War in Ukraine | “Russia is holding the world hostage”

Ukraine is the victim of a war wanted by Russia and it is not up to the West to tell it which territories to cede or not to cede to meet the demands of the Kremlin, believes Steven Pifer, former ambassador of the United States United in Ukraine, nonresident senior member of the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Initiative at the Brookings Institute and a research fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. The Press spoke to him.

Nicolas Berube
The Press

What do you think of Western leaders, as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, suggesting that Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia in exchange for an end to hostilities?

I am against this idea. It is not for the West to suggest such a thing. If the Ukrainian President [Volodymyr] Zelensky one day concludes that ceding territory is a good option, that’s one thing. But the West does not have to tell Ukraine what to do, which, let us remember, is a victim in this war. The West does not have to satisfy Vladimir Putin.

I also believe that Zelensky is truly saddened by the fact that every day more Ukrainians are losing their lives in this war. I also believe that he wants to protect certain principles, such as the principle that countries cannot use military force to change borders. And even if he wanted to make territorial concessions, an agreement like this could work against him if the Ukrainians were to judge that it goes too far.

As for Kissinger, I believe he was always of the opinion that small countries had to make sacrifices to satisfy large countries. In this case, it is quite clear that the Ukrainians are ready to resist. We’re talking about a war that Russia has chosen to wage, so I don’t think we should push Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire.

Volodymyr Zelensky even said that he would like to take back all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. Is this possible?

I think that militarily the Ukrainians have done a remarkable job in defending their country. They protected Kyiv, they carried out counterattacks in Kharkiv and elsewhere. But the Russians are making progress now in the Donbass. Even if the Ukrainians could stop them, could they transition to launch a major counteroffensive to drive the Russians out of Crimea? It would be an important struggle to go and reconquer the Crimea. I don’t rule out such a scenario, it’s just that it’s hard to imagine. Again, it’s up to them how they want to go about it.

Western countries have delivered heavy weapons to Ukraine, but Kyiv believes that it still lacks a lot of them and that the Ukrainian army is still at a disadvantage compared to the Russian army. Is the West too cautious?

At the start of the war, the West was a bit cautious, partly because people believed that Ukraine would not be able to resist invasion. Then the focus was on equipment that Ukraine could use quickly, like Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missile launchers, which are easy to handle. About six weeks ago, in Washington and elsewhere, attitudes began to change. Seeing that the war was going to last, we decided to send equipment that required training.

Some of my colleagues have criticized the Biden administration and accused it of dragging its feet, but instead I think things are moving fast. We’ll see what the $40 billion in aid just approved by Congress will do. What could help the Ukrainians the most are the MLRS multiple rocket launchers. It would give them the possibility of bombarding the Russian artillery at a distance of 60 or 70 km, which could give them an advantage. Currently, Russia is bombing heavily in eastern Ukraine.

You were worried recently about the fact that Ukraine is unable to export its grain to the world… How can you imagine a way out of the crisis?

Russia is holding the world hostage in this regard. This week, a member of the Russian government specifically said that Russia was blocking the shipment of Ukrainian grain by ship from Odessa. He said: “Maybe we could let the grain go if the West could reduce the sanctions against Russia. Ukraine has between 20 and 25 million tons of grain that it could send quickly to countries that need it on the world market. All this could be done quickly if the Russians opened access to the port of Odessa.

In my opinion, this is an ideal operation for the United Nations. It shouldn’t be difficult to arrange for ships to arrive that could be inspected by the Russian Navy, and then to pick up the grain and bring it to markets that are currently suffering from a lack of food. To fail to do so is to potentially bring tragedy to the countries that depend on exports from Ukraine to feed their people.