View Poll Results: Whom do you support and to what extent?

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161. You may not vote on this poll
  • I support Ukraine fully.

    109 67.70%
  • I support Russia fully.

    19 11.80%
  • I only support Russia's claim over Crimea.

    4 2.48%
  • I only support Russia's claim over Crimea and Donbass (Luhansk and Donetsk regions).

    12 7.45%
  • Not sure.

    8 4.97%
  • I don't care.

    9 5.59%

Thread: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

  1. #11681
    Kyriakos's Avatar Vicarius Provinciae
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Alastor View Post
    I think I suspect how this will end up. Russia will keep the Crimea, the Donbas and whatever else. Ukraine's path to NATO will be blocked. And Zelensky and his US/western backers will declare they won the war.*

    * I suppose there would be some truth to that, they would have stopped Russia from conquering Lisbon... probably.
    That may be enough outside of Ukraine, but inside Ukraine no one will be of the view they "won". Even with the carrot stick that they will join Nato (which I also don't see happening), it will still be obvious to them that they died and in the end lost more land than if they had signed peace when fewer of them had died=>they were played by the US in a bid to weaken Russia by extending the war.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  2. #11682
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    That may be enough outside of Ukraine, but inside Ukraine no one will be of the view they "won".
    No worries, no western leaders gives a dime about "inside Ukraine". As long as they get to prance around signaling their virtue and scoring cheap political points they're content.

  3. #11683
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    ^That goes without saying, sadly
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  4. #11684
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Will you outline the Russian demands or not?
    I know all the initial demands Russia made. But in any negotiation, there are always demands from one party or the other. What is important is knowing why and how the negotiations failed. The negotiations failed because Ukraine, while agreeing to be neutral, wanted its independence to be guaranteed by a certain group of countries. Russia would only accept this if it was part of that group of countries.
    As Charap and Radchenko note in their Foreign Affairs piece, The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine
    one of the reasons the original talks broke down was because the two sides were more focused on the broader endgame rather than on shorter-term solutions.
    Hence the comment: "the negotiators have put the cart of a post-war security order before the horse of the end of the war". Some commentators see the article, published in the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine, as an attempt to pave the way for a new round of negotiations. Let’s face the facts,

    Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion-CNN

    Ukraines army faces a huge problem: soldiers are deserting

    Ukraine has changed the law to decriminalize desertion and absence without permission if it is committed for the first time.
    Defection and insubordination are becoming a widespread problem, especially among newly recruited soldiers, the Ukrainian military told television. The situation is particularly dire among infantry units near Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the eastern front line, where Ukraine is struggling to stop Russia's advance.
    „Not all mobilized soldiers leave their positions, but the majority do. When new guys come in, they see how hard it is. "They see a lot of enemy drones, artillery and mortars," said the commander of a military unit fighting in Pokrovsk.
    „They either leave their positions, refuse to go into battle, or try to find a way to leave the army,” he added.
    As the situation on the battlefield worsens, more and more troops begin to desert. In the first four months of 2024 alone, prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against almost 19,000 soldiers who had deserted, according to the Ukrainian parliament.
    However, the actual number of deserters is much higher. Many officers will not report desertions and unauthorized absences, hoping instead to persuade soldiers to return voluntarily without facing punishment. This approach has become so common that Ukraine changed the law to decriminalize desertion and absence without permission if it is committed for the first time.
    ----
    "Ukraine is closer than ever to NATO," said Mark Rutte during a visit to Kiev. It's unclear why he lies so blatantly. Or rather, it is clear-some find it convenient to fight to the last Ukrainian.

    The Russians are advancing on the Ukrainian battlefield. Russian troops have taken Vuhledar, the largest conquest in Donbas after Bakhmut and Avdiivka, and are getting ever closer to Pokrovsk, a crucial objective before attacking the fronts of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

    According to the Ukrainian Institute of Demography and Social Research, the Ukrainian population continues to decrease and will reach 28.9 million people by 2041 and 25.2 million by 2051. On January 1, 2002, just under two months before the Russian invasion, Ukraine's population was 42 million. Who doubts that the losses from the war, along with the millions of Ukrainians displaced due to the conflict, jeopardize the demographic future of Ukraine?
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  5. #11685
    Kyriakos's Avatar Vicarius Provinciae
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    There is a real possibility that Ukraine literally doesn't exist after the war - Stoltenberg said the same. At the very least they should hold on to their last important port, Odessa, for without it they may well not be a country.
    As for Rutte, he is another in-name-only leader of Nato. He isn't there to do something different than serve as a mouthpiece for what he is told to say.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
    Anaxagoras of Klazomenae, 5th century BC










  6. #11686

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    I know all the initial demands Russia made.
    What's keeping you from outlining those demands?
    The Armenian Issue

  7. #11687
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    It is irrelevant to continuously insist on this point, like someone playing a scratched record, because the initial demands were not the final demands of either party. If peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia had ended the moment Russia's initial demands were not accepted by Ukraine, the negotiations would not have lasted for months. What is relevant is understanding why and how they ended, and this has already been widely explained in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. The Nation provided an excellent summary of the timeline of the negotiations.
    At this point, the war is going very unfavorably for Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is struggling with low morale and continuous desertions, the demographic collapse is not in its favor, and likely, to achieve peace, it will have to cede more territory than it would have if an agreement had been reached in March or April of 2022.
    --
    Edit,
    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    As for Rutte, he is another in-name-only leader of Nato. He isn't there to do something different than serve as a mouthpiece for what he is told to say.
    Quite right.
    Last edited by Ludicus; October 09, 2024 at 10:09 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  8. #11688

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    It is irrelevant to continuously insist on this point, like someone playing a scratched record, because the initial demands were not the final demands of either party. If peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia had ended the moment Russia's initial demands were not accepted by Ukraine, the negotiations would not have lasted for months. What is relevant is understanding why and how they ended, and this has already been widely explained in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs. The Nation provided an excellent summary of the timeline of the negotiations.
    At this point, the war is going very unfavorably for Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is struggling with low morale and continuous desertions, the demographic collapse is not in its favor, and likely, to achieve peace, it will have to cede more territory than it would have if an agreement had been reached in March or April of 2022.
    It's the only relevant thing here regarding the accusations you threw against Ukraine, Zelensky and the West in general. I also initially did not ask you about the initial demands of Russia but the points in March 2022 after months of negotiations that you referred to. The initial points were what you tried to push the conversation to which you seem to have abandoned so quickly. Am I to understand you do not know the state of demands by Russia from March 2022 despite basing your accusations on them?
    The Armenian Issue

  9. #11689
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    I've already said everything there is to say on this subject, which you apparently know less about than I do.

    1- The New York Times on June 15 published for the first time a purported draft of a Ukraine-Russia peace treaty from early 2022 that was never signed. The NYT said that the most important sticking point was connected to security guarantees under which powers like the U.K., the U.S., China, and France would come to Ukraine's defense if it were attacked. Russia demanded veto power on these guarantees. NYT published the 17-page draft in full

    2- NYT published a draft of the peace agreement that Kyiv and Moscow agreed on in 2022. Here is its essence - 15 June 2024.
    ...The clause on the protection of Ukraine in the event of a future attack became the biggest problem, the NYT writes. It stated that the guarantor countries should come to Ukraineʼs aid.
    3-It is not possible to give a more comprehensive description of how the negotiations unfolded and all the implications that resulted from them.
    Fresh evidence suggests that the April 2022 Istanbul peace deal to end the war in Ukraine was stillborn

    Fresh evidence has indicated that a peace deal thrashed out between Russia and Ukraine in April 2022 that could have ended the war only months after it had begun was probably too ambitious and by failing to consult with its Western partners during the negotiations the resulting deal was stillborn, according to an analysis by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko in an article for Foreign Policy.

    While the peace talks and its conclusion remains controversial, the evidence that a deal was agreed has become overwhelming.

    More than seven senior officials, six of whom participated in the meetings, as well as the White House’s top security advisor on Russia, Fiona Hill, who didn’t, confirmed the existence of the talks and their successful conclusion.

    New evidence has now come to light after the authors of the Foreign Policy article examined draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously.

    We have also conducted interviews with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments, to whom we have granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters.
    “When we put all these pieces together, what we found is surprising—and could have significant implications for future diplomatic efforts to end the war,” Charap and Radchenko concluded.
    Samuel Charap is the Distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. Sergey Radchenko is Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe and one of the best-known commentators on Russia.
    While the existence of the talks is not in dispute, and even the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Oleksiy Arestovych, says they ended successfully with a deal to end the conflict, critics have dismissed the significance of the talks entirely, claiming that the parties were merely going through the motions to buy time for battlefield realignments or that the draft agreements were unserious.
    The deal was ultimately rejected in April 2022...with the failure of Russia’s encirclement of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy became more confident that, with sufficient Western support promised by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he could win the war on the battlefield.

    “But Putin and Zelenskiy surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war. They might well surprise everyone again in the future,” says the authors.
    Nato’s role
    After the failure of an initial round of talks in the first month of the war in Belarus, the Istanbul round kicked off on March 10, when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Antalya, Turkey and spoke of a “systematic, sustainable solution” for Ukraine, adding that the Ukrainians were “ready to discuss” guarantees it hoped to receive from Nato member states and Russia. Ukraine had already conceded giving up its Nato ambitions during the Belarusian talks, enshrined in the Constitution since 2014, and returned to its neutrality stance that was previously enshrined in the Constitution.

    Ukraine’s relationship with Nato played a key role in the talks. Kyiv demanded that if it gave up its Nato ambitions it wanted firm security guarantees from Nato and Russia to ensure its security – something its Western partners were unwilling to agree to.
    The Ukrainian negotiators developed an answer to this question, but in the end, it didn’t persuade their risk-averse Western colleagues.
    Kyiv’s position was that, as the emerging guarantees concept implied, Russia would be a guarantor, too, which would mean Moscow essentially agreed that the other guarantors would be obliged to intervene if it attacked again.
    In other words, if Moscow accepted that any future aggression against Ukraine would mean a war between Russia and the United States, it would be no more inclined to attack Ukraine again than it would be to attack a Nato ally,” the authors said, who obtained a copy of the full text of the draft communiqué, titled “Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine’s Security Guarantees.”
    On March 29, the talks achieved a breakthrough.
    “The treaty envisioned in the communiqué would proclaim Ukraine as a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil. The communiqué listed as possible guarantors the permanent members of the UN Security Council (including Russia) along with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Turkey.”
    The communiqué also said that if Ukraine came under attack and requested assistance, all guarantor states would be obliged, following consultations with Ukraine and among themselves, to provide assistance to Ukraine to restore its security.
    Remarkably, these obligations were spelled out with much greater precision than Nato’s Article 5: imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force,” the authors said, citing the text of the communiqué.
    The question of Ukraine’ membership of the EU was left open, but Russia had no objection to its accession in principle.
    The communiqué also included another “stunning” concession: it called for the two sides to seek to “peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea” next ten to 15 years. Russia has refused point blank to talk about the status of Crimea since it was annexed in 2014.
    The tricky question is why Putin would agree to this deal, given he has the upper hand in the war on paper with hundreds of thousands of troops on-the-ground fighting an under-armed and under-supplied Ukraine.
    “We can only conjecture as to why. Putin’s blitzkrieg had failed; that was clear by early March. Perhaps he was now willing to cut his losses if he got his longest-standing demand: that Ukraine renounce its Nato aspirations and never host Nato forces on its territory. If he could not control the entire country, at least he could ensure his most basic security interests, stem the haemorrhaging of Russia’s economy, and restore the country’s international reputation,” the authors wrote.
    Deal collapses
    In remarks he made on March 29, immediately after the conclusion of the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, sounded decidedly upbeat saying the talks had entered a “decisive phase.”
    The next day, he told reporters, “Yesterday, the Ukrainian side, for the first time fixed in a written form its readiness to carry out a series of most important conditions for the building of future normal and good-neighbour relations with Russia.” These comments came as Russia was pulling its troops back from Kyiv and calling off that assault. Medinsky continued, “They handed to us the principles of a potential future settlement, fixed in writing.”
    But the pull back stiffened Zelenskiy’s resolve, removing an immediate threat to his government, and demonstrated that Putin’s vaunted military machine could be defeated. This success also bolstered Western confidence that Ukraine could win a victory with sufficient military support. The emerging reports of the massacre at Bucha on April 4 only catalysed this confidence, although the two sides continued the negotiations around the clock.
    In his February 2023 interview, former Israeli Prime Minister Nafital Bennett, who participated in the talks, reported seeing 17 or 18 working drafts of the agreement in the first week of April; Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko also reported seeing at least one.
    “We have closely scrutinised two of these drafts, one that is dated April 12 and another dated April 15, which participants in the talks told us was the last one exchanged between the parties. They are broadly similar but contain important differences—and both show that the communiqué had not resolved some key issues,” the authors said.
    A key issue was the language covering the guarantor states obligations to to come to Kyiv’s aid in the event of another attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin insisted that such action would occur only “on the basis of a decision agreed to by all guarantor states”—giving the likely invader, Russia, a veto as it was to be one of the guarantors.
    Ukraine insisted on the original formula, under which all the guarantors had an individual obligation to act and would not have to reach consensus before doing so.
    Russia also added several items that Ukraine refused to discuss including a demand that Ukraine ban “fascism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, and aggressive nationalism”—and, to that end, to repeal six Ukrainian laws (fully or in part) that dealt, broadly, with contentious aspects of Soviet-era history, in particular the role of Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
    “The Russians knew these provisions would make it more difficult for the Ukrainians to accept the rest of the treaty. They might, therefore, be seen as poison pills,” say the authors.
    Arakhamia later downplayed the importance of these provisions suggesting they were not a deal breaker.
    The size and the structure of the Ukrainian military was also the subject of intense negotiation as Russia wanted to demilitarise Ukraine to some extent.
    “As of April 15, the two sides remained quite far apart on the matter. The Ukrainians wanted a peacetime army of 250,000 people; the Russians insisted on a maximum of 85,000, considerably smaller than the standing army Ukraine had before the invasion in 2022. The Ukrainians wanted 800 tanks; the Russians would allow only 342. The difference between the range of missiles was even starker: 280 kilometres, or about 174 miles, (the Ukrainian position), and a mere 40 kilometres, or about 25 miles, (the Russian position),” the authors wrote, citing the final draft of the proposed treaty.
    The talks had deliberately skirted the question of borders and territory and the thorny issue of sovereignty over both the Crimea and the occupied Donbas regions were to be left to direct negotiations in a mooted summit between Putin and Zelenskiy at a later date.
    “Despite these substantial disagreements, the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast,” the authors wrote.
    “We were very close in mid-April 2022 to finalising the war with a peace settlement,” one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Oleksandr Chalyi, recounted at a public appearance in December 2023. “[A] week after Putin started his aggression, he concluded he had made a huge mistake and tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.”
    A former US official who worked on Ukraine policy at the time told us that the Ukrainians did not consult with Washington until after the communiqué had been issued, even though the treaty it described would have created new legal commitments for the United States—including an obligation to go to war with Russia if it invaded Ukraine again,” the authors wrote. “That stipulation alone would have made the treaty a nonstarter for Washington. So instead of embracing the Istanbul communiqué and the subsequent diplomatic process, the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime.”
    The United Kingdom took the lead with Johnson coming out with a hard line, saying on March 30 that, “we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine,” before he arrived in Kyiv on April 9.
    He told Zelenskiy any deal, “would be some victory for [Putin]: if you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.”
    According to the Charap and Radchenko account, the Istanbul deal would have been still born as it contains an obligation by the Western powers to provide real security guarantees that oblige them to commit troops in Ukraine if Ukraine was attacked again – something that Kyiv had not cleared with its Western allies during the talks and something they did not want to do.
    This version of events tallies with earlier bne IntelliNews reporting, suggesting the proposed security deals the West was supposed to offer, but never actually agreed to ahead of, or during, the talks was the real dealbreaker.

    “Even if Russia and Ukraine had overcome their disagreements, the framework they negotiated in Istanbul would have required buy-in from the United States and its allies. And those Western powers would have needed to take a political risk by engaging in negotiations with Russia and Ukraine and to put their credibility on the line by guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. At the time, and in the intervening two years, the willingness either to undertake high-stakes diplomacy or to truly commit to come to Ukraine’s defence in the future has been notably absent in Washington and European capitals,” the authors said.
    In the 2023 interview, Arakhamia ruffled some feathers by seeming to hold Johnson responsible for the outcome. “When we returned from Istanbul,” he said, “Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we won’t sign anything at all with [the Russians]—and let’s just keep fighting.”
    By late April, Ukraine had hardened its position, demanding a Russian withdrawal from the Donbas as a precondition to any treaty, effectively abandoning the Istanbul deal. Oleksii Danilov, the chair of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council, said on May 2: “A treaty with Russia is impossible—only capitulation can be accepted.”
    Charap and Radchenko conclude that the final reason the talks failed is that, “the negotiators put the cart of a postwar security order before the horse of ending the war.”
    Essential questions of conflict management and mitigation were glossed over such as the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals, and instead the parties tried to craft a long-term peace treaty before the hostilities had ended, without agreeing on how those hostilities should be ended.
    “It was an admirably ambitious effort—but it proved too ambitious,” the authors said. “This history suggests that future talks should move forward on parallel tracks, with the practicalities of ending the war being addressed on one track while broader issues are covered in another.”
    4-Charap is co-author of the Foreign Affairs article The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine.
    On 6 May 2024, Charap said,
    At the time, what the Ukrainians were asking for was not NATO membership, but this sort of multilateral security guarantee involving Russia that would see geopolitical rivals, the United States and its allies on the one hand and Russia on the other, guaranteeing the security of a neutral state that sort of lied between them. And this was something that was a novel concept, not something that the U.S. does in other contexts that much.
    Normally with allies, you're with security commitments. You're talking about an ally where you have access, and you train together and they're integrated into a military structure.
    In this case, it was going to be guaranteeing the security of a neutral country, and it would have also required and just to be clear on the guarantees, the West has never really been interested in that kind of commitment to Ukraine's security.

    Alexander Chaly
    -
    a key Ukrainian negotiator and former First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, said by April, peace was all but certain.

    “We negotiate with Russian delegation practically two months, in March and April the possible peaceful settlement agreement ... between Ukraine and Russia. And we, as you remember, concluded so called Istanbul communique. And we were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement. For some reasons it was postponed”
    --
    On a side note, the "accusations" against the hegemonic power are, who knows, well deserved, as it is the only one to gain economically. Ukraine would be much better off today if it hadn't been forced to fight to the last Ukrainian in a war in which the military-industrial-congressional complex wins and Europe is weakened in the process. The Risks to Germany and Europe of a Prolonged War in Ukraine.

    Current U.S. policy has imposed disproportionate costs of the Ukrainian conflict on Europe. This is a bad bargain, not least because Europe’s economic and institutional vitality is essential for its ability to increase its own military readiness. A settlement to end the conflict short of outright victory for either side could bring forward a period of stabilization and recovery, which is becoming more evidently pressing each day for Ukraine, Germany, and Europe as a whole.
    Last edited by Ludicus; October 09, 2024 at 03:56 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  10. #11690

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    I've already said everything there is to say on this subject, which you apparently know less about than I do.
    1- The New York Times on June 15 published for the first time a purported draft of a Ukraine-Russia peace treaty from early 2022 that was never signed. The NYT said that the most important sticking point was connected to security guarantees under which powers like the U.K., the U.S., China, and France would come to Ukraine's defense if it were attacked. Russia demanded veto power on these guarantees. NYT published the 17-page draft in full
    2- NYT published a draft of the peace agreement that Kyiv and Moscow agreed on in 2022. Here is its essence - 15 June 2024.
    3-It is not possible to give a more comprehensive description of how the negotiations unfolded and all the implications that resulted from them.
    Fresh evidence suggests that the April 2022 Istanbul peace deal to end the war in Ukraine was stillborn
    4-Charap is co-author of the Foreign Affairs article The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine.
    On 6 May 2024, Charap said,
    Alexander Chaly
    -
    a key Ukrainian negotiator and former First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, said by April, peace was all but certain.
    The only thing there was to say was to outline the Russian demands that were present on March 2022. You have said a lot but not that despite being asked to. It took you 7 posts to spam the thread to actually link to the article (which is conveniently hidden behind a paywall) you vaguely referenced, and in the past few posts, you tried to focus on a single issue, of guarantor countries. What else was there? Though the guarantor demand by Russia is enough to dismiss the proposal. Lets review:

    - Crimea and Sevastopol for the most part was basically to be ceded to Russia
    - Donbas to be decided personally between Putin and Zelensky
    - Ukraine to pledge permanent neutrality banning itself from any military alliance
    - Guarantor intervention could only be done by full agreement between guarantor states, which includes Russia
    - Ukrainian army to be limited to 85,000 personnel
    - No foreign weapons in Ukraine
    - Only about 300 tanks and 1000 armoured vehicles
    - Only about 500 artillery pieces and 96 rocket launchers of only 40 kilometres capability
    - Only about 100 fighters, 30 helicopters and 2 warships
    - All sanctions on Russia to be lifted and ICC not to investigate Russian war crimes
    - Russian to be made second state language

    That's the deal Ukraine walked away from. That's the deal you have been running away from outlining. No need to hide away behind what the New York Times argues. We are all fully capable of understanding what these conditions tell us. An unacceptable array of conditions designed to make Ukraine ready for Russia's next invasion phase that it will commence when it feels ready while Ukraine waits weakened without the capability of defending itself.
    The Armenian Issue

  11. #11691
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Lets review:

    - Crimea and Sevastopol for the most part was basically to be ceded to Russia
    - Donbas to be decided personally between Putin and Zelensky
    - Ukraine to pledge permanent neutrality banning itself from any military alliance
    - Guarantor intervention could only be done by full agreement between guarantor states, which includes Russia
    - Ukrainian army to be limited to 85,000 personnel
    - No foreign weapons in Ukraine
    - Only about 300 tanks and 1000 armoured vehicles
    - Only about 500 artillery pieces and 96 rocket launchers of only 40 kilometres capability
    - Only about 100 fighters, 30 helicopters and 2 warships
    - All sanctions on Russia to be lifted and ICC not to investigate Russian war crimes
    - Russian to be made second state language
    More precisely, according to the draft treaty, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces.
    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    That's the deal Ukraine walked away from. That's the deal you have been running away from outlining. No need to hide away behind what the New York Times argues. We are all fully capable of understanding what these conditions tell us.An unacceptable array of conditions designed to make Ukraine ready for Russia's next invasion phase that it will commence when it feels ready while Ukraine waits weakened without the capability of defending itself.
    It is irrelevant to mention Russia's list of demands just to make them unacceptable to anyone who reads them. It wasn't Russia's list of demands that led Ukraine - under pressure from the West -to withdraw from the negotiations. The security guarantees were the core issue.
    Of course, you are fully capable of understanding these conditions involved.The point is, in fact, none of the guarantor countries mentioned in the "peace plans" have agreed to this. Because, as already mentioned, it is crystal clear in the event of a new Russian invasion, none of these countries was interested in being forced into war. Only Ukraine's formal entry into NATO would prevent another eventual invasion.That's why I've quoted intelligent and unbiased people like the distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, Samuel Charap, and the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, Sergey Radchenko, "The proposed security deals the West was supposed to offer, but never actually agreed to ahead of, or during, the talks was the real deal breaker".

    The simple truth is, they will have to concede land in a peace agreement. I'm tired of hearing that there will only be a just peace if Ukraine wins the war. It's completely unrealistic. Geopolitics isn't about morality, it's just about power. If in doubt ask the US (or, for that matter, Israel).
    Last edited by Ludicus; October 10, 2024 at 03:54 PM.
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  12. #11692

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    More precisely, according to the draft treaty, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces.

    It is irrelevant to mention Russia's list of demands just to make them unacceptable to anyone who reads them. It wasn't Russia's list of demands that led Ukraine - under pressure from the West -to withdraw from the negotiations. The security guarantees were the core issue.
    Of course, you are fully capable of understanding these conditions involved.The point is, in fact, none of the guarantor countries mentioned in the "peace plans" have agreed to this. Because, as already mentioned, it is crystal clear in the event of a new Russian invasion, none of these countries was interested in being forced into war. Only Ukraine's formal entry into NATO would prevent another eventual invasion.That's why I've quoted intelligent and unbiased people like the distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, Samuel Charap, and the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, Sergey Radchenko, "The proposed security deals the West was supposed to offer, but never actually agreed to ahead of, or during, the talks was the real deal breaker".
    What Russia demanded is the most relevant thing we can evaluate. You may want people to ignore them, given how unacceptable they are, all you want to keep your narrative alive. After all, your premise relies on having a sensible peace proposal on the table to make sense. Without that, how or why Ukraine didn't agree to it is as moot as it gets. It's also moot to talk about whether named guarantor countries are interested in being forced into war or not. It's even insensible to talk about that. They wouldn't be forced into a war as such an agreement doesn't bind countries to intervene. They could simply support intervention and step aside. The idea wasn't that they'd be forced into war but that with the Russian veto power an invasion by Russia would basically go unchallenged under that agreement. It's an insult to anyone's intelligence.
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  13. #11693
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    What Russia demanded is the most relevant thing we can evaluate...given how unacceptable they are
    It will not seem unacceptable to Ukraine when unconditional defeat looms on a horizon already laden with dark clouds. However, it appears to be in the interest of some to continue fueling a war that is practically lost, rather than striving to negotiate the best possible peace agreement right now. Western countries have had and continue to have considerable influence over all important geostrategic decisions made by Ukraine, and the political reality was and is that any formal conclusion to the war and the establishment of a long-term peace agreement could hardly succeed without the consent of the Western alliance. On the other hand, it must be said, to be fair, it is sadly true that there are countries that, when they start to tire of the wars they are engaged in, pull away to better focus on the next war. If we want to talk about insults to intelligence, it is to refuse to understand that Western countries that might eventually be willing to guarantee peace in a post-war agreement would be virtually forced to go to war with the Russian Federation, lest they lose face. Otherwise, what would be the purpose of that agreement? Saying that "they could simply support the intervention and walk away" makes no sense. And let’s be honest, would the U.S. ever accept not having veto power in the wars they enter?
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
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  14. #11694

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    It will not seem unacceptable to Ukraine when unconditional defeat looms on a horizon already laden with dark clouds. However, it appears to be in the interest of some to continue fueling a war that is practically lost, rather than striving to negotiate the best possible peace agreement right now. Western countries have had and continue to have considerable influence over all important geostrategic decisions made by Ukraine, and the political reality was and is that any formal conclusion to the war and the establishment of a long-term peace agreement could hardly succeed without the consent of the Western alliance. On the other hand, it must be said, to be fair, it is sadly true that there are countries that, when they start to tire of the wars they are engaged in, pull away to better focus on the next war. If we want to talk about insults to intelligence, it is to refuse to understand that Western countries that might eventually be willing to guarantee peace in a post-war agreement would be virtually forced to go to war with the Russian Federation, lest they lose face. Otherwise, what would be the purpose of that agreement? Saying that "they could simply support the intervention and walk away" makes no sense. And let’s be honest, would the U.S. ever accept not having veto power in the wars they enter?
    That word salad argues that it doesn't matter what Russia demands and that Ukraine should capitulate to everything. Every single sentence in your word salad tries to shift focus from Russian responsibility to others. Anyone but Russia. You, of course, deceptively implied that the Russian demands constitute as a long-term peace agreement while you forget the fact that total and all surrender against unlawful and unjust action by an actor to be never peaceful. Why utilize defying basic logic and common sense to insult everyone's intelligence? You know that guarantor concept does not have the power to force a guarantor to be involved in direct conflict. This is no rocket science. Yet, you continue to ignore the stupidity of Russian demand on having a guarantor veto power. If USA requested such a power while it is the primary invader we'd point out the stupidity of that equally. Russians know that it makes no sense. You know that it makes no sense. It's basic common sense. Everyone knows that it makes no sense. Ukrainian position was based on historical treaty of guarantees while the Russian position is based on Russian desire to make the entire agreement pointless. What's the point of championing for something so obvious?
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  15. #11695
    Mithradates's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    “We have closely scrutinised two of these drafts, one that is dated April 12 and another dated April 15, which participants in the talks told us was the last one exchanged between the parties. They are broadly similar but contain important differences—and both show that the communiqué had not resolved some key issues,” the authors said.
    A key issue was the language covering the guarantor states obligations to to come to Kyiv’s aid in the event of another attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin insisted that such action would occur only “on the basis of a decision agreed to by all guarantor states”—giving the likely invader, Russia, a veto as it was to be one of the guarantors.
    Ukraine insisted on the original formula, under which all the guarantors had an individual obligation to act and would not have to reach consensus before doing so.
    ...
    Arakhamia later downplayed the importance of these provisions suggesting they were not a deal breaker.
    Russia could veto Western help to Ukraine and thats not a dealbreaker? Of course it is.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    According to the Charap and Radchenko account, the Istanbul deal would have been still born as it contains an obligation by the Western powers to provide real security guarantees that oblige them to commit troops in Ukraine if Ukraine was attacked again – something that Kyiv had not cleared with its Western allies during the talks and something they did not want to do.
    This version of events tallies with earlier bne IntelliNews reporting, suggesting the proposed security deals the West was supposed to offer, but never actually agreed to ahead of, or during, the talks was the real dealbreaker.
    Right. So Russia wanted a "peace" that would guarantee Russia that the next time they attack Ukraine, there would be no Western intervention and Ukraine would be even weaker than it was in 2022.

    Because of the West, the negotiation couldn't get to the point where Russia would 100% kill the deal, therefore the West killed the deal.
    Just wow.


    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    While the existence of the talks is not in dispute, and even the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Oleksiy Arestovych, says they ended successfully with a deal to end the conflict, critics have dismissed the significance of the talks entirely, claiming that the parties were merely going through the motions to buy time for battlefield realignments or that the draft agreements were unserious.
    Yep, pretty much thats what happened.

  16. #11696
    Kyriakos's Avatar Vicarius Provinciae
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Wasn't the US already a guarantor of Ukraine, before 2014? Yet it didn't go to war with Russia.
    In other words, the US could sign that it would go to war to protect Ukraine, and (for the second time) not do it.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
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  17. #11697

    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    Wasn't the US already a guarantor of Ukraine, before 2014? Yet it didn't go to war with Russia.
    In other words, the US could sign that it would go to war to protect Ukraine, and (for the second time) not do it.
    Budapest Memorandum of 1994 which USA was a signatory to did not have a guarantorship clause. It did have a clause requiring Russia to respect territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia also signed the same clause in Russian–Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997 respecting Ukrainian territorial integrity which didn't stop Russia from invading Ukraine starting in 2014.
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  18. #11698
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Zelensky’s peace plan is non-negotiable; it is a victory plan, and nothing less than victory. He is on a tour across Europe, trying to convince increasingly less enthusiastic Western leaders (1) that he has a plan for victory. It is true that he has been enthusiastically applauded by many of our political commentators-people with short-sighted views and forceful rhetoric. Some of them, and they are not few, are less commentators and more propagandists. They raise their voices, their jugular veins swell, red with noble indignation that does not tolerate dissent: "We must defeat Russia!"
    With this goal in mind, Zelensky wants to end the war by 2025, through what he calls "decisive action." As The Guardian notes, “Zelensky did not spell out how and why he perceived such an opportunity.” Kyiv will likely be forced to seek a cessation of hostilities sometime next year, negotiating from a position of weakness".

    (1)UK has not agreed to long-range missile use after after Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit, Downing Street has said.

    Last edited by Ludicus; October 12, 2024 at 11:55 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  19. #11699
    Kyriakos's Avatar Vicarius Provinciae
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    While more than a few regular people in Ukraine already get which way things are going, I expect there to be a massive disillusionment with how they were kept in the war for motives of powers outside Ukraine and how they (not those other powers) will pay the price for it.
    I almost feel bad for Ukraine on account of the US very clearly not wishing any direct conflict with Russia. A ww-type war literally is the only remaining way Ukraine doesn't get reduced to pretty much nothing. I suppose there is a (very small) chance the remnant of Ukraine will be forced-put in the Eu, since that is controlled by the US, but it's not compensation for what they will lose.
    Λέων μεν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δε βούς, ἄνθρωπος δε νῷι
    "While the lion prevails with its claws, and the ox through its horns, man does by his thinking"
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    Alastor's Avatar Vicarius
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    Default Re: Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

    Quote Originally Posted by Kyriakos View Post
    I suppose there is a (very small) chance the remnant of Ukraine will be forced-put in the Eu, since that is controlled by the US, but it's not compensation for what they will lose.
    I am optimistic that's not going to happen. Particularly since the EU seems to be finally, albeit slowly, coming to the realisation of just how ed we all are... thanks in no small part to the US.

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