(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Opinion | How to Support Ukraine Beyond the Next Election [1]

['The Editorial Board']

Date: 2023-09-15

Any talk of a cease-fire or negotiations is premature; neither side is ready to negotiate, and the United States is in no position to compel them to come to the table. Mr. Putin, who chose to wage this war, could end it today simply by calling back his troops. Yet he continues his claim to nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and has shown no interest in a cease-fire. He has gambled from the outset that time will erode the Western commitment to Ukraine, and he would most likely read any push toward a cease-fire as confirmation that his strategy is working.

And so long as Russia is not ready to talk, neither can Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, whose publicly declared goal is to drive the Russians out of all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbas. Ceding any territory to the Russian invader is anathema to Mr. Zelensky and the Ukrainians, and they would not agree to a cease-fire that might be used by Mr. Putin to regroup and attack again.

The moment when both sides conclude that they have nothing more to gain on the battlefield, most likely the prerequisite for negotiations even to be considered by either side, still appears a long way off.

President Biden’s position from the outset of the war, shared by America’s allies, has been to give Ukraine the weapons and resources to defend itself, so that when the time comes, it would be “in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” But the decision on negotiating belongs to Ukraine, as Mr. Biden wrote in a guest essay in The Times in May and has reiterated many times: “I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions.”

While this board has questioned some specific decisions by Mr. Biden, such as supplying the Ukrainian Army with cluster munitions, we agree with him that it would be “wrong and contrary to well-settled principles” to pressure another country to negotiate over its sovereign territory.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/opinion/ukraine-russia-negotiations.html

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.