Doesn’t say much, but what this does at least signal is that both sides seem to understand how this war ends - with both sides unhappy.
This is Zelensky stating their likely starting postion: Unconditional ceasefire along current lines. Followed by diplomacy and security guarantees. The first part is easier. The second part, less so. Doesn’t seem like much, but it IS the first time that they have said even that much.
Russia has spent too much to be content in the long term keeping only what they have now - and the heavy emphasis being on NOW. Including the exorbitant reconstruction costs they would have to pay. And I mean just internally within Russia to repair their oil & gas infrastructure to some new baseline level. But they ARE sort of, kind of, in the traditional bad-faith Russian way, acknowledging that their original war aims of total regime change and Belarus-ization of Ukraine aren’t going to happen. Yet.
Unconditional ceasefire means exactly that - no conditions, including no reparations intially. That’s what the diplomacy and security guarantees are for. But - who’s going to provide security? Not the current U.S. administration, that’s for sure. So what would that look like? For sake of argument, let’s say a Euoprean NATO ground monitoring force and no-fly zone 100km from Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus. Total guess, but not that hard to imagine.
And what about reparations? Ukraine will want and deserves them in any world where justice matters. Russia will never, ever, EVER pay reparations willingly unless they are actively collapsing, like in WW1 with the treaty of brest-litovsk. BTW - the Russians paid only $6 billion marks then - like $160m dollars, or $3.5B dollars today. Seems like a bargain, but that’s another story. The important part is there’s no way Russia willingly pays out of pocket. Period. Too much pride and ego and nothing would get Putin killed faster than obliging oligarchs to pay a tax on their future earnings to get out of the war he started.
Ukraine might be assessing that an unconditional ceasefire is acceptable, because the future post-putin instability might present new opportunities to regain territory without having to do the bloody business of fighting for it today.
As for reparations - Ukraine COULD probably succesfully seek a portion of the seized assets post-war. Russia will lose their minds, and threaten to restart the war. This often happens in negotiations, but…rarely actually does. Let’s assume that they aren’t ready to resume fighting midway through peace talks. There would be signals like mobilizations if they were.
But, it’s not crazy to think they might accept losing SOME of the $300 billion that Belgium is currently sitting on if it meant getting the rest back. They’ve lived without it for nearly 5 years, and they absolutely need it for their own post-war reconstruction costs. And it is not quite the political humiliation of outlaying new money. There’s probably a way to do it quietly enough that even if the average russian muggle understands that it’s reparations by other means, that it comes from already-stolen money that was never going to come to them anyways.
That settlement will be done during the Diplomacy phase. The glass-half full view is that IF the fighting stops per the initial Unconditional Ceasefire, it is hard to restart the war at the same intensity. There’s so many issues of logistics, momentum, economic re-configuration and morale. Nobody on either side really wants to be the last person to die while diplomats quibble over semantics far away. Battlefield conditions rarely change much DURING negotiations - that’s why they’re really significnat even if it seems pointless. We’re only JUST at the initial stages where they talk about their opening positions. You don’t do even THAT when you think your position will be stronger tomorrow.
All this to say - both sides are going to end up unhappy, at least at first. But - in what seemed hopeless until pretty recently, both sides are publicly stating their positions. That’s SOME kind of good news.
Thoughts?
Russia is clearly unable to advance in any meaningful way and Ukraine, while performing admirably would be unlikely to be able to force Russia back to their borders. This conflict has been a stalemate for some time now so the question is who does the current situation favour?
Ukraine has a relatively small economy for a country of its size and as long as the EU keeps paying its bills could sustain the current rate for years.
Russia had a large globalised economy that has been sustained for years by cash injection from their national wealth fund which appears to have run dry. This war has also been financed by Russian bank debt to the MIC to keep the real cost off state books. This debt is a ticking time bomb and will likely be Russia’s limiting factor. Russia has already started selling off it’s gold reserves to cover their budget deficit which is sure sign they are running on fumes.
Ukraine just needs to stay the course and wait for Russia to do what it does once a generation, have a financial collapse. Imagine Putin had the sense to invest all of the money wasted on the war in improving Russia instead of destroying Ukraine. Even if Russia gets some land from the final settlement it will be a pile of rubble requiring money they don’t have to become useable. I find it hilarious that people once thought the Russian mob boss was some kind of genius.
Bang on mate. Couple of other things - Russia has already extracted the easiest-to-get-at oil. Everything else going forward will cost more to bring to market and erode their profit margin. And that’s IF they can get sanctions lifted for the machinery and more importantly technical expertise to rebuild their drilling and refining capacity. They won’t be back to 2022 levels, maybe…ever.
The 30 year war chest of Cold War grievances is spent, and getting it back will take far FAR longer than the years Putin has left to live. They pissed away their entire Soviet hardware inheritance. That itself is a staggering idea. The purpose of that stockpile was to roll from Poland to Portugal before the feckelss pussies in NATO could organize a response. It’s gone. Period. And so is that russian dream
To your last point - Putin was sometimes described as a 4D Chess player running circles around naive Western leaders. That’s only half true IMO. I’ve said this before, still holds: He’s not a chess player - he’s a poker player who always bluffs, punches down on enemies he doesn’t think will hit back, and counts on his fat chip stack scaring away the other players. Well - his bluff got called, hubris prevented him from making a smart correction when he should have, his chip stack is blown and now he is cornered by his own stupidity and greed.
Indeed - imagine if they had spent half as much time and money improving Russian society to be attractive to the world instead of creating a repulsive goon state with nothing to admire? Putin isn’t a statesman - he’s a gangster, full stop. And gangsters only understand fear and brutality.
Putin as a bluffing poker player with a fat stack is spot on. European leaders have for too long been cowardly in all dealings with Putin, fearing his presumed strength while forgetting all about the bigger stick they carried.
Thanks to Ukraine for showing us that the short bald chump in the Kremlin is just a busted flush.