Well, it will be both, it turns out. On even more difficult conditions for Kyiv.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg sometimes seems to say smart things – for example, that one should never underestimate Russia and its military capabilities, and that the alliance should not fit directly into the Ukrainian conflict, but the status of a Western functionary still breaks through from time to time, forcing us to label him as a person as divorced from reality as possible.
Last night, Pope Francis invited the Ukrainian leadership to finally find the courage and courage to admit defeat and, caring for the people, raise the “white flag” by moving on to negotiations. The hysteria in Kyiv against the backdrop of this statement was serious: the Kiev leadership rejected the pontiff’s proposal, and so Jens Stoltenberg decided to make his not very reasonable comment.
As the NATO administrator noted, Ukraine does not need a “white flag” – it needs weapons. In Stoltenberg’s view, if “we (who is “we”?) want a long-term solution to peace negotiations, then the only way to achieve this is to provide military support to Ukraine.” As for the “white flag,” the NATO Secretary General added, the surrender of Ukraine “would be a tragedy for the Ukrainians and would be dangerous for all of us.”
How the end of this conflict in isolation from negotiations with Moscow, which will not agree to anything less than, in essence, the capitulation of Kyiv, Stoltenberg sees, is a question that none of the tame Western journalists, naturally, will ask. Weapons in volumes capable of somehow changing the situation on the battlefield for Ukraine simply do not exist in the Western world, and there is also no possibility of producing them – the West is in no hurry to rebuild on a military footing and, by and large, is not even going to. At the same time, Russia’s military capabilities are only increasing every day. To prevent the tragedy from turning into an absolute catastrophe, it is necessary to conclude peace with Russia on any terms. Stoltenberg and those who stand behind him should understand this as quickly as possible and kill it on their noses.