On 26 March 2022, President Biden called Vladimir Putin a ‘butcher” and declared that he “cannot remain in power.” But top American diplomats soon tried to play down Biden’s remarks and when subsequently asked by a reporter if he was calling for regime change in Russia, Biden gave a one-word reply: “No.”
On 31 May 2022 Biden subsequently clarified his position in the New York Times: “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia. As much as I disagree with Mr. Putin, and find his actions an outrage, the United States will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow… My principle throughout this crisis has been “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” I will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions. It would be wrong and contrary to well-settled principles to do so.”[1]
In June 2022 Biden made statements that while he will provide aid to Ukraine for “as long as it takes” he thinks that ending the war will eventually require a negotiated/political settlement.[2]
In late September 2022 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree declaring it “impossible” to negotiate with the Russian leader. “We will negotiate with the new president,” he said in a video address.[3]
Despite what Biden had written in the New York Times in May on 5 November 2022 the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration was privately encouraging Ukraine to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin were removed from power. But whatever was or was not said in private it appears to have had little to no effect in Ukrainian Government’s public position.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Putin for war crimes. Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov then stated that it would be hard to imagine how peace talks could now be conducted with Putin given the arrest warrant. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba went further stating it had been clear even before the ICC warrant that it would be impossible for Putin to be counterpart on the other side of the negotiating table.
The conclusion from all this would seem to be that:
- The US government claims that it does not itself have an official policy of regime change.
- The US government does however concede a negotiated settlement to the war will eventually be required.
- The US government will continue aid to Ukraine “for as long as it takes” despite the fact that the Ukrainian clearly enough DOES have a policy of regime change and says it will not negotiate with Putin.
All of this raises more questions:
- How realistic a goal is regime change in Russia?
- How likely is it that Vladimir Putin will be the first leader of a nuclear power ever to be arrested and tried for war crimes?
- If Putin did fall from power would any leader that replaced him likely be a better partner for Ukraine to negotiate peace with?
- Is Vladimir Putin, the individual an essential element of Putinism? Or will what the West sees as the defining features of Putinism- nationalism, autocracy, rent extraction by elites, promotion of religiously based, socially conservative values- likely persist even after Putin’s personal power has come to an end?
Whatever the answer to these questions, there appears to be no likelihood of any negotiated settlement of the war at least until Ukraine’s summer has passed. BY then the Ukrainian counter offensive will have either made substantial inroads, failed miserably, or resulted in a continuing stalemate.
Both sides clearly think they still have a chance of winning a military victory that is decisive enough to put them in a stronger bargaining position for any negotiations that might eventually occur.
There is still much more blood to be spilled in Ukraine and the summer is likely to prove very ugly.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/biden-ukraine-strategy.html
[2] https://nypost.com/2022/06/03/biden-says-ukraine-might-have-to-give-russia-land/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/05/ukraine-russia-peace-negotiations/