Page 64 - bneMag Dec22

64 I Eastern Europe bne December 2022
The rising cost of the war in Ukraine is feeding a growing fatigue amongst some of Ukraine's supporters and the US has told Kyiv it should reconsider its hard line of no peace talks with Putin. / bne IntelliNews
Ukraine fatigue builds, but Western support for Kyiv unlikely to falter soon
Ben Aris in Peterborough
"Ukraine fatigue” amongst Kyiv’s Western allies is
building as the war drags on fuelling both a cost of living crisis and
an energy crisis, but Western aid to the embattled country is still far from halting.
“Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners,” one US official told the Washington Post.
The US also admitted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy risks increasing Ukraine fatigue if he continues to reject proposals by the Russian side to start peace negotiations out of hand, The Guardian reports.
The Kremlin has recently been signalling that it is willing to resume talks that last broke up without result in March, although they came tantalisingly close to a deal.
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More recently Ukraine has taken a hard line on talks with Russia. Last month Zelenskiy signed a law that forbids negotiations with President Vladimir Putin, saying that Bankova (the presidential seat) will “wait for another president” to start peace negotiations.
Western tensions and fatigue
Both trans-Atlantic tensions and those within the EU have been growing as problems caused by the war in Ukraine increasingly spill over the border.
East-West diplomatic relations have almost come to a halt since the invasion began at the end of February, but back channel conversations continue after President Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed that the White
House has been in contact with the Kremlin in recent weeks, saying it is in the interest of the US to stay in touch with Russia, adding that the US is "clear- eyed about who we are dealing with," the BBC reported on November 7.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Sullivan had held secret discussions with Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and senior Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov in recent months.
China has also been approached by Western powers to “use its influence” on Russia to dissuade it from using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. The US has said that if the Kremlin resorts to a nuclear strike it would have “catastrophic consequences for Russia,” but has remained vague on the details. Analysts speculate that the US would