Mud Spunge He lives in the United States, where he has been working as a correspondent for many years, but nourishes a deep passion for Russia, his history and his policy. In 2020, he published the book A RUS HISTORY: Chronicle of War in eastern Ukraine And now he has just published his second book about the conflict, focused on one of the cities that took the worst part of the invasion of Moscow troops in 2022: Mariupol, last battle (21st century).
Due to his knowledge of American politics and, specifically, of current President Donald Trump – on which he wrote the book The candidate and fury (2017) -, mud is in a privileged position to analyze the negotiations promoted by the USA with Russia to end the Ukraine conflict, without the participation of kyiv or the European Union. The journalist warns that Trump’s urgency to end the war can lead to a false closure and more problems in the future for Ukraine herself and for Europe.
Can Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine, excluding Zelenski?
It is most likely. One of the conditions that Putin can put to sit down to negotiate is that [Volodímir] Zelenski leaves the presidency of Ukraine, and there are indications that Donald Trump agrees with the idea. The two have talked about celebrating elections in Ukraine, for example, what would be the mechanism to replace Zelenski.
From this perspective, it makes sense to think that public humiliation to Zelenski in the Oval Office of the White House can be aimed at weakening it politically and justify the pressures to abandon power. Right now the entire American right is following Trump’s argumentative line: the idea that Zelenski is an ungrateful that wants to prolong carnage for personal pride and that, therefore, is not prepared to negotiate peace. So yes: the current environment suggests that Zelenski can be excluded from conversations. The question is how these elections would be held, in time of war and with more than six million exiles, who would happen to Zelenski as president of Ukraine.
Where are they going The negotiations between the US and Russia?
I am not optimistic because the situation in Ukraine is very complicated, on the battlefield and political level, and I do not believe that the Russians are content with the apparent concessions that the Trump administration is considering.
On the other hand, there is an asymmetry of priorities: for Trump, the Ukraine War is a discomfort that must be quickly settled to take the peace of peace; For Putin, Ukraine is everything. If Trump wants to get a peace agreement to Matacaballo – like the negotiations with the Taliban, which were the preparation of the disastrous departure of Afghanistan that Joe Biden carried out in 2021 – if he adopts that attitude of speed, that can only occur with concessions to Russia and that peace can be bread for today and hunger for tomorrow.
Can Donald Trump end up so quickly with a war that has lasted three years?
Trump is a person who always prioritizes effectiveness, Telerreality, has a very short -term vision: he wants to be the man who ended the Ukraine War. But that impatience can only lead to a bad agreement that the Russians will exploit for their benefit.
And the Ukrainian political situation must also be taken into account. In Ukraine there are 300,000 combatants right now on the War Front, if they return home to a destroyed home, with a ruined economy, without opportunities or psychological help to overcome the traumas, with cities that are not adapted to people with disabilities … and if that idea of the “stab in the back” of the West begins to circulate, it may be in Ukraine. Bad for Europe. Badly cured post -war are very problematic. A bad peace can lead to that situation.
It must also be said that Trump fills a void. What alternative has the European Union offered? What did Joe Biden offer? The fear of the administration drives to Putin resort to a tactical nuclear weapon has caused Ukraine to have always been limited and that has not allowed Ukrainians to win the war. This stagnation is the one who wants to solve Trump, but it is possible that he does not solve it or to the taste of the EU or the Ukrainians.
The entry of Ukraine into NATO It is still one of the main pitfalls for an agreement, how can it be solved?
Germany and the US have been between racks by braking and hindering the first steps of the Ukraine entry process in NATO. In the EU and in NATO there are differences of opinion: in Eastern Europe, where they are closer to bullets, they defend a Ukraine in NATO that is a shield for Poland and the Baltic countries; But Germany and the US do not want because, it would not only be a provocation for Russia, but it would be a ballast because it is a very prone country to war, regret.
The most important thing [para alcanzar un acuerdo] It is the security guarantee. That guarantee can be a mini-oot with countries in Eastern Europe with a larger actor (for example, USA, although now with Trump it will not happen); At a lower level, it can be a guarantee of security of European and American peace forces; And another step below, a security guarantee to the Israeli: USA and Europe do not have any mutual defense treaty with Ukraine but would give it weapons and financing to make it a garrison state; That is an instrument of deterrence if Russia decides to attack in the future.
The point is that Russia may not accept any of these options, not even that of an armed Ukraine to the teeth.
Why would Russia not accept any of the three options?
Putin’s goal is not entirely clear, but it may be a maximalist objective: eliminate Ukraine from the map, but as a state, which has already done so in the east, at least as a state with its own will and voice, and ability to defend itself. There is a possessive attitude of Russia with respect to Ukraine, not only from the geostrategic point of view, but sentimental, and this is probably the most difficult aspect to deal with.
To write the book he has spoken with many Ukrainians and still has contact with some. How are they feeling while There is talk of the future of Ukraine without them?
It gives me the impression that they are in a moment of stupefaction, trying to digest what is happening. There is an eagerness for growing peace and a clear tiredness of war for all human suffering, material, with seven million people in exile, hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the front, an economy that allocates to defense spending a quarter … a whole series of sacrifices that, if the war continues, will go more.
Ukrainians want peace, but not a peace at any price. And Trump seems to want to close a peace quickly, that can play against Ukrainians and Europeans.
His book tells Mariúpol’s battle, how do you think they are in that city three years after the invasion?
Of the population suffered by the siege [entre febrero y mayo de 2022]there is a part that has gone to another part of Ukraine or abroad so as not to suffer Russian occupation; There is another part that actively supports the Russians and the rest, perhaps the majority, is enduring, regardless of whether the flag that is the Russian or the Ukrainian.
Those who have stayed are suffering rusification, which is something that Russians have historically done wherever they go. They consider that Mariupol is part of historical Russia. There have been deportations [de residentes] To Russia, kidnapping of children who are being raised in Russia [un crimen por el que la Corte Penal Internacional ordenó la detención de Putin] and people who are suspected of collaborating with the Ukrainian authorities have been arrested. The husband of one of the people who interviews in the book has been captivated since May 2022, they know he is alive but cannot communicate with him.
He writes in the book that no city suffered as much as Mariupol. Because?
The suffering in Mariúpol was pasmous and could have been avoided. There were no evacuation plans, the mayor ignored the alarms until the last day [de una invasión rusa]… citizens were not prepared, they didn’t know what shelters go. The military forces did not have time to digs trenches, they had no preparation to resist.
In Ukraine, in January and February 2022, those who were more restless were foreigners, journalists like me. The Ukrainians had been at war for eight years [en la región oriental del Donbás]They said it was nothing new and there was a part that resisted believe that there was going to be a total assault over all Ukraine. This attitude was more noticeable the closer to the front: in Mariúpol, for example, people thought there would be no invasion and that if there was, it would be solved in a few days. The trains, in the first week, when it was still possible to escape, they were empty. Many people even stayed with their families because they had become accustomed to war.
Among the interviews he did to write the book, there are interviews with Members of the controversial Azov Brigade. How were those interviews?
A chapter of the book is dedicated to the Azov Brigade. An orthodoxy has been generated in Ukraine about the presence of ultra -rightists: as the cause of Ukraine is the “correct”, of that correction emanates a somewhat excessive moral superiority that minimizes the problems that may be. The leaders of the Azov Brigade are people who have a clear history in the world of the extreme right, with neo -Nazis elements, and who are part of a political movement called Azov, which has a clear agenda of the extreme right.
However, the Azov brigade has earned the reputation of having very delivered and very hard fighters, and that Mariupol defended bravely. In that chapter I try to make a more detailed portrait, with total honesty, and some Proucranian will feel hurt by it.
The testimonies gathered them during my trips to Ukraine, two trips in 2022 and one in 2023. I met with different survivors in different locations in Ukraine and interviewed civilians already combatants. The fighters gave me the vision of the war in the first person and the civilians the vision of a normal person who suddenly meets a siege, which is the most destructive type of war, urban war. It is interesting to see the siege phenomenon, not only in Mariúpol, but using this example to understand how people suffering from a siege.
Why did you choose to tell Mariúpol’s siege?
I chose Mariupol because it is a city that has a triple importance for the Russians. First, geostrategic importance because it is in the midst of that land corridor that joins the Crimea occupied with continental Russia. It was an important strategic award. The second is that the Russians and prorruse tried to conquer Mariupol in 2014 and failed, which remained that thorn stuck in the military honor of Russia; He wanted to compensate in 2022. And the third is that Russian propaganda has painted Ukraine in a spurious way, as a Nazi regime, based on the demonization of the Azov brigade, and that brigade was in Mariupol; Therefore, to fulfill the objective of the ‘denazification’, the Russians needed to conquer Mariupol because it was the symbol of the ‘Nazification’ of Ukraine.
#Humin
