Diverse commentators, including Viktor Orbán, Noam Chomsky, Barry Posen, Peter Hitchens, Henry Kissinger and Robert Wright, have called for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine. I too have been suggesting this almost since day one.
Last week, the former head of the British Army Lord Dannatt said, “Russia is not going to lose … The Russians will never go voluntarily. I can’t see the circumstances whereby the Ukrainians will ever be strong enough to throw them out.” He added that at some point Zelensky’s military commanders will have to tell him, “President Zelensky, sir, you’ve got to start negotiating.”
So what would a diplomatic solution look like? Well, it needs to be something that both sides can accept. And it should aim to preserve geopolitical stability as far as possible.
At the start of the war, I would have suggested an agreement like the one John Mearsheimer put forward in 2014: neutrality for Ukraine (no NATO integration); autonomy for the two Donbas regions; and recognition of Crimea as Russian territory. But I fear it’s too late for that now: unless defeated, Russia isn’t going to give back the Donbas.
Something along the following lines seems more realistic: the two Donbas regions go to Russia, along with Crimea; the Sea of Azov becomes a demilitarised zone; Russia withdraws its forces; Ukraine gets defensive weapons but does not join NATO. One might add further stipulations like: Ukraine must opt out of long-range missiles; and NATO must not admit new members on Russia’s border.
Now, I’m not pretending this deal is ‘fair’. And it’s entirely possible that one or both parties would reject it outright. At the present time, Russia occupies vast swathes of southern Ukraine, which under my proposal they would have to give back. So unless the course of the war changes dramatically in Ukraine’s favour, the Ukrainians are unlikely to get a better deal than this.
Why do I say the Donbas should go to Russia, and not other regions that Russia is occupying? Survey data collected prior to the invasion suggest there’s considerable support for separatism in the Donbas, but not elsewhere.
A 2014 survey commissioned by Ivan Katchanovski (the scholar who’s done all the work on the Maidan Massacre) found that a sizeable share of Donbas residents favoured some form of separatism. However, his survey found almost no support for separatism in other regions of Ukraine – contrary to Russian claims at the time.
![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/image-53-1024x815.png)
A 2019 survey commissioned by the researcher Gwendolyn Sasse yielded broadly similar results, though found dramatic differences between government and separatist-controlled areas.
![](https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Peace-Deal-1024x345.png)
A 2020 survey carried out by Sasse and her colleagues found even starker differences, with more than half of residents in separatist-controlled areas wishing to join Russia, compared to less than 15% who wished to remain part of Ukraine.
Interestingly, the latest survey from this group of researchers – carried out in January – found that 50% of Donbas residents in both government and separatist-controlled areas agreed with the statement, “It doesn’t matter to me in which country I live: all I want is a good salary and then a good pension.” Which highlights the despair people evidently feel after more than eight years of war.
Transferring the separatist-controlled areas of Donbas to Russia would help preserve geopolitical stability, while respecting the self-determination of the largely ethnic Russian population living there. However, the same cannot be said of the other regions Russia is occupying – as Katchanovski’s survey indicates.
So how would we get Russia to accept the deal? One approach would be to issue an ultimatum of the form, ‘If you reject the deal, the West will supply Ukraine with more heavy weapons’. Since supplying such weapons is what Western hawks want to do anyway, why not use them as leverage in negotiations first? Another approach would be to make the resumption of friendly relations conditional on accepting the deal.
Regarding the latter suggestion, a hawk might respond that offering to resume friendly relations is unlikely to bring Russia around, since Russia currently has the upper hand – thanks to Europe’s ongoing energy crisis. But this is all the more reason to negotiate now, rather than later, since Europe’s energy crisis will only worsen over the next few months, further undermining the West’s bargaining position.
Some commentators might find the idea of negotiating with Russia objectionable, even offensive. But they have to remember: the choice isn’t between negotiations and certain Ukrainian victory. It’s between negotiations and the continuation of fighting, which may or may not lead to Ukrainian victory, and could produce an outcome far worse.
As Hitchens reminds us, “Almost all wars end in ugly compromise.”
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I have just Googled “Ukraine frontline bodycam” the most recent video was posted on May 20th 2022. (See screenshot)
If there is a war raging that requires €$¥£Billions in international aid and military hardware, surely those fighting or those badly affected may wish to share their plight with the world.
I understood that Ukraine was a developed, prosperous nation. Does nobody there own a mobile phone with a camera?
twitter.com/Armia_fm/status/1563175034213916672
‘HIMARS are actually not the kind of weapon that is used to strike toilets. Even if it has a dubious lonely place on the general list of lend-lease (it is impossible to win a war with missiles alone), it has incredible destructive power within the framework of the tasks assigned to it.
What it did the other day at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station with several Russian military vehicles, I think, there is no need to tell [NOTE: you can view the results of the Nova Kakhovka bridge strike) The video is already online. How many demolished artillery and missile weapons, permanent personnel positions, command points, logistics hubs? Also, HIMARS is incredibly accurate, which, for example, cannot be said about Tornado-S. The effectiveness of missile defence against HIMARS missiles also remains questionable when, let’s say, on average half of the missiles from the package are taken down, and it is not a particularly important object, but simply a harmless artillery and missile warehouse in a rear or in a permanent troop position, then the only thing left is to stick three icons on the gate.
And even without taking into account the fact that the effectiveness of HIMARS more than coincides with its declared performance characteristics, and as we noticed on this theatre of operations, many weapons manufacturers often, to put it mildly, lie when talking about the capabilities of certain systems, it is worth saying that “the HIMARS effect” is not in HIMARS itself, but in the target intelligence. The target designation of the Ukrainian side, obviously with significant assistance from Western military intelligence agencies, is concentrated on real important military infrastructure facilities, which our side despite an advantage in high-precision missiles unfortunately cannot achieve. If you, being a believer, truly had an idea of how many rocket and bomb strikes were fired into nothing, you would become an atheist, and vice versa.
This story has been going on exactly since February 24, when at 04:00 massive strikes were carried out on Ukrainian military facilities empty of manpower, where only ~ 16 people were killed during the entire raid, who were all from the guard service and passers-by. Personnel location positions were abandoned 36 hours before X-Hour.
Yes, Kalibr, Zircons, X-** [missiles] and other guided weapons are, of course, good, but when you have huge problems in reconnaissance of targets, in view of the sad situation in everything from undercover to specific reconnaissance, then there is no sense in this.’
Russian military expert channel, ‘GREY ZONE’ 26 Aug 22
‘Russia is not going to lose’
Russia already lost.
Good luck with trying to get Ukraine to negotiate.
They know Putin will never abide by the terms of any ceasefire.
Buy woolly hats.
‘The reality is that in the spring the Russian Federation killed all those forces with which (they) were able to carry out large-scale encirclement operations. No encirclement operations, no decisive turning point in the course of war. I already wrote about it. The enemy will slowly retreat in those places where they will be pressed by the artillery powerfully enough, but they will retreat to prepared positions occupied by the reserves deployed. To “grind” their cheap infantry in this way without having enough of our own proper infantry can take a very long time and not bring much success.
As already mentioned, instead of the normal replenishment of currently fighting troops, a program has been launched to form new units “from scratch”. We will observe the slaughter of this wave of “volunteers” over Ukrainian positions, including the next three-month-old “BARS” [special reserve initiative in Russia] during the fall. With no mobilisation there will be no fully-fledged replenishment of troops. Are you forming new units in conditions of a general shortage of personnel and communications? They will initially turn out to be uncontrollable, roll out in dense columns to the front line and be wrecked by the enemy artillery and MLRS.
Well, the remnants of experienced infantry professionals are now being finished in completely wild conditions of further attempts to storm the Ukrainian positions around Donetsk.’
‘As one officer of the DPR People’s Militia said, by the start of Mariupol [campaign], most of the platoon and company officers who had been officers before February 24, 2022, had died. In Mariupol, in their place were more or less experienced sergeants, they dragged Mariupol on their backs, and died or dropped out due to severe injuries in the same location. Now most of the platoons and company commanders in the Republics are simply the most experienced ordinary soldiers or, if you’re lucky, sergeants who do not have any officer training.
“There are, so to speak, serious doubts about the practicability of mobilisation. It is unlikely that poorly trained reserves can radically improve the situation at the front, but the river of funeral notices can overwhelm the patience of the Russian society, which, let’s be honest, is not too inclined to sacrifice private interests for the sake of victory.”
This means that even many of those who say what they think, and who at the same time have something to think with, do not understand what is happening. We are already fighting with poorly trained or not at all trained people, such as the Donetsk and Luhansk “mobilised” and all kinds of “volunteers” who are not properly trained by anyone to work with heavy weapons. Fighting now are sick, old, recovering wounded, anyone who is caught on the street.
‘The slaughter of the next wave of “volunteers”, formed from now a completely unusable contingent, which will begin to run away after the first battles much faster than the first recruitment. Then an awkward pause to come up with an explanation for why we starting advancing even more slowly. Then humiliating attempts at negotiations. Then, finally, mobilisation in the Russian Federation, even more monstrous than the current “recruitment of volunteers”, because the same people will be involved. And yes, races towards Ukrainian machine guns by unprepared mobilised for the first anniversary of the start of the SMO. Again without communication, without personal protection, without normal training, without normal management…(told) “Go, there’s no one there!”
Russian volunteer and blogger Murz 26 Aug 22
“Russia already lost.”
In what way? What was their objective? Has anyone won?
My remarks below refer.
This is what Putin feared:
‘There is also a temporal aspect to Russia’s defensive motivations in coercing Ukraine. As Kyiv moves closer to western states, its economy is likely to stabilise and its armed forces to become more capable. Even though NATO membership is unlikely and EU membership improbable, increased training and industrial collaboration, institutional support and personal ties will create a Ukraine armed with Western weapons, using NATO doctrine and fielding highly capable combined arms formations. Ukrainian civil society will also continue to reinforce a fierce sense of Ukrainian identity among the population, limiting Moscow’s soft power in the country. Over time, therefore, Russia’s capacity to coerce Ukraine must diminish.’
RUSI Feb 22
And that is precisely what he has achieved.
So what’s your recipe for ending the war?
That is the whole stupidity that has been perpetrated by Putin. This war is not going to end, for the foreseeable future.
There is no recipe for ending the war that does not involve Russia withdrawing from Ukraine entirely (Crimea already signalled as ultimately negotiable, although that may no longer be the case as a consequence of war crimes) and a U.N. peacekeeping force setting up a buffer zone along the 1000km border with Russia. Latvia is showing the way with a fence along its border with Belarus.
Europe cannot permit anything less, because:
‘…a Russian defeat of Ukraine would turn the proactive Western strategy of economic and political engagement into one of retrenchment, where boundaries could be placed on Western ambition and internal divisions stoked to create paralysis. The question in Eastern European capitals would be that if guarantees to Ukraine were negotiable, where does this leave Article 5? Divisions would emerge between the proponents of stability, such as France and Germany – eager for pragmatic diplomacy – and those in the Baltic, Balkans and the UK who fear Russian aggression.’
‘This would therefore open the door to a more coercive approach in Georgia and Moldova, where the objective would be to ensure that these countries remain dependent on Russia and within a Russian sphere of influence. Explicit or implicit assurances to consult Russia on European security frameworks, meanwhile, would demonstrate to Beijing that Moscow is an invaluable ally in preventing AUKUS and other alliances and/or regional security arrangements from being focused solely on the Indo-Pacific’
RUSI Feb 22
That is unthinkable for Europe, the USA
And a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine is unthinkable.
So, only the catastrophic defeat of one side or the other can end this war, or regime change……but that could make things worse……..
Stupidity; lethal, barbaric, inhuman, criminal stupidity……
Russia is behaving like Nazi Germany and so cannot be negotiated with. That means it must be defeated, ie pushed out of Ukraine. This will require a steady build-up of Ukraine’s army and armaments. Probably take years.
I’m all for peace, but I think the above is wishful thinking. Russia is never going to give up the Crimea that Yeltsin gave away in his cups. The water supply for the Crimea comes from Kherson so I doubt they would surrender Kherson, no words will make the Russian trust the UkoNazis not to use that as leverage against them in future. There is a long held view that the industrial Luhansk and Donetsk sit better with Russia, before you consider the ethno-linguistic issues and the fact that it will take generations for their populations to forgive the UkoNazis for the genocide they have been pursuing there since 2014. Frankly I think the Russkis will keep going till they control everything East of the Dnieper, and The Comedian is just going to have to Lump it..
Did you read the article?
‘….the two Donbas regions go to Russia, along with Crimea’
But you are correct that Russia wants everything East of the Dnieper and, ultimately, Moldova, the Baltic States.
This is, ultimately, a powerplay by Russia to reinstate its global standing.
I doubt the world is very much impressed.
Luckily we have liberal leaders in the West. Weak-kneed and Vlad knows it![🙄](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/svg/1f644.svg)
Putin/Lavrov insulted Truss when she visited Russia. Bad idea.
Yet another reason why there is no end to this war in sight.
That’s rich. 2% of Ukraine voted for them, whereas close to 100% of Russia are PutinNazi supporters.
Outright drivel. Russia sent money and troops into Donbas to start a hybrid imperialist war. Your propaganda misrepresents casualties from that.
‘…the two Donbas regions go to Russia, along with Crimea; the Sea of Azov becomes a demilitarised zone; Russia withdraws its forces….’
Neat and tidy…but war is not neat and tidy and neither is its aftermath.
These are the problems:
Ukraine will never give up the Donbas. It already gave up Crimea, in reality, and look how that ended up. So, even if it signs an agreement giving up the Donbas, it will not abide by that agreement, just as Russia will never agree to the Sea of Azov being demilitarised. Russia may withdraw its ‘forces’ in the short term but they will return in one form or another. It also will not abide by the terms of any treaty it signs. That mich should by now be clear to everyone.
So what is all this about and what will work?
‘Russia’s intent towards Kyiv is a subject of considerable speculation. French President Emmanuel Macron is far from alone in arguing that Russia’s behaviour is not about Ukraine, but rather that Ukraine is merely a lever by which Russia wishes to prompt the negotiation of a new security architecture in Europe.’
‘There are several interrelated drivers to Russia’s current policy, and it is important to understand them in combination.’
Russian defence thinking since the war in Kosovo has revolved around the challenge of ‘colour revolutions’. Watching Western intelligence agencies, diplomatic missions and military powers collaborate in dismantling Serbia and thereafter fostering a political opposition to topple Slobodan Milošević, Moscow took this as a blueprint for how Western policy destabilises its adversaries. Western policy in Serbia stretched legal principles to erode national sovereignty and thereby shaped Russia’s view that the West’s pronouncements about a rules-based international order were hollow and hypocritical.’
‘Putin believes that Hillary Clinton attempted to drive such a campaign towards Russia in 2011. And for the Russian state, Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity was yet another instance of the West subverting a Russian ally. Russia is incorrect in this assessment. The Revolution of Dignity took Western governments by surprise. But Moscow is determined that the movement cannot be seen as a success, and ideally should be reversed. There is a fear of contagion by example in Moscow, where the government has expanded its capacity for repressive measures and begun to actively shut down civil society organisations deemed to provide vectors of criticism against the state.’
‘Ukraine must at least remain in a state of civil conflict, and ideally be brought back under Moscow’s shadow. There is also a temporal aspect to Russia’s defensive motivations in coercing Ukraine. As Kyiv moves closer to western states, its economy is likely to stabilise and its armed forces to become more capable. Even though NATO membership is unlikely and EU membership improbable, increased training and industrial collaboration, institutional support and personal ties will create a Ukraine armed with Western weapons, using NATO doctrine and fielding highly capable combined arms formations. Ukrainian civil society will also continue to reinforce a fierce sense of Ukrainian identity among the population, limiting Moscow’s soft power in the country. Over time, therefore, Russia’s capacity to coerce Ukraine must diminish’
‘Beyond Moscow’s defensive concerns, the Kremlin also views Ukraine as a lever against NATO. Russian officials have become alarmed by expanding and overlapping Western alliances from an enlarged NATO and EU, to AUKUS and the Coalition of Democracies. Russia’s experience of the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, where a UN Security Council (UNSC) mandate to protect the civilian population of Benghazi was used to overthrow Muammar Qadhafi, also underscored how strong Western alliances were able to bypass or manipulate the UNSC, essentially circumventing a forum where Russian interests could be protected.
In light of emerging alliance architectures, Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine fulfils two purposes. First, it shows many non-aligned countries where Moscow is eager to pursue financial and security ties that the West’s guarantees of support are hollow.’
But ‘concessions to Russia that allow limited military and political interference in another state are but the first step in the progressive subversion of that state’s independence.’
‘If Ukraine does fall, then the same tactics and measures may well be applied elsewhere, in Georgia, Moldova and the Balkans, and the West should act quickly to prevent Russia from repeating its multipronged assault on yet more countries. Punishingly harsh sanctions and other measures in the wake of an assault on Ukraine may buy the West time before Russia regroups and goes further. It must not fritter away such a reprieve.
RUSI Feb 22
It must not fritter away such a reprieve.
That means the reinstatement of conventional deterrence.
That is the only way forward in dealing with a country like Russia, uninterested in complying with any international treaties that it may have signed.
Only power talks to Russia.
Ukraine understood that after 2014. They trained, they recruited, they equipped, laying the groundwork for their courageous, dogged and militarily impressive resistance today.
Poland has just ordered 1,000 tanks from South Korea.
Britain? 148 tanks.
It is not the fact as to whether tanks are particularly effective on today’s battlefield that matters, although Ukraine constantly asks for more tanks….hmmm….
What matters is their perceived effectiveness as assessed by likely antagonists.
And those calling the shots are not military experts.
‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ is the kind of thinking taking place.
And right now we only have a few more tanks than the Pope.
“That means the reinstatement of conventional deterrence.
That is the only way forward in dealing with a country like Russia, uninterested in complying with any international treaties that it may have signed.”
However, the USA can go where it pleases – Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Vietnam, Syria, Panama.
As we all know, the USA always goes only where it is invited.
Your understanding of history is decidedly selective.
This is an article about Ukraine and a way forward to peace. There is no way forward to peace.
Whataboutery is not a useful contribution to the debate.
Nevertheless, as I reference above, part of the cause of this conflict does lie in the Blair/Clinton stupidity regarding Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing is a crime but air warfare is not judicial due process.
So much of this was predictable that, really one has to wonder, how are these massive foreign office bureaucracies filling their days?
Yes it’s the contagion of democracy – being a threat to autocracy – that is Russia’s tactical justification for the war.
The strategic objective being to recreate the Russian empire of Tsarist and Soviet times.
This is a war of attrition. Victory in a war of attrition goes to the economically superior side. The German army wasn’t defeated by the Soviet army because their soldiers were inferior in fighting ability.
Russia is much bigger than Ukraine, and I see no evidence that the USA or its European lackeys are prepared to make up the difference.
The PC, feminised and trannified Western armed forces are, with some exceptions, jokes: does anybody seriously think an RAF that would rather have planes without pilots than planes with white male heterosexual pilots is a serious fighting force?
‘“I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war,” Stalin said. “The most important things in this war are the machines…. The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.”
J. Stalin Teheran 1943
‘”If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war,” “One-on-one against Hitler’s Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me.”
N. Krushchev, Memoirs
You seem to be proposing that any large/nuclear powered nation can grab any bits of neighbouring countries they like and the west will conceed after a nominal resistance. I disagree. We should expect such an aggressor to act just as Putin did – he got away with Crimea now he wants more. If he got Donbas he would want more of Ukraine and also he would go after Georgia and others.
On the logic presented the UK should have allowed Argentina to keep the Falklands and we should not have interferred with German objectibves in WWII.
Ukraine is the 4th most corrupt nation on earth and no doubt will become a lined subsidy on our mountainous energy bill. Any peace deal will impact the development of Zelenski’a swimming pool at his beach side property.
In fact Ukraine is only second to Russia in Europe in terms of corruption.
Ukraine ranked 130th among 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2017 released by Transparency International. Next to Ukraine stand Gambia, Iran, Myanmar and Sierra Leone. Ukraine was able to achieve a slight improvement due to the fact that the Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities (Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office and National Anti-corruption Bureau) forwarded to courts first corruption-related cases where the suspects were high-ranking officials.
‘There is clearly a legitimate concern about corruption when it comes to financial aid to Ukraine. However, the Ukrainian government cannot effectively tackle corruption while it is being systemically destabilised by Russia. Aid will therefore need to be carefully structured to ensure that it expands the capacity of the Ukrainian state.’
RUSI Feb 22
A major reason for breaking with Russia was to break from the corruption that came from the Russian connection.
I think a lot of people in Western governments actually want the continuation of fighting, as long as possible. They want to do as much damage to Russia as possible – that is their war aim. They really don’t care about Ukrainian victory. The most damage to Russia, or at least to its military, is achieved by a war that drags on for months or years.
Correction : damage to Russian imperialism.
So best just get this tidied up and accept the unacceptable? How can you deal with a man who runs a country, that throws from 6th floor windows, those Russians who criticise the Russian acts of war? “Russian energy boss dies after falling from 6th Floor Window” so runs a headline in the Telegraph. Deal with Putin now or face worse in the future.