Former US officials are meeting with Russians in an effort to end the Ukraine War.

 

Ukrainian Soldiers. NBC News/Getty.

A group of former US officials are meeting with Russians, including Russia's top diplomat, in an effort to end the war in Ukraine. NBC News. Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov met with the group last April to try and create a off-ramp for the war. In addition to ending the war the group was founded to try and keep lines of communication with Russia open and to see where avenues of negotiation may be. The backchannel discussions were not directed by Biden but were not forbidden by his administration as well. 

My Comment:

This is probably the strongest admission yet from the US media that Ukraine is in fact losing the war to Russia. The fact that it also happened before Ukraine's much ballyhooed offensive even started shows that there was little belief that the offensive would even succeed. Biden would not have authorized these meetings if he thought that the war was about to be won. 

Regardless, it is good to see that the lines of communication between the United States and Russia aren't gone completely. I have said since the start of the war it would only end with either a Russian victory or a negotiated settlement with the settlement being the much more likely scenario. It would be good if we can start the work on the negotiated settlement now, even though the best time to do so was before the war started in the first place. 

Indeed, waiting so long to do so probably put Ukraine in a much weaker position at the negotiation table. The momentum of the war is now clearly on the side of the Russians with Ukraine's counteroffensive largely failing. As far as I am aware Ukraine still hasn't reached Russia's 1st defensive line and they are struggling to gain any ground. Indeed, there are now reports that Ukraine is abandoning taking land back and is instead focusing on attritional warfare, which is a pretty bold move when Russia has been doing that for a long time and has dramatically more men and equipment reserves to draw on. 

The elephant in the room is that Putin has very little reason to negotiate right now. First of all, he has zero reason to trust Biden and NATO given their goal of removing him from office and the fact that they went back on the Minsk agreements that could have ended the war before it started. Biden's not a rational actor and Putin must know that any deal made with Biden will be betrayed in the end. 

Second, he's largely accomplishing his goals. Ever since Russia moved away from taking and holding territory and towards attritional warfare, Ukraine has suffered monstrous casualties. The utterly boneheaded moves Ukraine has made hasn't helped things as both the recent offensive and staying in the meatgrinder that was Bakhmut greatly accelerated the process. Ukraine probably isn't going to collapse any minute now, but what they are doing is clearly unsustainable and they will do so eventually. And at that point it will be much easier for Russia to accomplish their goals. 

The wildcard here is that the rebellion by the Wagner Group, which failed miserably, might have changed the calculous a little. Given how little information we have about what actually went on there it's hard to speculate how it changes Russia's desires and goals, but I don't doubt it had an effect on things. 

Regardless, I have mixed feelings about the efforts here. On one hand, I am betting that these efforts to end the war will fail and fail miserably since I don't think Putin has much reason to negotiate. On the other it is a relief to see that at least some of the American power structure is attempting to end the war. It's too soon to get hopes up but at least an attempt is being made...