RU-UA Peaceful Settlement: The Main Issue
Security guarantees for Ukraine - what can they be?
Now that more or less concrete plans for a peaceful settlement between Russia and Ukraine have begun to emerge, the issue of territorial concessions is attracting the most public attention. Will Russia's jurisdiction over Crimea have to be recognized? Will Ukraine agree to the occupation or even annexation of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions? What other claims might Russia come up with?
This topic is being fueled by statements from Russian officials who are putting forward new territorial demands. This reinforces the public's belief that this is the main issue. In reality, the territorial issue is coming to the fore because of its “geographical visibility,” so to speak. Anyone interested in what is happening can look at a map, find Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Crimea, draw the front line and make their own conclusions about how vital these regions are to Ukraine or whether they can somehow be sacrificed.
However, the question of a genuine, rather than decorative and declarative, peaceful settlement cannot be reduced to the end of hostilities. It is about creating a lasting and durable peace — one that will be difficult to break.
Security guarantees as the foundation of peace
The key element of any settlement is not state borders and territorial claims, but conditions that will ensure a stable and unbroken peace. This is the main point of contention. Concessions and compromises, both territorial and otherwise, can be made to achieve these conditions.
Ukraine is undoubtedly interested in ensuring that any peace agreement, whatever form it may take, concluded with Vladimir Putin (let us not discuss how likely this is in principle) guarantees lasting peace in the future. In other words, Ukraine must strive to create conditions under which Putin will be forced to consider a repeat attack too costly, unprofitable, and simply dangerous for himself, and therefore abandon these plans.
What might such conditions—i.e., “security guarantees”—look like?
The first and most important security guarantee of any state is its armed forces. If they are sufficiently numerous, well-armed, have high morale, and a competent officer and general corps, a potential aggressor will think twice about whether to start a war. Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in 2022 was largely dictated by a misguided perception of the weakness of the Ukrainian armed forces and their inability and unwillingness to resist the Russian “liberators.”
It is equally obvious that the mere existence of a powerful Ukrainian army is unlikely to deter Moscow from attempting revenge. Moreover, Russia will do everything in its power to weaken Ukraine and its military potential, insisting on “demilitarization” and other steps that are disadvantageous to Kyiv. Another problem is that a large army is expensive, and it is highly questionable whether Ukraine will be able to maintain a million-strong army for many years without damaging its economic development.
Additional guarantees are needed.
The illusion of NATO security
Before Putin launched his full-scale war against Ukraine, the country's participation in a defensive alliance, primarily NATO, was considered a “universal” ironclad guarantee.
NATO is the most famous, successful, and powerful defensive bloc in history. Article 5 of the 1949 Washington Treaty states that “… an armed attack against one or more of them (the Parties) in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
However, until 2022, few people paid attention to the fact that Article 5 does not oblige Alliance members to provide armed assistance to each other. Until the real prospect of war loomed, everyone irresponsibly and thoughtlessly believed that, if necessary, each NATO member would fight for the other like a fierce beast. First and foremost, of course, the US, the bloc's main and primary military power, was put forward as the fierce beast.
However, since 2022, after Russia's repeated use of nuclear blackmail, it has become clear that even NATO members have no hard guarantees.
The policy of NATO countries towards Ukraine has clearly highlighted the fear of NATO members of finding themselves in a direct military confrontation with Russia. On the part of the US — the leading force of the Alliance and the most powerful military power of our time — the Biden administration's timid and generally spineless policy looked particularly pitiful. Moscow and other like-minded capitals have come to the conclusion that nuclear blackmail works. NATO countries, including the US, are catastrophically afraid of a nuclear scenario, are not prepared for it, and are unable to resist someone who recklessly brandishes a nuclear bomb.
Russian troops could have been defeated and expelled from Ukraine back in 2022 if the West had initially taken a tough stance toward Russia and Ukraine had received the necessary amounts of weapons. But the West chose to be afraid. The West chose to hand the initiative to Putin and never tried to take it back. This is a sure path to defeat.
Despite the fact that Putin's declared “red lines” have been repeatedly violated and no nuclear strike has followed, Western leaders continue to remain in a state of panic, but one that is very comfortable for them, which justifies their policy of inaction. This reinforces Putin's confidence that his tactics are working — and could even work in the event of an attack on a member of the Alliance.
It is easy to imagine Putin attacking Ukraine again, threatening its security “guarantors” with nuclear weapons, and those who promised to intervene reneging on their words. We don't have to look far — the Budapest Memorandum, which guaranteed Ukraine's security in exchange for its renunciation of nuclear weapons. And what happened?
In other words, guarantees that are supposed to be activated only in the event of an attack are not guarantees at all. It would be extremely naive on Kyiv's part to expect that Britain, France, or Germany would immediately declare war on Russia and engage in combat with it. If they do not rule out such a scenario, what prevented them from sending their troops to Ukraine back in 2022? Or at least now? But we see that even hypothetical talk of “European peacekeepers” is gradually coming to the expected conclusion — there will most likely be no peacekeepers. What if Putin takes offense?
Guarantees that work
Therefore, of all the possible guarantees, Ukraine needs those that are already in place, in peacetime. They must be real and irrevocable and must work “here and now,” without waiting for aggression — that is, preemptively.
This could primarily involve the deployment of a large military contingent in Ukraine — 50,000 to 100,000 troops with armored vehicles, aircraft, and all necessary supplies — from countries with which Putin would not want to find himself in direct military conflict. So far, there are only two such countries: the US and China.
For many reasons, China is unlikely to be interested in protecting Ukraine from its friend and ally. The US, if we proceed from its real interests rather than Donald Trump's wild fantasies, should have considered this option.
Only the prospect of an attack on American troops and, consequently, war with the US could cool down Vladimir Putin, who would then consider that the benefits of a second attack on Ukraine are too small compared to the guaranteed damage from a war with the US.
This, of course, requires political will and legally binding commitments enshrined in a law passed by the US Congress that cannot be revoked or suspended by presidential decree. This law must provide for everything: financing, supplies, the status of military personnel, the duration of their stay, and the procedures for amending the law itself.
Unfortunately, there is currently no talk of such a guarantee, which is the only one that would work. Moreover, this scenario frightens the West and the main superpower, the US, almost as much as the prospect of war with Russia.
Fight the disease, not the symptoms
It must be understood that even the deployment of a large international military contingent in Ukraine will not guarantee peace 100%. Putin's regime will look for new ways to deal with both Ukraine and the European countries that stand in its way. Hybrid wars, interference in internal affairs, terrorism, cyberattacks, provocations, trade in components for weapons of mass destruction, and much more will continue and escalate. Countering this, plus maintaining “peacekeepers” in Ukraine and helping Kyiv rebuild its economy, will be a heavy burden on Western economies, weakening their already fragile positions.
This approach is palliative care, where doctors seek to alleviate the symptoms of the disease. For example, a patient with a severe infection is given painkillers “so that he does not suffer.” But the pathogen continues to live in the patient's body, multiplying, poisoning the body and making his condition worse and worse. Treatment becomes more difficult and more expensive, and the prospects become bleaker.
It is much more effective, promising, and ultimately cheaper to use antibiotics and suppress the infection at its root.
The problem is not Russia's claims against Ukraine — the problem is Vladimir Putin's regime, which sees external aggression as the key to its political (and perhaps physical) survival. It is only possible to “make peace” with him, to “come to an agreement,” on his terms — that is, Ukraine, and with it the West that supports it, including the US (yes, Donald, you too), must capitulate - i.e. to acknowledge that Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine was right, legal, lawful and must be rewarded.
However, if the goal is to preserve freedom and the right to decide how to live, then we must not fight the symptoms or build walls, but eliminate the cause of the disease, just as an infection is treated with powerful antibiotics. As Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov keep saying – “the root causes of the war must be addressed”. It is the Putin regime that is the single root cause of the war.
This war cannot be truly ended by begging the aggressor to calm down and stop fighting. It can only be ended by imposing peace on the aggressor, forcing him to cease military operations, defeating Putin in Ukraine, and bringing down his regime in Russia. Only a change of regime in Russia can be a real guarantee of peace for both Ukraine and Europe.
However, Western leaders are looking for the easiest solution, not the right one. And the easiest solution is to give up and surrender. That is where everything seems to be heading at the moment.