Ukraine – The Beginning Of The End (Which Is Yet Far Away)

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the borderland, i.e. Ukraine, will have to give up territory to Russia. There will be no place for Ukraine in NATO. The U.S. will give no security guarantees to Ukraine. Neither the U.S. military nor NATO will take part in any peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.

With that the U.S. conceded to Russia two of its main requests. Four Ukrainian oblast plus Crimea will become parts of Russia. NATO enlargement towards the east has been stopped. Any U.S. deployment to Ukraine is, for now, out of question.

The devil however is in the details. Russia will want legal agreements and guarantees. It knows that these might (again) be broken but it is still be better to have those than none.

There is also no agreement at all, when, where and how the fighting might stop.

The Trump administration wants an immediate ceasefire along the current line of contact. For Russia this just a repeat of Minsk 1 and 2 agreements which were used to prop up Ukraine. It is not a sufficient solution.

The Russian readout of yesterday’s Trump-Putin call says:

Donald Trump spoke in favour of stopping the hostilities as soon as possible and solving the crisis peacefully.

In turn, Vladimir Putin pointed out it was necessary to eliminate the root causes of the conflict.

Trump wants a ceasefire, Putin wants more.

The question of NATO membership for Ukraine is only one element of the root causes of the conflict. What is necessary to conclude the war is a long lasting indivisible European security structure in which every major country can feel save and secure.

In late 2021 Russia presented two papers to the U.S. and NATO which point to potential solutions. Discussions on those have not even started. This will be a long process.

Unless a structure of indivisible security in Europe is found and agreed upon Russia will have to use military means to guarantee security for itself and its allies. Its Special Military Operation is likely to continue until that objective has been achieved.

There is no sign that Trump has recognized the larger issue at hand and is willing to talk about it. When he finds out that there is no short term solution – a ceasefire – to have, he might want to dump the whole issue and ignore the outcome: “Let Europe take care …”

When the Biden administration provoked and executed the proxy war against Russia, major European countries ignored their own interest and behaved like U.S. vassals. They now make noise about being left out of the peace process.

Well, if you behave like vassals and ignore your own interest why are you astonished when you are treated like vassals and have your own interests ignored? Grow some balls and fight for your interests. Then maybe, just maybe, other will also start to keep your interests in mind.