‘Ukraine fatigue’ shows up in the West

An unnamed United States official has reportedly told The Washington Post newspaper, “Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners.” And the newspaper indicated that the US has been advising Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the war, while another report in The Wall Street Journal has hinted of secret talks between the US and Russian officials to de-escalate the war.

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated in his meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month that Russia was willing to end the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was firm that there can be no negotiations with Russia unless Ukraine regains the territory occupied by Russia in the war.

Diplomats might say that Zelensky’s position is not as inflexible as it might appear, and that the Ukrainian president has to take a tough stand to get a better peace deal if the talks were to take place.

But peace is as complicated as war in the case of Ukraine and Russia. So far, both the US and the European Union (EU) countries, or at least the EU, had taken a belligerent position against Russia, and the economic war between Russia and EU has been bad for both sides. Part of the economic crisis – higher fuel prices, fuel shortages and inflations – are the direct consequence of the war.

Both France and Germany have been wary of taking an uncompromising positions towards Russia, but the attempts of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to persuade Putin to back off have failed. The only NATO country that has managed to get the Russians to allow Ukraine to export wheat was Turkiye.

It was US Defence Secretary Llyod Austin who had a telephonic conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, though the details of the conversation are not yet in the public domain. And the US has given nearly a trillion-dollar military and other aid to Ukraine, and it is one of the major reasons that Ukraine had been able to beat back the Russian forces in the east, and defend its capital, Kyiv.

The war situation became a little more complicated when the Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abollahian admitted a few days ago that Iran had sold drones to Russia much before the war had begun, and that it would not agree to the Iranian drones to be used in the war against Ukraine because Tehran is maintaining strict neutrality between the two.

And Ukraine has taken strong objection to Iran’s drones being deployed in the war. Both sides – Ukraine and Russia – need a face-saving exit strategy.

Russian President Putin cannot afford to enter peace talks because the Russian forces are being beaten back. Putin’s consolation is that he has occupied the four small regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and it is holding on to them.

Ukrainian President Zelensky is rightfully demanding that the Russian forces must vacate these parts, though he is also demanding that Russia withdraw from Crimea which it had occupied in 2014.

But with the war having reached a stage of attrition, it becomes difficult for the US and the Western European countries of the EU to support Ukraine with no end to the war in sight. That is why the phrase ‘Ukraine fatigue’ becomes a key issue.

But it cannot be unresolved conflict in Ukraine as it has happened in Cyprus. There has to be a compromise.

The war had begun because of the provocation that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Russia wanted an assurance that Ukraine would not join the Western military alliance, and it is an assurance that the US-led NATO refused to give. There is need for a rethink on the NATO issue. But with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the issue becomes all the more complicated. War is unsustainable, and peace is elusive in this war.