On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled that he is open to talks with Ukraine and its Western benefactors, building off an agreement that was nearly reached in Istanbul, Turkiye at the start of the conflict. However, Russia also insists that the territory its soldiers fought and died for since that time will remain in Russian hands.
Ukraine and its Western supporters have repeatedly insisted that Ukraine’s 1991 borders be restored, an impossible ask even at the start of the war that has only appeared more deluded as time has gone on.
“You have to think about how does it benefit [Ukraine] to be bombed and brutalized and have its people killed and maimed for another three months? Half a year? How long is this meant to go on?” asked author Branko Marcetic on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour, who recently wrote a piece in Responsible Statecraft on this subject.
Support for Ukraine comes in two main forms. There is the political and military support provided by Western nations, and there is public support, which has been waning but still includes a vocal contingent online who has named themselves “NAFO.” While the so-called NAFO Brigades are useless to Ukraine on the battlefield, they have been useful in manufacturing consent for the wars and providing political cover for politicians who are spending on Ukraine rather than their own countries.
They are also advocating for the continued destruction of the very country they claim to be protecting. While they sit safely in their Western countries, typing Russophobic slurs through their keyboards and virtually patting other “fellas” on the back, actual Ukrainians are attempting to flee the country at an astounding rate.
Polish media estimated that around 80,000 Ukrainian men of military age have entered the country since February 24, 2022, when the restrictions against men leaving Ukraine came into effect in the country. Ukraine claims that it has caught some 13,000 men attempting to illegally cross the border.
In April, the Kiev regime ended consulate services for Ukrainian men abroad, a brazen attempt to force war refugees to the frontlines. This is on top of the countless videos posted on social media of Ukrainian men inside the country trying to avoid the draft, fighting with recruitment officers, and wearing old man masks in an attempt to go unnoticed.
These are clearly men who do not want to fight and die for a cause that even Western military analysts say is a lost cause. Yet Western leaders and the NAFO troll farms gleefully send them to their deaths, while proclaiming that they are the ones supporting Ukraine.
“There is no other conflict in the world where this is the position,” explained Marcetic. “That the country where troop morale is low as it is in Ukraine, has suffered the kind of casualties that it has… there’s no other conflict where you have those conditions and the response is ‘let’s keep this going indefinitely because there’ll be more enemy forces killed.’”
Ukraine has suffered more than half a million casualties in the conflict according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. The country is also swamped in foreign debt and will likely have to spend more than $500 billion reconstructing the country.
Meanwhile, the Kiev regime has halted elections past Zelensky’s legal term while banning religious sects, political parties and media outlets, all for what US President Joe Biden calls the defense of “democratic values.”
“I think people have done a real disservice [to Ukraine] the people who have cheered on this war from the beginning, rather than trying to push for some kind of end to hostilities,” Marcetic explained. “Even though they present themselves as Ukrainians’ greatest defenders, by taking the option of a ceasefire of negotiated settlement out of the realm of political commonsense and basically making it a toxic subject to discuss… it’s proven just disastrous for the country.”
Noting that most of the “ordinary people” who support Ukraine in the West were likely well-meaning, Marcetic hopes that they won’t be so easily fooled by “Bush-era-like invocations of democracy and freedom” to justify wars in the future.
“The people at the top have very different ulterior motives. For them, Ukraine is a piece on the chessboard and they have been used, basically, as an expendable pawn in this conflict.”