Putin’s Offer To Achieve a Ceasefire With Ukraine by Freezing Battle Lines Is Met With Skepticism in the West

President Putin’s offer, through intermediaries, to achieve a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire by freezing battle lines in place, is being met with skepticism in Ukraine and Western Europe today. Four Putin aides tell Reuters that Mr. Putin, who started his sixth term earlier this month, does not want to be stuck with a forever war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells Reuters that Russia does not want “eternal war.”Analysts said today that Mr. Putin made an offer to take the wind out of the sails of an 80-country Ukraine peace conference that President Zelenskiy is holding in two weeks in Switzerland. Mr. Putin is not invited. Standing in the bombed-out ruins of a book publisher at Kharkiv, Ukraine’s president recorded a video appeal inviting the two world leaders who could make a difference: President Biden and President Xi.Mr. Putin’s bid for peace comes as the war is not going well for Russia. On Friday, Russia’s dead and severely wounded toll, as calculated by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, topped 500,000. In American terms, as adjusted for population, that would be 1.2 million killed and mained in 25 months. For comparison, the Soviet Army lost 75,000 dead and wounded during its decade long occupation of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union had a population twice the size of Russias. By contrast, America suffered about 200,000 either killed or severely wounded during 20 years in Vietnam.British and French defense officials say these tallies track with theirs. Last month, Britain’s armed forces minister, Leo Docherty, said that Britain estimates Russian losses at over 450,000 “killed or wounded” and reckons that “tens of thousands more have already deserted.”To put the war on a new course, Mr. Putin two weeks ago appointed as defense minister Andrei Belousov, a gray-haired 65-year-old economist and management expert with no military experience. He has been called “Russia’s McNamara,” after the former Ford Motor Company “whiz kid” turned defense secretary who tried to achieve success in Vietnam between 1961 and 1968.Mr. Belousov has started his tenure by firing and jailing several generals accused of corruption. Then in an indication that Russia’s appalling battlefield losses are having an impact on the Kremlin, he made a little noticed statement at a Russian parliamentary hearing: “The key task, of course, remains achieving victory. Ensuring the achievement of the military-political goals of the special military operation, set by the president. At the same time — I want to specifically emphasize this — with minimal human losses.”In the field, the big losses are not translating into big territorial gains for Russia. Earlier this month, to mark Mr. Putin’s May 7 inauguration, thousands of Russian soldiers crossed into Ukraine. Three weeks later, the Russians control half of a district capital, Volchansk. Mr. Zelenskiy said his troops have established “combat control” in the area. Now, Ukraine says Russians are massing for another cross-border on Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine. With the crisis past, Mr. Zelensky was in Spain today, a working trip to the Iberian peninsula that had been postponed due to the Kharkiv attacks.Similarly, Russia has failed to take Chasiv Yar, a Donetsk district capital that was to have been taken in time for Russia’s mid-March elections. The town is located 10 miles west of Bakhmut, a city taken by Russia one year ago at the price of 40,000 lives. Overall the land war is largely a stalemate. In the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine has recaptured 54 percent of occupied territory. Russia still occupies 18 percent of the country.In the Black Sea, Ukrainian rockets and maritime drones have sunk or severely damaged one third of the Black Sea fleet. Most warships have taken cover in Novorossiysk, a mainland Russian port. Britain’s Defense Ministry said last week that two missile carriers were transferred down the Volga–Don Shipping Canal to the safety of the Caspian Sea.In the air Ukraine shot down five jet warplanes in eight days this month. Today, Ukrainian officials said that one of their drones flew east a record 1,100 miles to damage a radar array in Orenburg.On the international front, the winds are blowing against Russia. Today, France signed an agreement with Ukraine to allow French soldiers to train Ukrainian soldiers inside Ukraine. Also today, a group of Baltic parliamentarians said they would ask their governments to send troops to fight in Ukraine. Poland says it is working on creating an air defense umbrella for Western Ukraine.NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, joined a growing chorus of European voices appealing in an Economist interview for Washington to allow American-supplied rockets to hit military targets inside Ukraine. In response, Mr. Peskov warned that “NATO is flirting with military rhetoric and falling into military ecstasy.”Even Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary, Russia’s biggest ally in Europe, is expressing skepticism about Russia’s army. About 41 percent of European Union resolutions regarding Ukraine were blocked by Hungary, Foreign Minister Gabrielus Landsbergis of Lithuania said today.“If the Russians were strong enough to defeat the Ukrainians in one go, they would have been defeated, but that’s not what we’re seeing,” Mr. Orban said Friday in a radio interview. Addressing a Russian threat to NATO, he said: “I don’t think it’s logical to assume that Russia, who can’t even deal with Ukraine, will suddenly come and catch the whole Western world.”All five Kremlin sources quoted — anonymously — by Reuters said Mr. Putin has told advisers he has no designs on NATO territory. One spelled out the ideal off ramp for the Russian leader: “Putin will say that we won, that NATO attacked us and we kept our sovereignty, that we have a land corridor to Crimea, which is true.”

Putin’s Offer To Achieve a Ceasefire With Ukraine by Freezing Battle Lines Is Met With Skepticism in the West

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