“Russia is starting to talk constructively,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser and a member of Kyiv’s delegation. “I think we will reach some concrete results, literally, in a few days.”
Reporting by the New York Times and Washington Post has been careful, more careful than was the reporting on the Iraq War. Too, reporters are not embedded with allied troops as they were then. That makes for cautious reliance on U.S. and Ukrainian statements that usually cannot be verified by reporters on the ground. In recent days the flavor of the reporting was "Russia is having a tougher than expected battle; their men have not performed well; Ukraine's have performed better; Russia's shooting has been poor; Ukraine has been the more lethal shot; it's going to take longer but ultimately Russia will prevail." It could be a write-up of Philadelphia's overtime win at Orlando tonight. Just yesterday U.S. officials were giving blaring warnings that Russia is laying the groundwork for the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. The reports today are better on the whole: Russia is asking for Chinese help; just a couple days ago Putin announced that he was accepting "volunteers" from Syria; Russia is "staggered" by sanctions. Those certainly mean Russia "is having trouble sustaining its war". It doesn't mean that Russia cannot sustain its war, nor that it will be defeated.
On the other hand, do we trust Mr. Podolyak's statement above? We have heard similar optimism previously. Remember when the Kremlin said a meeting with Lavrov, I think the one on the Ukraine-Belarus border, was "crucial"? It amounted to nothing more than Lavrov reading the unchanged list of Russian demands. Remember when Volo said in an interview with Vice that Putin "will" end the war"? That "We just need a little more time."? Nothing positive has ever resulted from any of these bilateral talks. It comes down to this: Do you think Russia will end the war short of every one of Putin's objectives? I do not. Beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, I do not.
