Desperate & Semi-Despairing Night Thoughts About Ukraine
Can you negotiate a peace with sooooo many liars in the room? Is there an unstable path to Ukraine’s future?
Can you negotiate a peace with sooooo many liars in the room? Is there an unstable path to Ukraine’s future?
How can one try to negotiate a peace with a lying fantasist chaos monkey in the house—with multiple lying fantasist chaos monkey in the house—anyway?
If, for once, what Donald Trump says is true—if Vladimir Putin really has no objections to peacekeeping troops in Ukraine—then the end of the Putin war on Ukraine should be immediate:
International recognition of Russian acquisition of Crimea.
Plebiscites or “plebiscites” in eastern oblasts to determine which will join Russia.
Immediate free-trade zone between Ukraine and the EU with full membership to come later.
And NATO “training” and “peacekeeping” battalions all over the place.
But nobody believes Trump tells the truth. And so we have:
Robert Armstrong & Aiden Reiter: Investor sentiment vs consumer sentiment: ‘Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump that he had no problem with the presence of peacekeeping troops in Ukraine after the end of the war in that country. Or so Trump said yesterday. This is, in the words of one analyst, “bombshell” news that changes the odds of peace significantly — if it is true. But no one is sure if Putin actually said it, and if he said it, whether he meant it. So Trump’s comments didn’t even make front pages. In 2025, in politics as in markets, nobody knows what to believe… <https://www.ft.com/content/9734000e-b63f-4729-85f3-49561cba0801>
Thus the problem is, as Rob Armstrong and Aiden Reiter point out, Trump is such a liar that what he says is worth reporting only for whatever clues it might give to his fantasy state of mind, rather than to any form of reality ground truth out there in the world.
But maybe now that Trump has claimed it, the door to that compromise peace, the one in which Putin gets to claim victory by establishing international recognition of Putin’s possession of Ukraine and ingathering more of the Great Russian people to the Motherland, is open a little bit?
Certainly the world should not ignore the problem. People have been dying at a horrific rate for three years now. Forcing complete and public defeat on a nuclear superpower was always too dangerous to be a victory condition you seek. And the fact that that was the public position of NATO led the very wise and humane Robert Skidelsky to be despairing of the path that brought us here:
Robert Skidelsky: Britain’s insistence on total Ukrainian victory was misguided – it’s time for a realistic compromise: ‘What was right was the forthright condemnation of Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine…. [Yet] The contradiction between militaristic rhetoric and unwillingness to “do what it takes” to secure victory for fear of Russian retaliation was the crucial fissure in the British approach. No one was willing to risk nuclear war to save Ukraine. Logically, this should have led to a search by Ukraine’s supporters for a compromise peace…. But within the UK, the only acceptable condition of peace was a Ukrainian victory…. From my perch in the House of Lords I repeatedly heard ministers say it was up to Ukraine to decide when, and on what terms, to make peace… <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/25/britain-ukraine-victory-compromise-peace-negotiations-uk>
However, I was always more optimistic.
I had always interpreted “it was up to Ukraine to decide when, and on what terms, to make peace” as meaning something different. I saw it as a public message. And I saw, underneath it, a private message to Ukraine: Things will change, and while we will not now undermine you by saying “there must be peace soon”—and thus forcing you to accept whatever Putin offers in the next three months—you do need to get busy.
I had always thought that private message was being sent loud and clear by everyone except possibly Idiot Boris Johnson. (But I may have been wrong.)
Perhaps Putin thinks that peace can be made while Trump assures people that peacekeepers who will never actually appear will show up real soon now. And then he thinks he will be able to resume the war when he wishes. That is not a scenario Ukraine will accept. So the question is how to move to a scenario in which the peacekeepers actually do show up, rather than one with empty promises from Trump that they will.
Thus the urgency right now of Europe pointing out to Putin that they can and will step in to provide the support that Trump will not, that the fact that Trump is now trying to give away the store is irrelevant because the store is not his to give away, and that his semi-isolationist United States is not the relevant player here. Perhaps Putin’s victory conditions are already down, territorially to what he can get: Crimea and pieces of the eastern oblasts.
But the ultimate sticking point? Security guarantees? Actual rather than pretend ones?
Skidelsky rejects peacekeepers as ungettable:
Robert Skidelsky: Britain’s insistence on total Ukrainian victory was misguided – it’s time for a realistic compromise: ‘Can we somehow insert ourselves into a peace process that we repeatedly disdained? Certainly not by sending British “peacekeepers” to Ukraine, as Kier Starmer has suggested. Our prime minister must know this is a deal breaker, not maker, as there is not the slightest chance Putin will agree to it… <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/25/britain-ukraine-victory-compromise-peace-negotiations-uk>
But maybe the fact that Trump says that Putin has agreed opens the door a sliver?
Maybe there is a place not for “peacekeepers” but rather “training battalions”, plus a restating of the 2004 peace agreement, but in which this time Ukraine’s guarantors agree not just to “consult” but to intervene if Ukraine’s sovereignty is infringed?
Just maybe this disaster is not doomed to continue or worsen over the next several years.
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What's motivating Skidelsky to repeat his unhelpful comments? Is he forgetting how politics works, or is he trying to advance some (non-obvious) coherent alternative position? Or is he merely helping Putin?
Reminds of weakness the EU displayed during the wars in Yugoslavia. The Confederate States of Europe could not get their act together and shut the war down. The US provided the muscle to stop it. Maybe the Russo Ukrainian war will be serious enough to get the EU to the field the muscle to stop a dangerous war on their doorstep.