Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on August 15 to discuss a Russian proposal to end the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to participate in the summit. Zelensky says that any deal the parties reach in Alaska will be "stillborn."
"They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," Zelensky said in a video address to the nation on Saturday.
Zelensky now finds himself in the same position as the South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu at the end of 1972, when the U.S. negotiated a withdrawal without him. He accepted a deal in the end because he virtually had no choice. Once he lost his U.S. support, the war, for all intents and purposes, was over.
Zelesnky cannot continue an effective resistance against the Russians if he has to depend on his Western European allies. They are not going to go to war to save Eastern Ukraine, and neither is the United States.
The Russian proposal calls for Russian sovereignty over four Eastern Ukrainian provinces: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, as well as Crimea, which Russia invaded and occupied in 2014.
It's a non-starter.
The Institute for the Study of War:
Unnamed sources told Bloomberg on August 8 that Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine cede the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, along with Crimea, as part of ceasefire negotiations.[1] Bloomberg reported that this demand would require Ukraine to withdraw troops from Ukrainian-controlled territory in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts that Russian forces have been trying and failing to capture since February 2022, after having failed to take it during Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Bloomberg reported that the terms stipulate that Russian forces would also halt offensives in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts while Ukraine and Russia negotiate a ceasefire and subsequent peace deal.
Zelensky is not going to just walk away from territory he already controls. On the other hand, Donetsk and Luhansk are already mostly occupied and, like Crimea, are extremely unlikely for Ukraine to win back without outside assistance from Western Europe or the U.S.
There are several areas in Eastern Ukraine that Russia currently occupies, which could be returned to Kyiv as part of a final peace deal. Putin has not indicated that he will cede anything.
Given all the negative factors for Ukraine in this deal, the most likely explanation is that Putin is deliberately proposing an unacceptable deal to delay U.S. sanctions.
Putin may be offering this proposal in an attempt to delay the sanctions that Trump threatened to impose by August 8 if Putin did not begin to negotiate with Ukraine to end the war.[5] Putin’s proposal demands the surrender of Ukrainian-held territory before a ceasefire, a sequence at odds with Trump's and Zelensky’s stipulation that a ceasefire must precede any peace negotiations.[6] US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on August 6 that a ceasefire is an important part of the negotiation process because it is difficult to negotiate a permanent peace deal while under fire — reiterating Trump's preferred timeline of establishing a ceasefire in Ukraine before starting formal peace negotiations to end the war.[7] The Wall Street Journal noted that European and Ukrainian officials worry that Putin is simply using the offer as a ploy to avoid new US sanctions while continuing the war.[8] Putin is likely deliberately offering a proposal designed to be unacceptable to Ukraine in order to delay sanctions as well as meaningful ceasefire negotiations and place the blame for the failure of negotiations on Ukraine.
Putin sees no need to stop fighting until someone forces him to stop. Why should he agree to a ceasefire when he continues to win territory? His losses in men are massive, but Putin figures Russia has a lot more cannon fodder he hasn't tapped yet. The Russian people have yet to organize any kind of peace movement and aren't likely to, given the internal security situation.
No matter what comes out of the meeting in Alaska next week, the war will likely rage on. Zelensky would do well to negotiate an end to the war while he still has a country to govern.
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