MSNBC What a NATO official’s surprising statement reveals about the war in Ukraine Experts say that talk of a land concession to Russia wasn't just a gaffe. Aug. 17, 2023, 11:32 PM +03 By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor

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What a NATO official’s surprising statement reveals about the war in Ukraine

Experts say that talk of a land concession to Russia wasn't just a gaffe.

Aug. 17, 2023, 11:32 PM +03

By Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor

Stian Jennsen, the chief of staff to the NATO secretary-general, made a surprising statement Tuesday about how the war in Ukraine could end. “I think that a solution could be for Ukraine to give up territory" to Russia, he told a debate panel in Norway, “and get NATO membership in return.”

Though Jennsen also noted that Ukraine, not its allies, should decide the terms of negotiation, his remarks caused a firestorm. Ukrainian officials slammed his remarks as “ridiculous” and “completely unacceptable,” arguing that any land concession would be an unconscionable capitulation to Russian aggression. European diplomats were also caught off guard, describing Jennsen’s comments as out of line with NATO’s position. NATO even released a statement clarifying that its position on the war hadn’t changed and that it supports “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”   

Jennsen’s remarks most likely reflect a growing pessimism over Ukraine’s odds of completely expelling Russia from its territory.

The next day, Jennsen expressed regret for the way he had phrased his comments, saying they were “part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I shouldn’t have said it that way.” But he appeared to stop short of walking back the substance of his statement. He emphasized that territorial control will “necessarily have a decisive influence” on peace negotiations, seeming to leave open the possibility of Ukraine giving up land. 

But Jennsen’s clarification didn’t answer the more fundamental question: How is a senior NATO official floating ideas apparently at odds with the way Western capitals and Ukraine want to talk about the war?

Experts say that Jennsen’s remarks most likely reflect a growing pessimism over Ukraine’s odds of completely expelling Russia from its territory. Jennsen isn’t saying that Ukraine should give up territory, but his remarks might reflect how some people behind closed doors are thinking about it as a possibility given Russia’s entrenchment. His remarks could have the effect of weakening Ukraine’s negotiating position — but they could also be a realistic preview of the future.

Some people treated Jennsen’s first statement as a gaffe. But the comments likely “didn’t come from nowhere,” said Paul Poast, an international relations professor at the University of Chicago. George Beebe, the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft and a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA, agrees. “These sorts of things don’t happen accidentally,” Beebe said. “It was not an official position, not an official communication, but I think certainly when an official of this rank says something like this publicly it’s a sign that people are thinking about ways out of the war.”

With Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive making slow, incremental gains in recapturing Russian-occupied territory, some defense officials and diplomats’ assessments of what the endgame for the war might look like are shifting. While Kyiv has made some modest gains, the slow progress has raised questions of whether expelling Russia entirely from vast swaths of Ukrainian territory might be an impossible task. 

Unlike in the first months of the conflict, Russia now has the advantage of being on the defensive. Military experts say that Ukraine needs a 3-to-1 advantage to prevail on offense, but that it likely has something closer to a 1-to-1 ratio with Russian forces in Ukraine. Russia has far more manpower, airpower and financial resources, and has taken up land Ukraine could otherwise use for its economy. While President Joe Biden could send more weapons, his administration has consistently — and wisely — declined to send the kind of offensive long-range weaponry that would risk triggering a nuclear escalation with Russia. 

This set of circumstances has a growing number of experts forecasting a stalemate. “The most likely outcome of this war, I think, is a frozen conflict on the ground as we wait to see what happens politically,” John Nagl, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and professor of warfighting studies at the U.S. Army War College, told New York Magazine recently. Poast was not ready to call the counteroffensive a lost cause, “but I think it’s also illustrating how difficult it is going to be to push Russia out of the territory, especially permanently and fully, and I think that’s the reason why this is now coming on to the table,” he said. 

If Ukraine can’t expel Russia by force, there’s going to be a negotiated settlement — which is how most wars end. “If your plan for how to end the war looks like it’s not working out, it’s only natural to say, OK, well then what should we be doing?” Beebe told me. 

A key thing to remember is that for Ukraine to join NATO, it has to meet the provision of the organization’s charter that new members not have ongoing territorial disputes. The reason is straightforward — because NATO must defend all of its members, NATO would automatically be at war with Russia if Ukraine were still at war with Russia upon joining. “Anyone contemplating admitting Ukraine into NATO in the future has to account for the control of Ukrainian territory by Russia today,” Christopher Preble, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told me.  

It is not surprising that Jennsen’s comments would infuriate Ukrainian leaders who see a comment from such a senior NATO official as opening up the possibility of territorial concessions prematurely when they’re still committed to fighting for as hard and long as possible. Moreover, there’s something to be said about the awkward timing. Even if some people in the Western alliance are seeing the war as looking grim for Ukraine, saying these things during an ongoing counteroffensive is demoralizing and could embolden Moscow further.

Experts I spoke to varied on whether it’s actually realistic for some kind of exchange of territory for NATO status to be arranged. Beebe said that he thinks Russia would not accept a NATO-aligned Ukraine at all, while Poast seemed to see it as a more realistic possibility. 

But ultimately it does seem that there is a world in which Ukraine fails to push Russia out of much of its territory in the coming years, and may be forced to consider a de facto concession of some territory (even if not a formal one) in exchange for security guarantees as part of a settlement deal. It would, of course, be a tragic outcome for Ukraine to lose a huge chunk of its land to an autocratic aggressor. But Jennsen’s remarks are a reminder that, given the difficult situation Ukraine faces, such an end is not out of the realm of possibility. 

Zeeshan Aleem

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily.

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