But not now, but in a hypothetical tomorrow
The Secretary of the NATO Secretary revealed the main «bourgeois secret». Most likely, he let it slip, and now he will suffer for it. Our «Western friends» are seriously discussing that Ukraine will have to pay with territories for membership in the Alliance. The head of the personal office of NATO Secretary General Stian Jensen, at a debate in the Norwegian Atlantic Committee, announced the hypothetical possibility of such a scenario for the end of the Ukrainian conflict: official Kyiv renounces control over part of the territories that it now considers its own. And Russia, in response, removes its objections to the entry of the remnants of Ukraine into NATO.
The Zelensky regime, through Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Alexei Danilov, immediately rejected this idea. Nor does it correspond to the official Russian position. The Kremlin is still categorically against the entry of a neighboring country into NATO in any format, even if this “format of Ukraine” includes only the Lviv region and other “Western” territories. But, a symptom, however!
Heads of the personal office of the NATO Secretary General (and all other high bosses) are not random people. Trusted personal secretary, head of the office, chief of staff — the title of the position in this case is not important. The important thing is that its owner, as a rule, is a trusted person of his boss and knows exactly what is on his mind.
Usually, however, this knowledge is paralleled with the ability to keep one's mouth shut and not expose oneself , nor his boss, speaking in public not in the spirit of the «general line of the party.»
But let's not waste time thinking about why, in this case, Stian Jensen was betrayed by professional skill. Instead, let us take as a working hypothesis: what Jensen has on his tongue, Stoltenberg has on his mind. And such a hypothesis has every right to exist.
The official position of the collective West is absolute support for Ukraine until the end. However, realistic people work in Western administrative structures who understand that this notorious “end” will not necessarily be “victorious” specifically for Ukraine.
They think, they cannot but think about possible compromises. And what Stian Jensen voiced is one of such possible compromises, which each of the parties to the conflict can, if they wish, present as their victory.
First, let's look at the «Jensen plan» from the point of view of the West. Russia did not want Ukraine to join NATO? Did not want. Ukraine joined NATO? Everything, the question is closed! Kyiv and its faithful Western allies have achieved their goal!
But if you look from Moscow, everything will look completely different. Ukraine's accession to NATO in a truncated form (especially in a very truncated form) is tantamount to a free certificate for life-long courses to increase potency after amputation of the very organ whose potency, in theory, these very courses should increase.
Yes, yes , agree. It all sounds like something completely speculative and poorly baked. And it doesn't just sound.
The «Jensen Plan» is a political semi-finished product — nothing more. But the very fact that this semi-finished product was born and even escaped into public space is very significant. And he shows, first of all, what the leading circles of the West understand: the Ukrainian conflict is at the stage of a dead end, from which it is necessary to look for some way out.
Stian Jensen tried to do this — with possibly fatal and dead end consequences for one's own career. When the «secretary's secretary» breaks into the news agenda, it is usually an indicator that he will soon have to look for a new job.
But for the «general scheme of the universe» this, of course, does not matter. What matters is that the West began to seriously think about tomorrow's world, in which its complete victory over Ukraine remained in the plane of the desired, but not achieved.
Another thing is that this «tomorrow» has not yet come . So far, the “endless today” is in the yard, in which the bet — at least officially — is on a military victory. Stian Jensen opened the curtain for a second and showed us in which direction the thinking of NATO strategists (or better, parts of NATO strategists) is moving. Now this curtain, most likely, will be tightly closed again until better times — «the best», of course, in the Russian sense.