An American writer criticized the initiatives aimed at pushing Russia and Ukraine to sit at the negotiating table to end the ongoing war, and said that it is in the interest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He pointed out that the speech delivered by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the US Congress last month came at a critical time, not only because Kyiv continues to use Western equipment to expel and destroy Russian forces entrenched in the battlefronts, but also because calls for a settlement to end the war are also gaining momentum in Washington. .
Casey Michel, a New York-based journalist and researcher at the Hudson Institute, said in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the first calls for negotiations were made last October by members of the Progressive Caucus in the US House of Representatives, which are A group of lawmakers is working to push a more progressive agenda in the legislature.
He added that these calls have been renewed by important personalities in recent weeks.
A few days before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote an article urging the West to pressure Ukraine for a "negotiated peace".
However, Michel believes that such a peace would make Russia give up all the territories it has seized since the beginning of the current invasion, while the rest of the territories occupied by Russia will be subject to negotiation after a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the West is working on formulating "a new international structure ... Russia will eventually find a place in it," according to Michel, who quoted this phrase from Kissinger's article.
The researcher on Cold War issues, Vladislav Zubuk, agrees with this opinion, who believes that the time has come for the West to tempt Moscow to sit at the negotiating table.
Although these arguments have effect, they are based on faulty assumptions, "not only threatens to undermine the Ukrainian momentum on the battlefield, but may lead to the neglect of the Ukrainian population in the territories still under Russia's control."
Moreover, those with such arguments do not understand the Kremlin under Putin's leadership with its whims "saturated with vengeance and dreams of imperial glory," as described in the "Wall Street Journal" article.
In his article, Michel claims that the calls for negotiation would signal to President Putin that his only remaining strategy might work, which is to see what happens in the West, in the hope of a wider split among pro-Ukrainian Westerners.