ANALYSIS – Initially reluctant in the face of the Ukrainian president’s war aims, Washington has let go of Crimea.
Often politician varies. This was the case of Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky on the diplomatic opening with Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian president had opened negotiations with Russia at the start of the war “without warning the international community and on the basis of an extravagant Russian document”, says a source at the Elysee. He had even briefly considered freezing for a time the status of Crimea, annexed in March 2014. Joe Biden, for his part, indirectly encouraged, until the fall, the Ukrainian presidency to open talks with the Russian regime. . His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also recommended to Volodymyr Zelensky, at the beginning of November, to think about talks and to reconsider his objective of reconquering Crimea.
That same month, the influential general Mark Milley had even affirmed in a meeting that “military victory, in the true sense of the word, was perhaps not attainable by military means”that the belligerents…