Klaus Kondrup om den seneste situation: Nu venter vi på at se, om Washington kan levere på deres løfter til Moskva så samtalerne vil fortsætte.

The Western public spheres are in disarray, since they cannot make reality fit their narrative. When one takes point of departure in what happens on the ground, a clear picture emerges.

Rasputitsa

We are in the wet season. At least for a couple of weeks more now. Expect major offensives in Ukraine after that. There is no reason why AFR should not seek to maximize on their advantages throughout summer. AFU should seek to maximize too. A strategically carried out offensive could seriously disrupt a part of AFRs front. But that points directly to the larger issue, that the front is so long: AFU is exhausted and overwhelmed. In March AFU has enjoyed succesful counter attacks at Toretsk, Chasiv Yar, and Pokrovsk, while AFU has sought to carve out the western flank of AFR advances west of Pokrovsk, with the aim of securing supply routes into the town and further along the frontline to Kramatorsk, and hampering the coming onslaught in direction Dniepropetrovsk, but it has proven unsuccessful: AFR is well dug in there. April is going to be very different. At the moment AFU is fumbling around the border to Belgorod oblast. When the fighting season begins in the coming months, AFR has brought in fresh troops and supplies to assault the exhausted AFU soldiers sitting in their positions, de-moralized. AFR seems ready to advance in at least six parts of the line of contact. Why Kyiv did not seek peace a year ago is impossible for the observer to grasp. That is now 300.000 lost servicemen ago.

Narrative is everything

While the quality of the AFU fighting force is severely diminished, the propaganda from Kyiv is still working in overgear. Supported by the British and the wider West, Kyiv is proliferating the idea, that there is a betrayal by Washington, and that is the sole course of its accelerating collapse. Now a dialogue has commenced between Washington and Moscow in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where Kremlin is positioning itself as the patient, reasonable partner, signaling to Beijing, Brasília and Delhi, that they are moving towards peace, while slowly accepting capitulation from Kyiv. By proxy: Whether Washington can force Kyiv to accept Moscows demands while saving face in the USA and the world, is yet to be seen. The pressure on The White House is enormous. Throughout the catacombs of Kyiv pressure is obviously unbearable. In Europe, the public opinion is still trapped in propaganda, and the leaders detached from reality, clinging to their narrative about the evil Russians, that nobody can talk to, while everybody else does. Now, when Washington has acknowledged that NATO expansion is the fundamental issue, the Europeans are left without orientation and the stories about Ukraine suddenly vanished from the papers and electronic media. Only the fear mongering remains.

Kremlin demands

No NATO, demilitarizing, and denazifying Ukraine. Discussions about the future security architecture in Europe. That is what is on the table while the war continues: The threat from AFR of cutting the AFU frontline in two by advancing northwest around Pokrovsk is real. The situation in Kharkiv and around Siversk is intensifying. Will AFU be able to mount enough troops to set up a meaningful defence? Could they succeed in keeping the battlefield together over summer? Most observers claim that Kyiv will have lost Eastern Ukraine by summer of 2026. Peace seems to be the only other option. Only Bruxelles and Kyiv wants fighting to continue. Kremlin wants the door open to The White House in Washington, while starring down Kyiv as it succumbs. The question is when Kremlin loses confidence in Washingtons ability to control Kyiv and make good on its promises, and makes demands for another handful of oblasts; the Hawks in Moscow wants a security zone around Sebastopol stretching into Mikolaiv west of Kyiv, and a zone around Moscow including Sumy and Kharkiv, north. If it comes to that, Odessa will be engulfed into the Russian Federation and the idea of Ukraine as a viable political entity will become impossible to realize. There is no good alternative to peace, but that is still the unlikely outcome; Washington may want that badly, for the time being, but can The White House deliver?

Klaus Kondrup writes on Substack