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The plan doesn't really have to be complicated: call Putin and negotiate a cease fire and peace talks, maybe threaten to join in if he doesn't come talk, maybe concede Crimea, whatever sweetens the pot. Classic art of the deal.
There already were some accords before Boris Johnson was sent to blow them up. I'm sure you could actually get Putin to be reasonable in his demands if you treat Russia like a GP, which is ultimately what this war is about.
What a peace looks like now is a good question, but here's my proposal:
First of all, what exactly does Ukraine get out of this plan? It looks like something you might sell to them if it looks like Russia is going to turn it into the Puppet Republic of Malorossia in not-too-distant future.
But more importantly, what's the point of this plan? If you're a good Christian, then saving human lives might be the answer, but if you're a godless power projection optimizer in the mold of Bismarck and Kissinger, then drip-feeding Ukraine various arms and armor as long as possible is by far the better option.
The only thing you lose as the US is some surplus military equipment. In return you get to test various cool stuff against an actual army, you keep Russia busy, the NATO reinvigorated, the EU divorced from Russia. Why stop right now? Let Russia and Ukraine exhaust each other as much as possible. Then you can hit two birds with one stone during the peace talks:
The only risk is that you might miss a black swan that causes Russia to implode before you can react. Ukraine cannot really implode like this because it's already on life support.
This is my functional model of the end result of this war if nothing gets negotiated first. So yes, the main thing Ukraine gets is it's territory integrity back to some degree, security through some military guarantee, and conditional entry into the European socio-economic sphere.
Seems a lot better than meat grinding the rest of your population for less.
But to answer you, what I'd want most out of peace is stability in Europe and normalized relationships between powers so further conflict is made unlikely first, and self determination second.
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Crimea has been under Russian occupation since 2014. I doubt that Putin has been losing sleep over the possibility of a counter-invasion by Ukraine which would not be contrary to international law, but would be so after Ukraine formally conceded Crimea.
Putin may be an autocrat, but I think it is very possible that his position of power is strong enough that he can de facto surrender in Ukraine without losing his job and possibly his head. That might have an option after his Blitzkrieg had failed in 2022, but to tell the mothers of dead Russian soldiers that their sons have died so that Russia can keep Crimea seems like political suicide.
(And who knows how plebiscites in the oblasts might turn out, once the people who fled Russian occupation are allowed back. Both sides have incentives to engage in ballot-stuffing by sending their citizens to stay there long enough to vote, and the records of who was living there in 2013 could have been tampered with by either side.
Guarantees are not the deterrence you think they are, historically. Also, they are just a precommitment to start a war in certain cases.
Say you are Estonia. If someone invades Poland, that means that under Article 5 you are obliged to go to war (along the US and most of the West) to defend your fellow NATO member.
This might seem like a bad deal for Estonia, and indeed it is not clear how many NATO countries would honor the obligation. But with NATO membership, they get something in return: If they are invaded, Poland is also obliged to come to their aid.
The EU guaranteeing Ukraine would leave Estonia in the same position of having to fight if Ukraine gets invaded, but without (a) any reverse obligation to Ukraine (b) support from the US or the UK, who happen to have the largest nuclear stockpiles in NATO.
Now, I like Ukrainian independence, and support sending them weapons for as long as they care to fight and die for it, but absent mutual obligations (e.g. NATO), I am opposed to starting WW3 lite (between EU and Russia, without US/UK) over it.
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So, neither the EU (which would have to vote unanimously) nor Putin would agree to your plan. A more realistic peace proposal would concede most of the occupied territory to Russia and see Ukraine (which will then not be in an active conflict) join NATO so Putin can't come for the next slice in a few years. Of course, neither Ukraine nor Russia would likely agree to that.
Or perhaps start with a ceasefire, where both sides can dig in, making future conquests more costly. (Obviously swap the occupied part of Kursk for a piece of occupied Ukraine.) Then again, a frozen conflict a la Korea might be hard to accomplish because both belligerents are very unevenly matched here.
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Ukraine already has that. What else you got?
I am duty bound to inform you that you are allowed to read the rest of the sentence, or indeed, the rest of the post.
And yet, duty bound or not you didn't rebut the point of what had already failed.
*The accords you claim already existed were non-viable due to Russian demands even before the Bucha Massacre was recognized, and conditional on Russian demands for Ukrainian disarmament to levels below what Ukraine has already since lost in the war- i.e. an inability to defend itself- while demanding a Russian veto on external security assistance by non-Russian providers- i.e. that other actors like the EU would not be able to act in a crisis.
*The end of sanctions on Russia will not occur because the sanctions are themselves a mechanism of European transition away from Russian energy imports on grounds of national security following Russia's attempted energy blackmail.
*Russia has no credibility has a military guarantor of Ukraine's security as it is currently on the third continuation war of violating Ukraine's neutrality.
*Russia has already rejected the applicability of neutral administration of the Russophone oblasts both in the form of annexation and in its previous positions during Minsk agreements positions of previous agreed upon neutral parties.
*As there is no reason to believe there would turnover of territory, by consequence the destination of most reconstruction aid would be in the areas most heavily damaged- the areas Russia holds- amounting to a subsidy / reimbursement to Russia of the costs of Russian conquest. If there was no cross-control spending, the provision would have no role as both powers would simply spend on reconstruction of their own areas regardless.
*Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine was already conducted when Ukraine was on a much less involved level of EU association despite existing treaties.
Your terms of peace are non-credible because they rest on provisions that Russia has already broken or insisted on poison pill sub-provisions that lead to this conflict.
Peace requires concessions on both sides, and I think a European guarantee is enough of a deterrent.
Both sides' declared conditions are mutually exclusive, I tried to cleave from both of them somewhat fairly.
Formal borders sans Crimea restored and an end to military occupation seems like it goes without saying, formal schedules for returning Ukraine to normal administration are left as exercise to the reader.
If Putin is interested in clay instead of all of his declared war goals, peace is a non starter, but I believe him when he says his concerns are related to security of Russia and Russians more than rote imperialism.
So far your concessions are largely unilateral in light of how Russia has approached or poison-pilled various equivalent standards before.
A peace treaty doesn't depend on what you think is enough of a deterrent, it depends on what others think is enough of a deterrent. The typical-minding of other actors perspectives and interests to your own is why your proposals will not be credible to the actors that matter.
Are you trying for fairness, or functionality?
If you are trying for functionality, your sense of fairness has neglected the functional failures that already occurred as a result of equivalent terms in the past, failures which you are expecting previous victims of to subscribe to again.
It not only requires saying, but categorial opposition to this has been the starting position for the Russian position for over two years now, with no provided reason for why they would drop the position and un-annex regions now given that a cease fire or frozen conflict- a BATNA to a treaty- would let them retain territory well beyond formal borders sans Crimea.
And as one of the readers is the Russians, this turns any formal schedule into a frozen conflict scenario. Which is the same scenario that led to the 2022 invasion as Russia deemed a frozen conflict with no viable path to NATO membership insufficient to meet its desires vis-a-vis another continuation war.
Putin is interested in the clay because many of his claimed war goals were false or lost already.
The Russophone regional populations were not categorically endangered until Russia created and enforced a separatist conflict with external interventions, NATO expansion was accelerated instead of countered, the Ukrainians were not a false nation seeking Russian liberation, and the Ukrainian government was never a Nazi regime.
The clay is what allows Putin to justify to himself, his partisan supporters, and his historian that he 'won' in some meaningful sense.
Do Russian diplomats really read this forum? News to me.
In any case your model of the motivations of the belligerents is not the same as mine so I don't really think we can reconcile the reasoning for any of this.
I will say however that taking the current declared terms from both sides as immutable gospel as you do here is absurd. Diplomacy never works like that.
Do Russian diplomats need to read this forum for your proposals to be unworkable because of poor modeling of the interests and concerns of participants?
Sure we can. We can work to justify the models based on key actor behavior, contexts that the proposed models will work within, and past iterations.
For example, you made a concession that if Putin is interested in clay instead of all his declared war goals, then peace is a non-starter. I noted that it is impossible for Putin to achieve all of his declared war goals, and that in lieu of those he has significant interest in the clay in order to declare victory. You have not disputed these points on all of Putin's war goals. If Putin has many interests in the conflicts, and many/most have fallen away, then the reason to continue the conflict remains the rest- which includes the clay.
This is a synthesis, not a refutation of your model, and thus allows the conversation to reach your own conclusion. Putin cares about the clay, and thus peace is hopeless.
From this point, we can discuss what that means for reasonable peace talks (which have a purpose even when an adversary has no interest in fulfilling them), assumptions of terms they can be approached with, and so on.
Fortunately I am not arguing on the immutable gospel of declared terms, but rather past iterations, interests, and incentives... which is how diplomacy routinely works, absurd as that may seem to you.
Moreover, you seem to be trying for a flawed reasoning of what is or is not considered subject for negotiation. Just because initial declared terms are 'never' final terms doesn't mean all parts of initial terms are subject to concession. Plenty of terms are not subject to trading way short of total capitulation- which is not the context Russia is faced with in the timeframe being alluded to. As such, the basis by which currently held Russian territory would be traded away with requires justification rather than going without saying, particular in light of past Russian policies in regards to frozen conflicts and relevant historical analogs to broad-front indefinite cease fires.
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I find my question unchanged.
Are you under the impression that the EU is or ever has been guaranteeing the independence of Ukraine militarily?
They get transitive Article 5 NATO protection under my plan, they just don't get to trigger it themselves or host NATO bases and are bound to formal neutrality as part of the deal.
No, just that such a guarantee isn't worth very much.
What the hell more do you want than dual GP protection? Nuclear weapons?
Acknowledgement of reality. A peace deal now without hard guarantees is just a pause, a frozen conflict so more can be taken in the future.
I don't think I can even imagine what you consider a hard guarantee if that doesn't qualify.
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