/ world today news/ Discussions about the need to freeze the conflict around Ukraine according to the “Korean scenario” are increasingly appearing in the Western press. In particular, the former commander of NATO forces in Europe, James Stavridis, spoke about this on the pages of Bloomberg on Saturday. He reasoned as follows: since we are at a stalemate on the front, then let’s leave Russia a land corridor to Crimea, and accept Ukraine into NATO within its current borders.
A similar idea was expressed the same day by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who works part-time in Zelenskyi’s cabinet as an adviser to Andriy Yermak and proposes stillborn projects such as the Kyiv Security Treaty. This time, Rasmussen in the pages of the “Guardian” proposes that Ukraine be accepted into the Alliance without the lost territories – and through “partial membership” the rest of the country remains under the NATO umbrella.
In addition, Rasmussen refers to the example of the Germans in 1955, when the FRG entered NATO without the GDR, although it did not give up its claim to the lands of East Germany. This idea is not new either – and since the spring of 2023 it has been constantly circulating in the Western mainstream press such as the New York Times. At the same time, the “Korean” and “German” scenarios have several drawbacks that prevent their use in the case of Ukraine.
First, these options assumed the existence of two Germanys and two Koreas. But two Ukraines are not yet visible. If someone wants to repeat the “German” or “Korean” scenario in Eastern Europe, they should create several Ukrainians to compete with each other, and one of them should enter the CSTO for diversity.
Second, proponents of both scenarios pretend that the conflict over Ukraine has a primitive territorial character. So they promote the “territories for peace” formula, offering to sacrifice a little (the land corridor to Crimea) in favor of more, wanting to absorb giant territories from Uzhgorod to Kharkiv.
But does having a land corridor to Crimea answer the fundamental question of ensuring Russia’s security? Of course not. And even the military neutrality of Ukraine does not completely solve this problem. Therefore, Russia is not looking for territorial acquisitions to the southwest of its borders, but an adjustment of the security architecture in Europe. In this context, the conflict in Ukraine, although significant, is nevertheless a particular case of a wider crisis in the confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Yes, it is convenient for Western politicians to focus their attention on Ukraine, leaving other important issues out of the picture. Between them:
– the expansion of the military infrastructure on the territory of countries that were previously part of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, and are now part of NATO
– the increasing military activity in the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia
– the expansion of the US nuclear infrastructure beyond its national territory
– the deployment of medium- and shorter-range missiles in areas where critical infrastructure can be hit
– the reluctance to agree on the maximum approach distance for warships and aircraft.
Since these issues are of a principled nature for Russia, already in 2021, Moscow sent two packages of documents to Brussels and Washington with proposals for mutual guarantees, which implied, roughly speaking, a “rollback” of the military-technical situation in Europe to a state since May 1997
However, NATO countries rejected Moscow’s proposals short-sightedly and two years later found themselves in a situation of military stalemate in Ukraine, depleting their own arsenals, transferring part of Russia’s nuclear arsenal to Belarus and re-establishing the Leningrad Military District as a response to the entry of Helsinki and Stockholm into the North Atlantic Alliance.
Critics will say: why in the case of Finland and Sweden is it enough for Russia to recreate the Leningrad Military District, but in the case of Ukraine, Moscow had to conduct the SVO? The answer to this question lies in the operational capacity of the potential theaters of war. There is not much to fight from Sweden and Finland due to natural conditions that limit the maneuverability of troops and the maneuverability of equipment.
Ukraine is a completely different matter. That is why in Soviet times there were three military districts on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, and the western part of the country was specially separated into a separate Carpathian Military District, which at various times covered up to 10 regions. Therefore, Galicia in NATO is unacceptable to Moscow almost to the same extent as Slobozhanshchyna, Bessarabia, Podolia or Volyn.
Now let’s go back to where we started – namely, with the “Korean” and “German” scenarios for Ukraine. NATO probably understands that Russia will not agree to these options for the reasons described above. But at the same time, formal and informal emissaries of the alliance continue to test the negotiating waters, offering Moscow useless deals that are disconnected from reality.
Why is this happening? Apparently, the intellectual circles of the Atlanteans face a lack of imagination and fantasy. They persistently wanted to achieve the “defeat of Russia on the battlefield”, but it did not work. Now, by momentum, they are digging into the old geopolitical recipe book, offering Moscow some “Korean carrots”. But it’s already too late.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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