Russian Ukraine Invasion

[Syne]

This is what is attracting most of the objections from Ukraine and the American war-hawks.

a. Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk will be recognized de facto as Russian, including by the United States.

b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along current front lines.

If this agreement is accepted, it will mean Ukraine suffered a lot longer than needed without any gain.
Maybe Putin wanted all of Ukraine, but due to Zelenskyy's intransigence, no one ever tested that.

[stryder]

This is what is attracting most of the objections from Ukraine and the American war-hawks.

a. Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk will be recognized de facto as Russian, including by the United States.

b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along current front lines.

If this agreement is accepted, it will mean Ukraine suffered a lot longer than needed without any gain.
Maybe Putin wanted all of Ukraine, but due to Zelenskyy's intransigence, no one ever tested that.

I'm pretty sure Ukraine will not go along with that at all. That being said it's been said before that if Ukraine has to make a hard choice in regards to what decision to make, it would require a referendum.

The read from this is simple, Trump wants to get Putin back to being able to make deals and he wants him sweatened to the idea that America is on his side. Thats why this whole deal is horseshit.

What should be done is they should be doubling down on those sanctions and stating they are not moving any time soon. (1 week for each day of warfare, with it exponentially increasing with any continued attacks) There should be no deals, no G7, no movement on the sanctions until the territory is returned to Ukraine. Anything lesser than that is the wrong way of doing any form of business.

In fact I'd suggest the world should pretty much renege on any tariffs sent to the US if this is truly what the US backs (since it's likely the only reason some went along with it to begin with).

Before you call it war hawking, just remember that if the Sanction method fails to be the solution to the problem, it means the only option to settle differences in the future is FULL OUT WAR, so it's a necessity to make the sanctions work for any future threats of war that occur.

[Syne]

If Ukraine holds an election for a referendum, certainly they will also need to hold a presidential election as well, since all elections have been suspended for the same reason... wartime. If Zelenskyy is as disliked as some say, he would then no longer be the one bargaining. You know... if a vote has to occur before Ukraine accepts the deal.

Threats about future sanctions won't effect Putin, as the entire Russian economy has been dependent on the war for years now. Even without Putin, you cannot expect Russians to want to plunge their country into a depression... which could very well lead to much worse than Putin.

But sure, just keep being intransigent... while more Ukrainians die and more territory is lost. Great solution... to not sacrifice your own countrymen just to spite Putin.

Other countries do not "send tariffs" to the US. The US consumers pay that. But you can try cutting off all your exports to the US and finally see, at least, an economic effect for your posturing.

Go ahead, send your own countrymen to war. The US doesn't have a dog in this fight.

[Yazata]

If this agreement is accepted, it will mean Ukraine suffered a lot longer than needed without any gain.

My feeling is that a big part of why the people who took power in Kyiv after the 2014 coup wanted so badly to join NATO was symbolic. It represented a reorientation of Kyiv from facing east as it did when it was part of the Soviet Union, to facing west. Poland and the Czech Republic did it, Ukraine wanted to do it too.

Of course Moscow took a very dim view of Ukraine joining the world's most powerful military alliance whose only real reason for existing was to be anti-Russian. To Russia, Ukraine joining NATO was perceived in much the same way that Russia engineering a communist coup in Mexico City in the 1970's and the new government of Mexico wanting to join the Warsaw Pact would have been perceived in Washington. We all know that had that happened, the US military would have been on its way to Mexico City with regime-change on its mind. Exactly the same thing that we saw Russia try in 2022 and for exactly the same reason.

So how can Ukraine face west without threatening Russia? I think that joining the European Union might be a good solution. The EU carries with it no end of ties to the West, but without the military alliance aspect. In terms of NATO vs Russia, Ukraine could remain neutral, while tilting culturally to the West. Copy the Swiss model. Or Cold-War Finland.

Maybe Putin wanted all of Ukraine, but due to Zelenskyy's intransigence, no one ever tested that.

I think that Putin's primary goal was to ensure that a friendly-to-Russia government held power in Kyiv. His goal in 2022 was quick and surgical regime-change. After the much-vaunted Russian military botched what it had promised him it could do, the goal turned into creating a buffer zone in the Donbass and a land-bridge to Crimea. But Ukraine wouldn't accept that and kept fighting, so the war became a World-War I style war of attrition, in which much larger Russia hoped to wear down Ukraine and perhaps get the regime change it wanted when Zelensky's government eventually collapsed.

But that's a very uncertain and very costly strategy from the Russian perspective, since they are weakening themselves while they weaken Ukraine. Which might be why Europe wants to keep it going indefinitely, because the longer it goes, the weaker Russia becomes. (The Europeans see that as somehow to their advantage. It isn't.)

So it obviously creates an opening for a negotiated solution. Ending the war ends the cost to both Russia and Ukraine. It creates the possibility of rebuilding and economic development, with the US and Europe helping. Removing NATO from the equation and substituting the EU addresses Russia's security concerns. Getting the Donbass oblasts allows Putin to portray the war as a victory to his own people. That loss is small enough that Ukraine easily survives as one of Europe's largest countries. It keeps its independence and avoids becoming a Cold War style Russian satellite which is a victory for them. Russia doesn't get to dictate the government in Kyiv. And Ukraine completes its cultural turn to the West.

[Syne]

If this deal goes through, it's a shame they couldn't do it sooner. I predicted it would end with Russia keeping Crimea and gaining Donbas, Ukraine maybe getting EU membership (whatever that may be worth nowadays) and no NATO membership.
Feb 23, 2025:

If the US has a vested interest in Ukraine's rare minerals, then Russian aggression becomes aggression against a US interest. While Putin has done a lot of saber rattling about NATO encroaching on Russia, a guarantee Ukraine won't join NATO (but maybe the EU), territory largely populated with Russians, and the threat of US retaliation should be enough to halt any further ambitions of Putin, restore peace in the region, and give Ukraine much needed security guarantees.

Mar 2, 2025:

I've already told you that US investment in Ukraine would make Russia the aggressor toward the US, not vice versa. Putin knows that could invoke NATO, even without Ukraine being a member nation. Putin has never signaled wanting the entirety of Ukraine. So you let him keep Crimea (which Ukraine and Obama basically already gave him), give him Donbas, and let him withdraw while saving face back home. That's the ONLY out between a continued war of attrition and WWIII.

[Yazata]

As predicted, the Europeans don't like the 28-point proposal. They all want to keep the war going forever into the future, imagining it as a moral crusade where hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed Ukrainians and Russians somehow illustrate their own righteous virtue.

Of course none of them have proposed any kind of alternative peace plan that has any chance of succeeding. They aren't even trying to bring about peace. They just continue to demand total Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat. Except that none of them have any concrete idea how to accomplish that Russian defeat. (What to they propose to do if a desperate Russia turns to using tactical nuclear weapons on the Ukraine battlefield?)

If Europe wants the Ukraine war to continue indefinitely into the future, then Europe needs to step up to fund it, supply it with all the necessary arms, and introduce European troops to fight alongside the Ukrainians if need be. Except that all of the European NATO countries are so weak militarily, that their combined presence on the battlefield probably wouldn't be decisive. They can't just demand all of those things, and then expect the United States to supply it all for them.

While it's true that the United States can't unilaterally make decisions for NATO or for the European Union, it CAN make decisions for the United States. Washington should tell everyone that this 28-point plan, or some agreed variant on it, are a take-it-or-leave-it from the US. The US will not be a party to this war continuing. Either it ends on the best terms possible, or we are out. If Europe wants the war to continue, then Europe will have to bear the cost in money, military capability and lives themselves.

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