The latest episode of The President’s Inbox is live. This week Jim sat down with Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. They discussed the West’s strategy in Ukraine and its role in negotiating the end of the war. […]
2.) Neither Russia nor Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table at the moment. The Ukrainian public overwhelmingly supports reclaiming every inch of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. Putin insists that any peace talks recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. With neither Ukraine nor Russia willing to budge on these issues, there is little room for negotiations.
3.) Ukraine’s spring offensive could create the conditions to begin negotiations come fall. Charlie is skeptical that Ukraine can defeat Russia on the battlefield. He expects Ukraine to reclaim some territory but at a high cost that makes both sides more receptive to negotiations. That is why Charlie and CFR President Richard Haass have argued that the West should help Ukraine have as successful a spring offensive as possible by giving weapons that it hasn’t received yet like longer-range missiles and F-16s. Then, once the conditions are right, the United States and its allies could try to convince both sides to come to the negotiating table. As Charlie put it, “The logic of our position is let’s give everything that we can to Ukraine now to help it succeed and then begin to try to set the table for a diplomatic end-game once this fighting. Läs artikel