The Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reports that Joe Biden offered Russian President Vladimir Putin 20% of Ukraine in exchange for a peace treaty. The offer was made by CIA Director William Burns during a top-secret trip to Moscow in January.
The White House is denying the specific “land for peace” offer was made but won’t deny some kind of peace offer wasn’t put forward. The story cited “high level German officials” as sources.
Both Kyiv and Moscow reportedly rejected the proposal.
The 20% offer of Ukraine’s territory is significant. It’s about the size of the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that Russia says it annexed last September. The region has a majority Russian population and is currently ravaged by civil war.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has been adamant that Donbas is Ukrainian territory and the war won’t end until all Ukrainian territory seized by Moscow — including Crimea — was recovered.
Kyiv reportedly shut down the proposal “because they are not willing to have their territory divided” while Russian officials said they “will win the war in the long run anyway,” reported NZZ, which has been described as the Swiss newspaper of record.
Sean Davett, the deputy spokesperson at White House’s National Security Council, told Newsweek that the report from NZZ is “not accurate,” and that the CIA would say the same.
According to the news outlet the German politicians said Biden wanted to avoid a protracted war in Ukraine, and so, offered the territory as part of the peace plan.
The administration is divided over its Ukraine strategy. Some, like CIA director Burns, want to try to end the war in Ukraine quickly in order for the United States to turn its attention to China.
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But Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “didn’t want to let Russia get away with destroying the rule-based peace order and called for massive military support for Ukraine.”
One of the politicians told NZZ that he believes it is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. is preparing for a long war of attrition. He raised concerns that Germany would suffer economically, financially and militarily from such a war.
Germany has also said it would provide Ukraine with 14 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks, and allow partner countries to re-export other tanks to assist Kyiv.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on January 26 that the promised Leopard 2 tanks will arrive in Ukraine at the end of March or the start of April.
That arrival date for the tanks may be too late to impact the coming Russian offensive that some analysts in Ukraine are predicting to begin on the first anniversary of the war’s beginning: Feb. 22.
A nation should only be as principled as it can afford to be. The principles Austin and Blinken are trying to defend are all well and good but when defending them could mean eventually using nuclear weapons, is it really worth it?
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