Day 1110 of the war
Today, the political philosopher Vlad Vexler shares some thoughts on what to make of the Ukrainian-American joint proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that emerged from the talks in Jeddah yesterday.“
The Ukrainians have got intelligence sharing back and they’ve got the US cessation of support revoked in exchange for a thirty-day ceasefire. Nietzsche would say ‘Don't tear your hair out, but don't over-celebrate either!” These are little stops along a very long road because we’ll need to see where Ukraine and European security will end down the line, so these are events which we can't frame the meaning of today but we can say this: as things go, this is a minor but solid diplomatic win for Ukraine and especially for Mr Yermak.
One question is whether to some extent Marco Rubio took advantage of Trump's distraction with annexing his neighbours to restabilise the US position in Ukraine with a bit more seriousness. There’s also the question of what Trump will say – and keep saying – about the ceasefire. Will he speak about it at a distance, allowing Putin more wiggle room? Or will he consistently keep on endorsing it? And what will he do once the Russians try to muck about? And what CAN he do once the Russians do start mucking about? And the answer is not much. He can certainly use stern words and we simply have to wait and see what happens.
Turning now to an analysis of where the Russian stand, the two most important things to understand about the Russians is that they want political but not territorial control over all of Ukraine and they also want – and this is not consistent and pulls in a different direction – renormalization of their relationship with the United States to the point that Ukraine becomes just one topic among others.
In their relationship with the US, Putin wants to focus on everything and anything else . . . from the Arctic to nuclear arms reduction to sanctions. The temptation for him is therefore to keep the Ukrainians out and keep the Europeans out and see if this ceasefire can provide the Russians with a promise of a deepening of Russia's non-Ukraine related relationship with the United States. That’s a path Putin is happy to make sacrifices towards.
It's also worth bearing in mind that the Russians know that they can simply agree to the ceasefire, but not agree to continue it after thirty days – or break it and blame Ukraine for it – and beyond these 30 days, they’re free to bring all their demands and requests to the table. One central one now that security guarantees are falling down the realistic pecking order will be a demand for limits on military support for Ukraine and demilitarisation. Given this, one of the key things to look out for is to make sure that the Europeans DON’T agree to a restriction on military support for Ukraine as part of the deal as that’s what Putin wants will want – and on the significant scale.
So while there is indecision on the Kremlin side about exactly how to make this next move, their goals are pretty clear: renormalisation of relations with the US while trying to keep the Europeans out of things . . . and moving towards a situation where the odds of gaining political control over Ukraine increase.
This depends in part on the Kremlin’s analysis of what will happen to Ukraine not just during a ceasefire but after a potential deal; how stable or unstable Ukrainian domestic politics will be in the view of the Kremlin, so Putin's judging that. If he's happy to make a deal because he thinks that'll bring Ukraine closer to ungovernability than carrying on the war would, then that’s what he’ll do. If he feels that carrying on the war will do that better, then he'll want to carry on the war. If it's 50-50 then he'll want to do the thing that facilitates the reorganisation of Russia's relationship with United States. We need to always bear in mind that these remain his twin goals, though.”
