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Notes -
So a new peace treaty for Ukraine war just dropped .
Trump’s proposed Ukraine peace plan would recognize Crimea as Russian, accept Russian control over parts of Donbas and southern Ukraine, and offer Ukraine vague European security guarantees, unfettered access to Dnieper partial territorial returns, and U.S.-backed reconstruction. It also includes U.S. control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. Vance said that the deal is final and in the case of rejection US will stop being a part of peacemaking process.
I think it's basically a great deal for both sides(I admit my bias cause for me any peace would be better than war). Ukraine loses nothing that it de facto has right now and gains territory in Kharkov, it can finally heal and maybe with some smart leadership, international investment and membership in EU it can rise to the heights of neighboring Poland, I doubt that it will and I already written on the motte why, but some chance is way better than no chance.
For Russia and specifically for Putin this is a way to claim victory after his many failures including starting this retarded SMO. Maybe for Russian state it would be better to deal with this close of an enemy once and for all, but it will not happen under current leadership and Putin is no nationalist, so even with total victory we would see semi puppet state in Ukraine that would break of as soon as possible. We are talking about person who still haven't annexed Belarus for christ sake.
I think kremlins are ready to accept this and even slightly worse versions of this deal, cause they already shown signs of it throught whole war, starting in March of 2022 and dictators are more likely to seek limited peace anyway. On the other hand Europe is actually putting some effort into its militarization, I'v seen news about new German ammunition facilities, and could collectively decide to continue the war even if US fully withdraws after rejecting the deal(which is in my opinion unlikely). That could prolong the conflict by another couple of years, probably lead to the Ukrainian territory gains but I can't see how it's worth the devastation that it would cause.
This is the rub. Russia has always cared more about Ukrainian "neutrality" than they do about the exact position of the border - the demands immediately before the invasion related to "neutrality" and not territory, and the Istanbul negotiations broke down over the issue. Russia has said that troops from NATO countries in Ukraine is a red line - and if you accept the Mearsheimer realist view of Russian goals then it should be one. If they are willing to accept peacekeepers from European NATO countries then that is a major move. And the vagueness from the Trump administration on this point suggests that they are not. And on the flip side, Ukraine has no incentive to accept a deal that doesn't leave them more defensible than they are now, given the risk of Russia reneging and restarting the war in the future.
The hard part of negotiating a Russia-Ukraine deal is the security arrangements. By default any arrangement which makes it easier for NATO to defend Ukraine from a Russian attack in future is something that could, in theory, make it easier for NATO to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory. If the security arrangements are TBD (as they have to be if the countries that will actually be guaranteeing Ukraine's security were excluded from the negotiations) then there isn't a deal.
Why not just attack from NATO territory in Poland, Finland (only decided to forego neutrality because of the Ukraine invasion), or the Baltics? They are closer to the presumable targets anyway.
I am inclined to agree - the Ukrainian border is slightly closer to Moscow than the Finnish or Latvian borders, but not by much. And obviously St Petersburg is closer to NATO now than it would be if Ukraine had been allowed to join. But the question isn't what we think - it is what Moscow thinks. And Putin has repeatedly said that he sees NATO troops in Ukraine as a Soviet-nukes-in-Cuba tier security threat. (While saying, out of the other side of his mouth, that he wants to conquer Ukraine because it is in some sense supposed to be Russian).
I don't think the Mearsheimer realist explanation of Russia's behaviour is correct - I think Putin wants to invade and conquer Ukraine and forcibly Russianise the Ukrainian people because he is a Russian nationalist and that is where his Russian nationalism takes him. But a lot of people (including, importantly, key people in the Trump administration) do buy it. And in any case Putin negotiates in the same way whether Ukrainian "neutrality" is about honestly held security concerns or whether it is a bad-faith move to isolate Ukraine in preparation for a repeat invasion.
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