Over recent weeks, there has been a flurry of extraordinary mainstream media reports admitting the hitherto unthinkable and unsayable. The war in Ukraine is over, Moscow has won, and Kiev has lost. Badly. Very, very badly indeed.

Perhaps the most stunning example was provided by a January 6th op-ed in The Spectator, authored by the outlet’s resident “Russia expert” Owen Matthews. A longstanding Maidan acolyte, in June 2023 he published Overreach, a pseudo-psychological account of why the February 2022 special military operation came to pass. Attributing the world-changing action to Kremlin delusions of spawning an illegitimate modern day hybrid of the Tsarist Empire and Soviet Union, his conclusions were stark, forecasting imminent, utter catastrophe for Vladimir Putin:

“Not only [will] Putin leave no lasting ideological legacy but any legacy of prosperity and stability that he may have created [was] destroyed by his own decision to make war on Ukraine. The price of his illusions was not only thousands of lost lives but also a lost future for Russia.”

Fast forward to today, and Matthews has a rather different take on things. He observes how there is “one brutal truth at the core of Putin’s maneuverings.” Namely, “the partition of Ukraine has, to a significant extent, already happened,” and “the key challenge facing US policymakers this year will be how to handle that reality”:

“The past year of fruitless fighting has shown that reconquering Ukraine’s lost territories in their entirety will require many times more blood and treasure than has already been spent - money that the US is increasingly unwilling to provide.”

The biggest barrier to the Empire simply admitting defeat, is “no one in Washington” wants “to spell it out” to Western audiences. Put simply, recognising Russia’s permanent ownership of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia “would represent a profound humiliation for the US and its allies.” Publicly, at least. This is highly problematic, for as Matthews acknowledges, “the final outcome of the war will be determined not in Kyiv but in Washington.”

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‘No Longer Possible’

Despite Biden’s repeated pledges to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” since February 2022, and White House spokespeople endlessly claiming it is up to Kiev when the war finishes, ultimately “Washington’s hand is on the tap of military and financial aid that is the lifeblood of Ukraine’s war effort.” This means the US has final say over when the proxy war ends - but not how:

“With the possibility of an incoming Trump administration, Putin has every incentive to wait for the outcome of the US presidential election this November before finalising any deal. But any deal Trump might do over Ukraine would in fact be little different to the one available to Biden…Partition [is] the only deal likely to be on the table.”

Never one to conceal his allegiances, Matthews argues Ukraine’s stated war aim of restoring its 1991 borders “has the logic and virtue of being just in international law.” Nonetheless, he is forced to concede even if “a reconquest” of the four lost oblasts were militarily possible,” there is no guarantee “their re-incorporation into Ukraine” would “make the country safer and more stable.” In fact, “the contrary” may be the case.

Up to 130,000 Donbass residents have been fighting alongside Russia on the frontlines, “for their own home territory.” In many cases, their battle long-predates Moscow’s arrival in 2022. Matthews believes they will not simply “lay down their arms en masse and welcome in the enemies they have been fighting since 2014.” Based on conversations with his “old contacts in Donbas,” there is even “strong opposition to being liberated by Ukraine’s forces.” A local journalist told him, after a trip to Mariupol:

“Some people are angry that Kyiv abandoned them, some are angry that Kyiv resisted and caused so much destruction. But most of all, people very much don’t want the war to come back to their homes. They don’t care what colour their passport is.”

Matthews records how, in a little-remembered episode in October 2019, not long after becoming President, Volodymyr Zelensky “was willing to accept a fudge in the form of a ‘special status’ for the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk inside an effectively federalised Ukraine.” He negotiated “to hold a referendum in the Donbas on its future status in October 2019 – only to have the planned vote cancelled after violent Ukrainian nationalist protests in Kyiv.”

Zelensky no doubt wishes that referendum had gone ahead, therefore likely averting the special military operation. He also surely regrets believing Boris Johnson’s promises of the blankest of blank cheques in return for keeping up the fight, after the then-British Prime Minister flew into Kiev in April 2022 to sabotage peace talks. Under that truce, Zelensky effectively ceded Crimea to Moscow, and ruled out NATO membership for his country. As Matthews laments, today “that kind of compromise is no longer possible.”

Matthews concludes by quoting Mykhailo Podolyak, Zelensky’s chief advisor and close personal ally, to the effect that, “we are talking about defeating Russia, not about territory.” These comments directly echo a December 27th New York Times editorial, “Ukraine Doesn’t Need All Its Territory to Defeat Putin”. The op-ed boldly argued, “recovered territory is not the only measure of victory in this war,” in blunt contravention of every statement by every Western official on the catastrophe over the past 22 months.