Ceasefire In Ukraine?

The diplomatic tempo of the Ukrainian Conflict is picking up as all relevant parties begin talking more about reaching an agreement to end it. Russia has consistently espoused this position and was even on the brink of signing a peace treaty in spring 2022 until former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Zelensky and convinced him to keep fighting. The intervening three years haven’t seen many significant changes on the ground as the conflict thereafter largely transformed into attritional warfare.

The Russian economy remained resilient in the face of the world’s most intense sanctions by far while military-industrial production continued expanding. At the same time, while the Ukrainian economy is in tatters as is its military-industrial production, it’s been kept alive thus far by unprecedented amounts of financial and military aid from its Western patrons. Trump’s return to power, however, resulted in the US reconsidering the wisdom of indefinitely perpetuating NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine.

“Pivoting (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China, which is officially assessed to be its only systemic rival, is deemed to be a much higher priority than continuing to contain Russia in Ukraine. It’s with this grand strategic reorientation in mind from the Western Eurasian theater of the New Cold War to the Eastern one that Trump diplomatically involved himself in the conflict. His rhetoric has evolved over the past 100 days since the inauguration though and he nowadays seems increasingly impatient.

He's since walked back his pre-election boast of supposedly being able to end the conflict in 24 hours and now only says that he has a vague timeline in mind that he refuses to publicly disclose. Trump has also made some passive-aggressive posts about Putin hinting that his Russian counterpart might just be manipulating him and isn’t really interested in a diplomatic solution. The US’ long-awaited signing of its minerals deal with Ukraine also led to Trump authorizing new American weapons packages for Ukraine.

The latest includes 100 Patriot air-defense missiles and 125 long-range artillery rockets from German stockpiles, which coincides with Ukraine and the West demanding that Russia accept an unconditional ceasefire as the prerequisite for continuing the peace process. The Europeans threatened to impose more sanctions on Russia and send more arms to Ukraine if Moscow doesn’t comply, both of which the US has also flirted with as well, though it’s been more circumspect about whether it’ll actually do so.

In any case, it’s very clear that the West is trying to blackmail and pressure Russia into accepting an unconditional ceasefire, which Russia has hitherto refused due to the Minsk-era precedent of Ukraine exploiting all periods of peace to rearm ahead of reinitiating hostilities. There are also serious concerns that the so-called “coalition of the willing” could swiftly move some uniformed troops into Ukraine during a ceasefire in order to establish new facts on the ground that could harm Russian interests.

To be sure, credible reports indicate that foreign military forces have been in Ukraine since the latest phase of this over-decade-long conflict began three years ago, but ununiformed troops (including those deployed under the cover of mercenaries) are politically different than uniformed troops. The first’s losses can be swept under the rug while the second’s can’t, in fact, the latter could also serve as the tripwire for escalating foreign military involvement to the point of brinksmanship against Russia.

Readers shouldn’t forget that France the UK, which are leading this “coalition of the willing”, are nuclear powers. Their liberal-globalist leaderships are hellbent on inflicting their hoped-for strategic defeat of Russia despite the practically impossible odds of that happening, to which end they might seriously consider “escalating to de-escalate” through the abovementioned means. This could still be in the cards despite the US Secretary of Defense declaring that Article 5 wouldn’t apply to their troops in Ukraine.

Trump’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric about Putin and undeniable mission creep through his authorization of new American weapons packages can’t be ignored by Russian policymakers. They’re interested in forming a strategic partnership with the US after the conflict ends, one which could be built upon resource cooperation like energy and rare earths, but they’re also not going to sell their country out for this either. Any resolution of the conflict must address the core security issues for Russia.

From Putin on down, there’s agreement that these are restoring Ukraine’s constitutional neutrality, demilitarizing the country, and denazifying it. The new ground realities must also be taken into account as regards four former Ukrainian regions voting to join Russia during September 2022’s referenda. They’re now legally considered to be part of Russia per the constitution, which prohibits ceding any land after an associated amendment entered into force following 2020’s constitutional referendum.

Russia could hypothetically freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact, leave parts of its new regions under Ukrainian control, but retain its legal claims, all possibly in exchange for significant concessions from Ukraine on the other issues detailed above, though Russia doesn’t seem interested in that. For its part, Ukraine insists on expanding its armed forces after the conflict ends and implementing none of the socio-political reforms that Russia considers to be denazification, and the US won’t coerce it to do so.

Amidst this dilemma, military means appear to still be the only realistic ones for ensuring Russia’s national security interests since Ukraine won’t voluntarily do so and the US isn’t taking Russia’s side, but Russia also isn’t giving up on the diplomatic track either. In response to the new Western pressure upon it from the “coalition of the willing”, Putin addressed the nation early Sunday morning after midnight to propose the unconditional resumption of bilateral talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday.

Trump reacted by posting on social media that Ukraine should immediately take Russia up on this opportunity, which in turn led to Zelensky making his own post less than an hour later about how he plans to travel to Turkiye on Thursday to talk with Putin, who he hopes will show up. Putin probably didn’t expect Zelensky to say that since the Russian leader arguably had in mind the resumption of bilateral talks between their officials just like was the case in spring 2022 before the UK sabotaged them.

Another point to make is that Putin isn’t known for wasting his valuable time on trifling matters like meeting with others just for the sake of it. Moreover, he doesn’t even consider Zelensky to be legitimate, so meeting with him in any context would be an unexpected concession that’s out of character for someone like Putin who passionately argued in support of the Ukrainian Constitution. Stranger things have happened so it can’t be ruled out, but it’s still a far-fetched scenario for the aforesaid reasons.

Regardless of whatever might happen on Thursday, it does indeed seem like the conflict is entering a new phase, it’s just unclear whether an escalation or de-escalation will soon follow. The diplomatic and military status quos are unsustainable, the first with regard to Trump’s growing impatience with the peace process and the second due to Russia’s growing military edge. Trump can therefore either walk away from this proxy war or double down on it like Biden did when the going got tough for the West.

What he doesn’t seem interested in doing is coercing Ukraine into the concessions demanded by Russia even though that would quickly end the conflict and lead to a mutually beneficial strategic partnership between the US and Russia. The reasons might be that the US either lacks the influence over Ukraine required to obtain these concessions, perhaps due to the Europeans replacing its political and to a lesser extent military roles, or his ego couldn’t bear him being accused of Chamberlain-like “appeasement”.

It's therefore an open question whether he’ll disengage from the conflict to cut the US’ losses in order to then “Pivot (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China or double down on the proxy war, even if the latter only proceeds gradually per the mission creep that he’s caught in. France and the UK could also act unilaterally irrespective of whether a ceasefire of any sort enters into effect, which could be a ploy for pressuring Trump to support them or “lose face”, though that would be a risky gamble.

The Europeans and the US might therefore make a fateful decision, be it unilaterally or jointly, depending upon what happens later this week. If the first only impose more sanctions against Russia for rejecting an unconditional ceasefire, then everything will remain manageable, but deploying uniformed troops to Ukraine would spark a serious crisis. Likewise, more American sanctions would harm bilateral trust but not fatally, while support for uniformed European troops in Ukraine would deal a deathblow to it.

Putin might also surprise everyone with another so-called “goodwill gesture”, even if it’s not compliance with an unconditional ceasefire, which could complicate Western warmongers’ plans. At the same time, however, he could also do the opposite by “escalating to de-escalate” in his own (possibly gradual) way. That could be an asymmetrical response to Trump’s mission creep that would still remain below the threshold of ruining the peace process and worsening bilateral tensions.

As was earlier written, the diplomatic and military status quos are unsustainable so it’s inevitable that they’ll change, for better or for worse. This state of affairs can’t continue indefinitely, and there are already signs that an inflection point is approaching, which might even be passed as soon as this week. If a creative diplomatic solution can’t be found, which would also have to prevent the deployment of European troops (unless in the unlikely event that Russia allows them), then an escalation might follow.