Brian Whitmore
This war will be decided on the battlefield.
Four months of chaotic shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a cease-fire in Ukraine, multiple phone calls between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, repeated US attempts to pressure, browbeat, and bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into concessions, have all yielded exactly nothing.
Which is not in the least bit surprising. Because there is no deal to be had with Russia on Ukraine. There never has been, and there never will be.
There is simply no magic formula, no concession, and no grand bargain that would satisfy the Kremlin’s maximalist and eliminationist goals. Moscow wants to end Ukraine’s sovereignty, nationhood, and statehood. Ukraine wants to continue to exist as an independent sovereign state. Given this, no compromise is possible. Any Kabuki negotiations or Potemkin cease-fire would be meaningless and treated by the Kremlin as nothing more than a strategic pause and an opportunity for sanctions relief.
“Russian imperialism will not be neutralized by negotiations, compromises, or concessions,” Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies and an associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, wrote on May 22.
Following his latest call with Trump, Putin said he wanted any settlement to address what he called the “root causes of the crisis.” That choice of phrase was no accident. The Kremlin leader used a similar formulation when addressing the issue of ending the war during a joint press conference with Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka in March.
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