Peace negotiations and the truth about the war

Almost 11 years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a part of a sovereign country at that time, and 3 years after the full-scale invasion on the remaining parts of Ukraine, there are competing, conflicting interpretations of these events across the world.

To some Putin apologetics (or Putin-Verstehers as they are called in Germany) this is an unfortunate result of geopolitical rivalry of superpowers. They claim that the presence of some 10 thousand NATO and US troops in Eastern Europe and Ukraine’s desire to join NATO and the EU were a direct challenge to Russia’s security. In this world view – shared mostly by China, Russia’a allies and apparently, since the last US election, the new US administration – Russia’s outright war was a justified response to the threats posed by the west, with Ukraine as a victim. Consequently, the thinking goes, if we were to remove this threat by reducing NATO presence and ensuring „neutrality” of Ukraine, peace could be restored. For some reasons it is automatically assumed that Russia should be compensated for their inconvenience by retaining the conquered territories.

The other interpretation of these events is that Putin miscalculated in his grand design to restore Russia to its Soviet era world-power position. Encouraged by past success in countries like Belarus or Hungary, which he managed to turn into close allies with little effort, Putin attempted to overthrow an elected government to change the course of Ukraine’s politics. People subscribing to this view do not believe that NATO ever posed a military threat to Russia and that Ukraine, as a sovereign democratic country, may freely choose the organisations and alliances it would like to take part in. They see Putin’s ambition to expand his sphere of influence, and perhaps the lack of western reactions to the annexation of Crimea, as the only reasons for the war. Under this assumptions there is no easy way out of the current conflict, as Putin is not going to be satisfied with a few provinces – especially feeling no pushback from the international community.

The recently started negotiations will play out differently depending on where the truth lies. Should Mr Trump and his administration be in the right, achieving peace should be a relatively simple matter of backtracking on some security commitments and promises to Ukraine, while ensuring an acceptable framework of future stability guarantees. In this scenario setting clear boundaries from the beginning (no return to pre 2014 borders, no NATO membership) will not impact the negotiations. Of course this goes against the wishes of Ukraine and, given the new administration lack of patience for details, is very likely to come at a huge cost to their territories.

However, should the war be really just an effect of Putin’s ambition, Marc Rubio’s negotiation team will be treating on a thin ice and might experience a cold shower well before the arrival of spring. The seasoned team of Russian negotiators led by Sergey Lavrov, who has almost half a century of experience in manipulating and exploiting the nativity of western diplomats, will be quick to benefit from the honesty and open communication. The US might quickly find that any concessions lead to further demands instead of progress in negotiations, soon reaching a level which will be a hard sell even to the relatively indifferent, republican Congress.

Until now these interpretations were competing against each other mostly in political analyses and journalist publications. But with the start of formal negotiations with Russia they might be put to a final test very soon.