9/12 Ukraine News Roundup
Trump-Harris Debate: info on Ukraine: Ukraine policy emerged in the debate between Trump and Harris. In general, I think it produced more noise than light but transcript included for reference.
Transcript of Ukraine references
Video clip of all Ukraine references
NYTimes: Blinken arrives: More aid, but no statement on lifting limits on Ukraine defending itself. Secretary of State Blinken and his British counterpart, David Lammy, travelled together to Kyiv. They had meeting with President Zelensky and new Foreign Minister Sybiha. More aid was promised. They discussed the issue of Iran sending ballistic missiles to Russia. Unfortunately, no public statement was made by Blinken about changes to the Biden Administration’s policy which limits Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and places Ukrainian lives at risk from Russian bombing.
WSJ: More Ukrainians Want to Negotiate an End to the War. Soldiers Don’t Agree
Do Ukrianians want to sue for peace? An extended article in WSJ makes that claim, but a look at the data challenges that claim as the actual data shows the opposite. The entire article is based on a survey conducted by the Russian and Eurasia program of the Carnegie Endowment. See article on the survey here. See complete data from the survey here.
The WSJ journalist claims there is a big divide between soldiers and civilians in terms of willingness to cooperate. A quick look at the data shows the opposite. On the key question which is cited in the article about negotiations 55% of active soldiers agree that Ukraine should fight until it liberates all territory to the 1991 borders. This contrasts 52% who have relatives in the military, 51% who have friends in the military and 50% of those without friends or relatives in the military. In a survey with a 2.5% margin of error, this seems like a highly unified country.
In other questions 73% of Ukrainians are very or somewhat confident in liberations of all its territory. Only 5% believe Russia is winning the war. And 91% of Ukrainians believe that Russia only wants to negotiate in order to take time to prepare for a new attack.