Ukraine - Past is Preamble?

At the ever valuable Substack The Fucking News last week, host Jonathan Larsen noted some Trump advisors "spilled the beans" about some of the Great Orange One's concepts of proposals for plans to end the war against Ukraine.¹

I was struck by the fact that those spilled beans ideas from the Tweetie-pie crowd bear some resemblance to ideas that had been presented to avoid the war in the first place. I wrote a fair amount² about these ideas in the weeks before the Russian invasion, and I even made my own suggestion for a settlement based on based on two points:

1. In 2015, Ukraine agreed to hold a vote on self-rule in the Russian-speaking breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. It was never held, likely because Kyiv knew what the result of the vote would be: self-rule leading to secession leading to becoming part of Russia.

2. The chances of Ukraine joining NATO in the foreseeable future were all but nil, as Germany and France were (and, I believe, are) both against it (unanimity is required for admission) and even Zelensky had accepted it was a "dream" to be achieved someday.

So my proposal was simple: an agreement to hold the vote as promised and finesse the issue of NATO by declaring an indefinite moratorium on new admissions.

In addition, quietly give up on Crimea (under Russian control since March 2014) by just not raising it in negotiations and offer Ukraine some compensation via membership in the European Union (which should not be a problem, as Russian raised no objection to the idea).

No, I don't know if that or something on similar lines would have worked; I am sure it wasn't tried.

Some would argue it doesn't matter because it would be a form of surrender because of Ukraine's loss of territory, but my answer is that an agreement of some similar form - which again yes, was a possibility - would have spared Ukraine the ravages of war without giving up anything over which it actually had control.

But the real reason I posted this is that I wanted to point up the bitter, sad, truth of how often wars end with agreements on terms that were available before they started, marking all the blood and suffering as a horrific waste, sacrifices on the altar of national egos that with depressing regularity prefer the horrors of war to the disgrace of humiliation.

At the same time, I raise it knowing full well that some here would (will?) accuse me of "pro-Trump" or "pro-Putin" bias. Go ahead; I don't care. I am saying what I said before the war started; I was trying to think of ways that both sides could back off without appearing to back down, stand down without appearing to kneel down, because the failure to do that is what turns confrontations into conflagrations.

And we have seen more than enough of that.

 ¹ All of which are undermined by DJT Jr. saying to Zelensky via social media (according to the ever-truthful Washington "Examiner") “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance.” Which is much more inline with what I’d actually expect. But stay with me, I do have a point to make.

² If you want to see the "fair amount" I wrote, check these; I won't claim every thought has stood up to time, but I think enough of it has to make it worthwhile and I never deny the things I've said, even if they turn out to be dumb.
March 1, 2022
March 19, 2022
March 20, 2022
October 20, 2022