When no one expected a quick resolution to the Ukrainian war, Donald Trump withdrew the peace agreement written by an American and Russian negotiator. Only the Ukrainians and their European allies were informed of this fact.
The White House gave Volodymyr Zelensky until next Thursday (27) to accept the prepared dish. He even suggested taking drastic measures, such as stopping arms supplies to Kiev, to put pressure on him.
The Ukrainian president faces problems at home, in the form of a corruption scandal that toppled ministers, and on the battlefront, where Russia is exerting maximum pressure and threatening the stability of the defense of the country it invaded nearly four years ago.
Zelensky’s fragility was evident in his first outburst of anger, when he said that his government faced “a difficult choice: either lose its dignity or lose a great ally.” Since then, with outside help, he has sought to fight back.
On Sunday (23), the negotiating teams from Ukraine and the United States of America met in Geneva. The 28 points of the plan announced by Trump, which is largely pro-Russian, became 19 points more balanced. Of course, the Kremlin has already said that it will not accept the changes.
If territorial losses were inevitable and it was necessary to listen to Russian demands, the first document went further, by limiting Ukrainian sovereignty.
It has done so on broad issues, such as limiting its armed forces or demanding elections within a hundred days, but also on details such as protecting the country’s persecuted Russian Orthodox Church. All of this is under review, and Trump’s deadline is unlikely to be met.
The point is that Vladimir Putin cannot win the war and dissuade Western-backed Ukraine, contrary to what the Russian generals claim, nor is Zelensky as capable of expelling the invaders as European leaders would like to believe.
So concessions are necessary, but we should not reward Putin for his use of force in the twenty-first century. The specter of the 1938 Munich Agreement will loom large, when the United Kingdom and France allowed Adolf Hitler to take control of parts of Czechoslovakia in the hope of placating the warmongers. I did what I did.
Of course, the end of the war would be excellent news, especially if it included a timetable for the normalization of relations between Russia and the West.
Critics say that Putin wants to rebuild an empire, which may be true, but the fact is that the inclusion of the former socialist bloc in the Western military club shows that the United States was not in the least bit generous in its victory over the Soviet Union.
If there is an insurmountable impasse in the ongoing negotiations, Trump will also have given Putin another gift. The Russian, who distanced himself from drafting the proposal, will pretend that the problem is not his, to gain more time to continue his war.
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