this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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With more sober assessments of the course of the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic, we may hope for a prompt attempt at serious negotiation and, if fate is kind, an end to the hostilities.
The problem is that negotiation only means something if the parties trust each other to follow it (or an agreement will be enforced by external parties with credible ability to do so).
Russia and Ukraine already have an agreement - the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed in 1994. It opens with this: "The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine". Note that the 1994 borders of Ukraine include Crimea and the entire Donbas region.
If agreements only apply until Putin feels it is ready to take more of Ukraine, and then Putin can just take more by force, but not risk what it has 'locked in' through Ukraine upholding its previous agreements, then an agreement is meaningless for Ukraine - at best, all it does is lets Russia recover economically and rebuild reserves so it can prepare for a large push and take more of Ukraine next time.
The only ways this could meaningfully be settled would be:
Historically many if not most conflicts started with the breach of an agreement. Without getting bogged down in irrelevant detail, there are issue of self-determination of Crimea, which repeatedly in 3 referenda (2 if you wish to exclude the last one) pronounced in favour of either autonomy or being part of the CIS (effectively Russian Federation). Likewise, and setting aside the 2014 events for the moment, there also were agreements that, in principle, may have served as a valid status quo, such as Minsk II, and were not complied to by the parties.
So, sure, some form of trust-building will be necessary. But what's the alternative? Endless war?