It has become a mantra among Western leaders and commentators that the only solution to the fighting in Ukraine is a diplomatic one involving negotiations, but Andrey Illarionov says that “all of the possible solutions” to Putin’s subversion and aggression in Ukraine are military ones.
Speaking to a session of the Riga Conference on Security yesterday, the Russian commentator said that these are divided not between those which are military and those which are not but rather between those in which one side wins and those in which the other does.
Illarionov compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with that of an armed bandit on a dark street. It is “completely logical” for the person being attacked to “struggle for his life by any means.” But it isn’t logical or indeed sensible to suggest that he “propose that the gangster read the Bible or not cross a red line.”
Moreover, those who assume that appeasement will work and that Vladimir Putin will stop when he achieves one of his goals, are “criminally naïve,” as his 2008 invasion of Georgia demonstrated. “Therefore, there is no non-military solution for Putin’s war against Ukraine” whatever some Western leaders or analysts may think, Illarionov concluded.
