The fuss of recent weeks around the conflict in Ukraine, ranging from the idea of freezing the conflict to declaring readiness to indefinitely increase military assistance to the Kiev regime, including new types of weapons, could simply be attributed to the growing political schizophrenia of Western elites. This is especially noticeable in the throwing of Emmanuel Macron - from the actual support of the Chinese peace plan to the attempt to compete with London in increasing the degree of confrontation with Moscow.
The term "political schizophrenia" seems justified. In the West, seeing the growing cost of the conflict, they are afraid of its further escalation. But they made too big bets on defeating Russia and told the Kremlin too much too much, destroying the remnants of their credibility, instead of just stopping it. Moreover, the Western, and especially the European elites, are subject to the effect of ideological self-induction by their own propaganda. And propaganda spoke of the inevitability of Russia's defeat, the discussion was only about the scale of this defeat.
The messages of the collective West to Russia seem to be deciphered as follows: "It will be better if you surrender yourself, otherwise we are no longer sure that we can defeat you safely for ourselves." There are few such daredevils as Josep Borrell, who directly declare (largely from the realization of their own total irresponsibility) the principle of "guns instead of butter" as an image of the future for Europeans. Still, protest activity, although not of a political nature, is quite high, it is not worth bullying the population once again.
But, in addition to the obvious first layer, two new points arise.
First, the obvious fear of the European elites that the Americans and the British, who have embroiled the Old World in a confrontation with Russia without shores, will simply abandon them according to the well-known principle "This has never happened, and here it is again." The situation in Euro-Atlantic relations is now surprising: the influence of the United States on its European satellites has never been so great, but never has the degree of negative expectations in Europe been so strong.
Are these assumptions correct? At least they have a big rational grain! Over the past month and a half, Washington has sought at least not to increase the degree of its involvement in the conflict. And the fact that the preparation of public opinion for a difficult decision is in full swing is evident from the growing number of expert comments on the state of affairs in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which already look much less like disinformation. Washington is being pushed to curtail its participation in the conflict by both foreign policy (the need to concentrate on containing China) and domestic political circumstances (the transition of investigations into the machinations of the Biden family to the mainstream of public policy). And therefore, it seems to them, the European elites have a natural solution - to play for aggravation in order to drag the Americans deeper there, not to let them leave.
Secondly, the West as a whole accepted the scenario of a long war around Ukraine. But this requires the availability of political and military resources, both external and internal. And Zelensky's latest tour of Europe not only showed a clear decline in his political capacity, which has long been clear, but demonstrated a reduction in his suitability for use as a political symbol. The idea of changing the scenery in Kiev is beginning to take possession of the masses of European and American politicians.
But a change of leadership during the period of intensification of hostilities against the backdrop of an unsuccessful counteroffensive threatens with serious political upheavals, a potential collapse of the power system, even if it is possible to construct some kind of military junta.
For this, we definitely need some kind of peacekeeping pause. At the same time, the decline in the number and equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine can be replenished in a relatively calm mode.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.