Ukraine: Negotiating from a Position of Irrelevance

This is 0.05% of the corpses of Ukrainian and NATO soldiers currently littering Kursk Region

Dmitry Orlov

As the date of Trump’s second inauguration approaches, various talking heads are devoting more and more breath to the topic of peace negotiations that Trump will enter into with Putin to end the conflict in the Ukraine. All of them assume that Trump can win valuable concessions from Putin. The NYT has for the first time admitted that the patient (the Ukraine) is dead and starting to smell, and it’s time for them to start planning the post-war phase of the conflict. Here is a rundown of the offers the talking heads consider possible. The experts there see just four versions of the agreement to be signed, which has to guarantee the Ukraine’s security in some way (to make sure that “Russian aggression” is kept under control).

1. Russia keeps the formerly Ukrainian territories it has liberated so far while the rest of the Ukraine joins NATO. But there is no consensus within NATO on allowing the Ukraine to join and, more importantly, Trump is opposed. And all of that is irrelevant since the Russian position since 1991 is that the Ukraine has to be militarily neutral and not a member of any military blocs or alliances. Let us strike this one off the list right away: anybody who uses the words “Ukraine” and “NATO” in the same sentence is wasting your time.

2. Russia keeps the formerly Ukrainian territories it has liberated so far while the rest of the Ukraine is to be patrolled by some consortium of European peacekeeping forces. This seems reasonable at first glance, since Trump certainly won’t send any US forces to do this dirty work, except… the Russian position since 1991 is that the Ukraine has to be militarily neutral and not a member of any military blocs or alliances. And having foreign troops on Ukrainian soil doesn’t qualify it as neutral; therefore, these forces will be dispatched to God or Allah or whatever upon arrival and, consequently, sending them to the Ukraine is definitely not a step toward peace. Strike this one off the list as well: anybody who suggests that European peacekeeping forces be deployed in the Ukraine is wasting your time.

3. Same thing, except European peacekeeping forces would be under NATO command. It doesn’t matter whose command these Europeans would be under; they’d still end up dead, so strike this one off the list as well.

4. “Armed neutrality”: Russia keeps whatever territory it controls at the moment while the Ukraine gets to flex its military muscle not subject to any restrictions on the size of its army or the number and type of conventional weapons at its disposal. The eggheads at the NYT think that this is the most achievable plan, although not as advantageous for the Ukraine (since they’d have to actually do something — flex, that is). Except that the Istanbul memorandum— the last deal negotiated between the Ukraine and Russia back in 2022, and which the Ukraine then refused to sign — spelled out the exact type and number of troops and weapons the Ukraine would be allowed to keep in its neutral, demilitarized, denazified final form. And it is this memorandum, updated to reflect new facts on the ground, that the Russians would be willing to go back to if negotiations were to resume.

As you see, the US, NATO and Europe have nothing. It seems very likely that the current bout of bargaining, as a stage of the grieving process, has to do with Trump waving good-bye to the Ukraine, wanting to extricate the US from the proxy conflict with Russia his predecessor started as quickly and cheaply as possible, without accepting any responsibility for anything and certainly without extending any security guarantees to the Ukraine. All that remains is to get the Russian side to make a concession — any concession, no matter how symbolic and inconsequential — so that the abandonment of the Ukraine doesn’t look like an outright defeat. That seems like a plan, except…

Except that Russia is at this point no longer interested in any negotiations with the Ukraine, the US, NATO or the EU over the fate of the Ukraine. Ever since the coup in 2014, Russia has tried repeatedly to come up with some nonviolent way to resolve the conflict between the West and the Ukraine’s Russian majority, but to no avail — because it was lied to at every step. Minsk 1 and 2 agreements were all entered into with the goal of buying time to arm and train the Ukraine’s troops, not in pursuit of peace. Istanbul was negotiated successfully but then Boris Johnson flew to Kiev and demanded that the war continue down to the last Ukrainian (which it almost has by now, given that the Ukrainians are getting ready to start drafting 18-year-olds). At this point, even Bloomberg’s analysts admit that “Russia has no motives to compromise because it is winning.”

Furthermore, Russia has no reason to want to enter into any sorts of negotiations with Trump or with the EU/NATO people that Trump’s people will soon start pushing around. Last summer, Putin specified that in order to start the negotiations, all sanctions on Russia would have to be lifted. Russia doesn’t need to have these sanctions lifted (its economy is growing nicely even with the sanctions in place) but it’s a point of law: these sanctions are not approved by the UN Security Council and are therefore illegal. And why would Russia enter into negotiations on the basis of state-legal relations with entities that are in violation of international law? Here we have the irresistible force that are the sanctions meeting the immovable object that is Russia and the obvious result is no negotiations at all.

If the EU and the US were to have an epiphany, realize that their 40 thousand illegal sanctions hurt them and help Russia, and swiftly repeal them all (unlikely as that seems), the next stumbling block is the idea of freezing the conflict along the current line of separation. The line of separation is in motion and by the time the negotiations are over it could be someplace else entirely. Also, the line of separation runs across Russian territory since the regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson were accepted into the Russian Federation in their entirety, not piecemeal, and as both Putin and FM Lavrov said, Russian sovereignty is not for sale. Furthermore, the line of separation runs through parts of Kharkov and Sumy regions, but this by no means completes the list of formerly Ukrainian territories that will become (once again) part of Russia. Not knowing what it is you are negotiating over is not a good position from which to enter negotiations.

Lastly, even if all such roadblocks were to be removed, an ultimate roadblock would remain: Russia has nothing to gain from entering into negotiations with Trump, the EU or NATO. It is to Russia’s advantage to simply continue doing what it is doing. What the Russian people want is not some negotiated peace with negotiating partners they no longer trust at all because they know them to be liars, war criminals and terrorists. What the Russian people want is outright, total victory — glory for their troops and humiliation for the enemy. Ideally, the victory would come in time for the 80th anniversary celebration on May 9th, 2025 (and if you don’t know what that anniversary is of, you know nothing about Russia). In turn, Russian politicians would only be too happy to oblige, seeing as that is the direction in which developments on the battlefield are moving. Don’t bother the Russians — they are busy winning!

If negotiations are impossible, what is left? “Escalation,” some would eagerly exclaim; “World War III!” Well, the Russian leadership has addressed this question during Putin’s recent address before the Ministry of Defense. To summarize briefly:

• The year 2024 has put Russian forces firmly in control of strategic initiative over the entire line of contact in the Ukraine. Thousands of square kilometers of territory and scores of population centers are being cleared of Ukrainian troops.<

• Russia’s military now numbers 1.5 million men, many of them battle-tested, while breakthrough weapons such as Oreshnik, which obviates the need for a nuclear response, are entering mass production.

• Russia is preparing to respond to any provocation, including armed conflict with NATO in Europe during the next decade. Given than Russia now has the strongest and most battle-tested military force on the planet, it is in NATO’s and Europe’s interest to avoid armed conflict with Russia at all costs.

The conclusion of the conflict in the Ukraine has already been written down. That document resides at the Kremlin and no, we won’t be told what’s in it. No US, EU or NATO involvement in considering it or revising it is called for or will be accepted. Russia is winning. The objectives of its Special Military Operation in the Ukraine are being achieved.

But the fact remains that the Ukrainian proxy war, instigated in early 2022 and perpetuated ever since by the Biden clan, has cost over a million Ukrainian lives and an order of magnitude fewer but still a considerable number of Russian lives. Since the Ukraine always was and always will be a part of greater Russia (check historical maps if you have any doubts about this), those Ukrainian lives are Russian lives as well. Take this to mean that American actions have resulted in the deaths of over a million Russians. Rest assured that Russia will find a way to avenge their deaths. The Russians, by their nature, are not vindictive. They just have very good memory and they like to settle scores. They are also very patient and will wait to act until the US is at its weakest.

And so, I have some good news for Americans as well as some bad news.

The good news is that they won’t die in a nuclear inferno any time soon. Russia will be too busy winning to bother with them. And then, as Putin put it during yesterday’s marathon 4-hour public Q&A, the Russians will have to “think about home.” The key topics for Russians, as summarized by artificial intelligence from the over 2 million questions they asked, are, in order of their prevalence, as follows: housing and subsidized mortgages, medicine, transportation, finances, welfare of servicemen, pensions and hooking up rural residences to gas pipelines. America, if you notice, is nowhere on this list.

The bad news is that Americans will eventually have to pay for the crimes committed by their government.

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Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/fbf83a92-ce26-4220-9463-c6a51e3f2ac1