Negotiate with Putin

2022-04-24T19:45:39.046Z

The Kremlin demands from the Ukrainians what the Ukrainians must not and cannot give up, at the risk of ceasing to be Ukrainians and to have a country

There is little to negotiate with someone like that.

He lies more than he blinks.

Her word is worth nothing.

Nor his presidential signature.

No one can trust an agreement with the current lord of the Kremlin.

And who except the Ukrainians, who have experienced firsthand the effects of their disarmament pact with Russia: they gave up their entire nuclear arsenal in exchange for recognition of their borders and their territorial integrity, Crimea included, and now as a reward they are being assassinated in mass and seeing their country destroyed.

Putin demands of the Ukrainians what the Ukrainians must not and cannot give up, at the risk of ceasing to be Ukrainians and to cease to have a country.

They could cede Crimea, even give up Donbas, admit Russian as a co-official language, disarm and forget about NATO as Putin demands.

But if they did, who would guarantee them compliance with such agreements and that Russia would give up demanding even more concessions?

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Putin has already told them that Ukraine does not exist as a sovereign nation, but is merely an appendage of Russia.

He has also said, not to the Ukrainians, but to the Europeans, that he has a special right over Europe.

At the moment about a part, later maybe all of it.

It is the same right that protected the Soviet Union to protect its satellite countries, where since 1945 the Red Army ensured favorable electoral results and the obedience of the communist parties to Moscow, at the risk of sending them tanks as happened in 1956. in Hungary and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.

If Ukraine gives in, then it will be the turn of Poland and the Baltic republics and then Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia...

There is a remedy to avoid this: that kyiv receives a sufficiently strong guarantee that Moscow will be forced to fulfill its commitments.

Zelensky asks for it to forget about NATO, but he knows that it is exactly the one enjoyed by the NATO partners who have left Moscow's imperial protection.

Huge paradox, the only effective guarantee to give in on NATO is the protection of something equivalent to Article 5 on NATO's mutual defence.

The negotiation with Putin is zero sum.

Like his war.

What one gains the other loses.

It is not intended that everyone can win.

But even this is not the biggest obstacle.

Once the threshold of the irremediable has been crossed, that of war crimes and probably crimes against humanity and even genocide, no one will be able to avoid the demand for compensation to the victims by their executioners or the persecution of those guilty of imprescriptible crimes by the of international justice.

A sovereign Ukraine could cede part of its territory, but in the reparation of the victims and that justice is imparted, no one can cede, not even the Ukrainians.