Deeply unserious.
This is the Russian way. The way of the terrorist. Maximalist demands completely detached from reality. Stonewall until they give you something you didn’t have before.
Russia’s “position” is -
- Ukraine can never join NATO.
- All land as it sits today is ceded.
- And the fortress belt and rest of Donbas territory and population is surrendered.
- Finland has to leave NATO for some reason.
- Economically vital Odessa and Mykolaiv are demilitarized and therefore hostage to Russian bombardment.
- NATO has to remove Baltics bases and the protection they give
- Return of $300B frozen assets
- Transnistria in Moldova is formally annexed
What does Russia offer?
- We will remove the tactical nukes we put into Belarus in 2023.
That’s it. Never mind that those nukes are both unusable and their location is completely irrelevant in a world of ICBMs and Cruise Missiles. And that “moving” them is an afternoon of loading them on trucks back and forth.
So - Russia demands literally everything, for literally nothing. **This is all revealing of what Putin’s plans were in the first place. **
They clearly intended to seize the Baltics, Finland, Poland, Romania…everything in the Warsaw Pact and as much beyond that as they could possibly grab. We are lucky they are so stupid, and that the ukrainians are so brave.
I mean - what do you even say? Ok Russia. Game on. Keep dying then. If Peace is the same as Death, why would anybody want it?
Here’s my compromise:
We drop 20 megatons on Moscow and every Russian household gets a free washer-dryer.
To be WAY kinder to them than they deserve, you can only take things off the table in negotiations. You can’t put new things on unless there is major changes on the battlefield. And if you thought that you had the momentum what is plainly a war of national conquest…you wouldn’t be negotiating for peace, even on absurd terms.
So - put yourself in the muddy gumboots of a black hearted Russian gangster ghoul - you might as well ask for absolutely everything at the outset. And they have.
There is optimism because of what’s NOT on the table. Russia knows Ukraine won’t accept this. They know they won’t probably accept ANY of it. They will amend these terms while their situation worsens and Krasnov gets less and less useful before January when the new Congress sits. He may well have some procedural fuckery planned for that anyways - but even the uproar around that would make him less focused on Ukraine.
They dropped earlier restrictions on Ukraine’s army size. That was unenforceable anyways, and not as relevant on an increasingly automated battlefield. They didn’t expcitly ask for EU membership to be removed. They aren’t demanding snap elections in Ukraine. They deserve NONE of these things, by the way, but that “reality on the ground” as they like to say, has never stopped them from making obscene demands before.
They are only negotiating because they are well and truly fucked. It’s vulgar and nasty what they’re asking for, and insulting theatrics above all - but ukraine doesn’t have to accept any of this for now. They continue to endure brutal terror attacks, but Russia’s position will weaken going forward too.
It’s tough but fair.
That wouldn’t be of much use to them since ~20% of Russian households do not have indoor plumbing and ~66% of people in rural areas do not even have indoor toilets. Source. I’m sure plenty of them would cheer for the nuke dropping on Moscow though.