Current European and American diplomatic activities aimed at ending Russian aggression against Ukraine have two common characteristics.
The first is that Vladimir Putin continues to exploit the naivety and fear of Donald Trump and his advisers. The second is Putin’s reliance on suspicion and division among Ukraine’s allies within the European Union, as well as those in the United Kingdom. These are two constants in all negotiations to achieve peace in Ukraine. Neither promises a just peace, if such an expectation has any basis in reality.
The dominant focus within the EU seems to be on financing Ukraine's post-war reconstruction. This focus is driven by the fear of EU leaders that not using frozen Russian funds to help Ukraine would lead Europe to a fait accompli: paying all the bills for the country's reconstruction. At least three countries - Slovakia, Hungary and Belgium - are unwilling to finance Ukraine's post-war reconstruction in the long term. This stance by EU member states significantly weakens the EU's united front against Russian aggression.
History teaches us that money, or financial benefit, has always been the central point of all agreements that end wars. Negotiations to end Russia's aggression in Ukraine are no exception to this rule.
Kushner and Witkoff have proven to be amateur negotiators, even as the Trump administration consistently prioritizes money over everything else. Trump’s dominant concern is how America can gain control over Ukraine’s mineral resources. He is not interested in the concrete survival of an independent, sovereign, and territorially complete Ukraine, nor is he interested in the mass casualties and barbarity of the Russian invasion. It is clear that the current US administration has no moral compass and is unwilling to lead the Europeans, through NATO, in an effort to demand that Russia withdraw its troops from the occupied territories.
All three “peace plans” discussed so far agree on the issue of Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory. The only debate is whether or not Russia should receive Crimea and the entire Donbas, or only those parts of Donbas that its army has occupied so far. It should also be borne in mind that the “peace” border zones in Zaporizhia and Kherson more or less correspond to the situation on the ground where the opposing armies are today.
This “meeting” of all peace plans at the point of concessions to which Ukraine must (?) agree is a confirmation that the move is being made towards a trade with Moscow that can ensure a functional peace on a scale that suits the interests of the White House and Brussels. It is also a sign that all of Ukraine’s Western allies have accepted Putin’s “casus beli” and that Ukraine, in fact, has no security guarantees. As has happened many times before, the victim of military aggression is forced to accept part of the aggressor’s goals and thereby redefine its own status of territorial integrity, its own independence and sovereignty. This is the essence of the so-called “achievable” peace. Cynic, therefore, are the occasional statements by EU officials that “borders cannot be changed by force.”
European leaders have been sharply criticized for their lack of willingness to act concretely. While this is a legitimate criticism, it is often forgotten that today we are dealing with a new situation compared to that of 2014, for example. This is, among other things, a new constellation of relations between Western allies and a new dynamic imposed by the Donald Trump administration. Today it is becoming increasingly obvious that the largest and most powerful military power in the world is starting to cooperate with the enemy, instead of maintaining a neutral position. For this reason, it is reasonable to conclude that the “peace plans” related to Ukraine are, in fact, agreements between the political West and Vladimir Putin on the Russian annexation of some Ukrainian territories and the so-called frozen conflict in that country.
Such situations are well known to anyone who has dealt with Russian politics in the past. We have a frozen conflict in Moldova, where the separatist Transnistria still persists after Russia's initial intervention in 1992-1993. The situation is similar in Georgia, where Russia has recognized the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In addition, in both countries Russia intervened during elections.
These states, it should be remembered, are less important to Moscow than Ukraine is. The fact is that for Putin and the Russian leadership, the Ukrainian state does not exist as a political and territorial reality. Every attempt by Ukraine to free itself from Russian influence has only further enraged the Russian president. What marked a turning point for Putin and Russia’s relationship with Ukraine was the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising. That was when the pro-Russian president was overthrown.
Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was swift and unopposed, and occurred at a time of chaos and insecurity in the Ukrainian capital. The Russian intervention in Donbass, and especially the fighting in Debeltsevo and Ilovaisk, halted Ukraine's military campaign to reclaim its eastern territories, which had by then been given new separatist names: the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.
There is no doubt that the events of 2013 and 2014 initiated the conflict that is being waged today. However, this did not happen because of the obvious division in Ukraine, but because Russia chose that moment to re-impose its intention to seize Crimea and intervene in the Donbas. It is worth recalling that in 2012-2013 Putin was elected president for the third time, amidst mass protests against electoral fraud. Therefore, the annexation of the region, where the majority Russian population lives, enjoyed considerable popularity among the people and brought Putin the necessary domestic support.
Putin's actions as a true autocrat have reached a level not seen in independent Russia. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015, and the head of the anti-corruption foundation, Alexei Navalny, was first poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok and, upon returning from treatment in Berlin, was sent to serve his prison sentence in the Butin colony, where he died in 2021.
There is no opposition in Russia today. At the top of the power pyramid is Vladimir Putin. Under his control is the Security Council, which is made up of his henchmen and oligarchs who have become rich thanks to Putin's goodwill. Such "collaborators" live and die with their leader. If, by any chance, they rebel, as Putin's former chef and leader of the paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, did in the summer of 2023, then they end up in plane crashes or after accidental falls from the balconies of high-rise buildings.
Although the true democratic capacity of Russian leaders has traditionally been low, it can be said that Putin’s Russia bears little resemblance to the Russia of Gorbachev or Yeltsin. Today’s Russia is dominated by leaders of criminal organizations and business magnates who control traditional and social media. The Russian Constitution has been amended several times to allow Putin to remain in power indefinitely. Theoretically, he can rule until 2036, assuming he wins the 2030 elections. It is therefore cynical for Putin to demand that Zelensky step down because, legally speaking, his presidential term has expired. No one in Russia dares to say anything similar about the current Russian president, who, with a short break under his deputy, Medvedev, has been in power for a quarter of a century.
One of the more important questions that Ukraine, and the European democratic establishment, is grappling with is whether American officials like Witkoff, Kushner, Rubio, Trump, and Hegseth even care about the fact that there is such a drastic lack of democracy in modern Russia. Given the Trump administration’s behavior towards Russia, a negative answer to this question is inevitable, as it is increasingly clear that Washington, Moscow, and Brussels share common interests. Truth be told, some of these interests existed even before Donald Trump came to the White House in 2016. It can be concluded that these administrations, in fact, speak the same language. It is the language of a business agreement in which everything is up for negotiation, including the future of Ukraine.
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