PUTIN’S UKRAINE CEASEFIRE CONDITIONS

1. Granting Russian control over areas in Ukraine that Moscow has never occupied during its two-year and a half invasion (Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia)
2. Pledge that Ukraine will never join Nato.
3. Lifting of western sanctions imposed in 2022
4. Kiev to never develop nuclear weapons and to pursue its “demilitarisation” and “denazification”

Note

1. Any territorial concessions by Ukraine in a peace agreement with Russia will reward crimes and aggression. They will encourage, not end, Russia’s attacks on countries in its neighborhood and elsewhere in Europe.
2. Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership has spent two decades frequently and systematically attacking the independence and sovereignty of many of its neighbors. Against this background, it is implausible to imagine that Putin would accept Ukrainian territorial concessions with relief, reflects on his good fortune, and resolve never again to gamble his country’s future on disastrous military adventures.
3. Territorial concessions will, on the contrary, give a firm basis on which Putin and/or future leaders in the Moscow Kremlin can claim success for a strategy of weakening and destabilizing the neighborhood. Aspiring future Russian leaders will not chose a sober and repentant path of good neighbor lines. They will seek to garner domestic support with similar ‘make Russia great again’ manifestos.
4. Crimea concession would be, as much as any other territorial transfer, a change to recognized 1991 borders, and a reward to Russia for its aggression.  It would therefore not only fail to deter Russian regime’s campaign to steal the territory and sovereignty of its neighbors. It would confer legitimacy on them.
5. An adage well used in several Slavic languages describes a situation where conflicting demands can be reconciled as one  where ‘the wolves are sated, but the sheep remain whole’. Territorial giveaways to Russia will achieve neither of these conditions.

The Way Forward

Absent an unlikely change inn strategy and/or leadership in Moscow a comprehensive defeat of Russia’s threat to countries in its neighborhood needs to remain a key objective for the West. Rather than offer Russia inducement to negotiate, the effort to drive up the costs of its deluded strategy must be continued and enhanced. A Russia that recognizes the benefits of constructive and cooperative partnerships in the wider European region may seem a distant prospect now. But until there is a satisfactory minimum of shared vision on what will bring that region stability and success, a rush to negotiations is unlikely to end well.

Russia must be defeated, not appeased. Deterrence and containment of Russia must remain key objectives for Western governments and their allies.