As reflected in two recent publications, the British Crown’s Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), sees last week’s mutiny by the Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin as the opportunity to intensify the drive for military victory in Ukraine and ignore any and all calls for a negotiated settlement or other peace overtures.
This lunacy is spelled out in the special report issued June 27, entitled “How To End Russia’s War on Ukraine,” which includes nine chapters, each of which purports to debunk a specific proposal, such as a call for a negotiated settlement, or an objection to further bolstering assistance to Ukraine, or anything else the authors consider unacceptable “quick fixes” to the war. It’s clear from the summary that the authors are worried about what they say are “proliferating” calls for compromise, a “euphemism for granting Russia its demands.” The reality is, it says, that the international response has been inadequate to the task, “dangerously wobbly” while “Russia’s wider threat to the rules-based international order is also insufficiently acknowledged.”
The only way to safeguard Europe’s future security, the summary continues, is “a convincing Ukrainian victory,” requiring the redoubling of Western military support to Kyiv “before it’s too late.” Time is of the essence, the report insists, also because the U.S. is heading into elections that might soon reduce U.S. foreign policy engagement or even produce a more “inward- looking” administration in D.C. The bottom line? Forget about any diplomatic solution—it might end hostilities for a while but that would only postpone “the essential reckoning with Russia,” and it is pointless without an achievable long-term plan for Ukraine’s security. “Backing a full and unambiguous Ukrainian victory is therefore essential,” and requires a “massive influx of weapons.” (https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-end-russias-war-ukraine )
