the call for talks with Moscow is Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to US officials, Milley “has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”
The top US general has made no secret of his stance. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley declared in a public speech this week….”
“…That a change in US policy could have blunted Ukraine’s far-right was made clear in the fateful months before Russia’s invasion. As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border in November 2021, Samuel Charap, a senior analyst with the US government-funded RAND Corporation, argued that US support for the Minsk II accords could help avert disaster.
“The reality is that Ukraine depends on political, diplomatic, economic and military support from the West, and particularly from the United States,” Charap wrote. Accordingly, that gives the US “significant leverage” on Kiev, which at that point had been “largely untapped.” To date, the US had “not yet used its influence to push for progress on the Donbas conflict.”
Instead of “focusing only on coercing Russia,” Charap proposed, “the Biden administration should also push Kyiv to take steps toward implementing its obligations under the Minsk II agreement, which Ukraine has shown little desire to do since the deal was brokered six years ago.” If the Ukrainian government could be pushed “toward complying with the agreement, flawed as it is,” that “might actually invite de-escalation from Russia and reinvigorate the languishing peace process,” while saving Ukraine “from calamity.”
Instead, Biden chose to sit idle as Ukraine’s far-right blocked any such peace process, to the point of threatening Zelensky with an outright coup if he reached a deal with Russia…..”
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