Those Demanding a Swift ‘Peace Deal’ for Ukraine Don’t Understand How Complex This War Really Is

With the re-election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, there are growing demands to try to find a resolution to the war that has raged across Ukraine since 2022.

Trump himself has repeatedly talked about ending the war in Ukraine, “in 24 hours”. However, this is going to be an impossibly tall order, for the simple reason that such calls for a quick solution to this conflict simply don’t understand its many complexities.

Those making these calls tend to begin by suggesting that Ukraine must cede some territory to Russia in order to bring the war to an end. This may sound simple. Surely Ukraine just needs to concede Crimea, and parts of the Donbas and the War can be brought to a swift end, right? Wrong.

In reality any such negotiation would not simply be about specific territories or lines on a map, but about what people on either side of the line will be subjected to.

Negotiating away land would mean abandoning human beings. And even if we ignore this, the truth is that “Crimea and parts of the Donbas” would never be enough for Putin, while also overlooking territory along the coast of Azov that was occupied in the Blitzkrieg of February and March of 2022.

If you think that Putin may be appeased by offering up Crimea, you miss out entirely on the single early goal of the 2022 war, which was the seizure of parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts in order to keep occupied Crimea supplied. Without Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, therefore, “have Crimea” will not be an acceptable offer to Putin.

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The other suggestion by those pushing this line is that people in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are somehow ethnically, and by dint of language preference, “Russian” and therefore rightfully should be a part of Russia.

However, what this misses is that this is ultimately a question for the people of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson themselves. Show me where, in any of the years since independence, but especially in the years between 2014 and 2022, those people ever collectively expressed any such opinion. They didn’t.

The same can be seen with what happened to Mariupol, in Donetsk Oblast. The story of Mariupol is yet another which shows that Russia is neither wanted, nor welcomed, in any part of Ukraine. The film 20 Days in Mariupol shows what happened when Russia, uninvited, returned in 2022. They murdered tens of thousands of people.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk is among those who have famously floated a plan proposing that referenda be re-run in these areas, under UN supervision, “to see who they really wanted to be with.”

However, we can already see, from the examples of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and indeed Mariupol, that occupation was not welcomed. Does that not say enough?

The Russia Problem

Two further statements from Russia in recent days also show that “Crimea and parts of the Donbas” will not be enough for the warmongers in the Kremlin.

Putin has set a policy to have captured all of the four partially occupied regions by the end of 2025, and Medvedev has stated that “all of Ukraine has a choice, to be part of Russia or to cease to exist”. This does not suggest that Russia is ready to make a deal. And therein lies the biggest obstacles to peace – Russia itself.

If a “compromise” is to be sought from Ukraine, what compromise will be demanded of Russia? What can be done to get the Kremlin to not only agree to terms of a deal in which they compromise, or that they will stick to any deal they promise now? We have had agreements with Russia in the past that intended to return sovereignty of Donetsk and Luhansk to Ukraine after local elections, but those agreements failed because Russia wanted war.

There can be no way to know what was in the mind of Vladimir Putin when he ordered the theft of Crimea. However, since that invasion he has raised, through his own propaganda, a nation that is now hooked on war. If the war ended tomorrow, where would Putin’s addicts get their next fix?

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It is clear that any “land for peace” compromise is not going to be the solution that ends the current phase of this war. However, even if it could be, it misses other vital considerations.

After all, “Peace” is not simply about a lack of violence now, it is also a surety that there will be no further violence later. What posible security guarantees could Ukraine receive on this?

There is also the issue of Justice. Russia has committed over 100,000 documented war crimes in Ukraine. If new territorial lines are fixed, will a line also be drawn under the rights of those victims and their families to see justice done? What about the arrest warrants for Putin and his child-snatching accomplices? Are they also to be bartered away?

And what of Russian Central Bank assets frozen in the West? Will they be given back to Russia, or will they be used to rebuild what is left of Ukraine?

These are all important questions for those seeking peace, but let’s close on one final question.

A peace deal for Ukraine will relate only to Ukraine. What about the nefarious activities that Russia is responsible for elsewhere? How will malign Russian activity against Georgia be dealt with? Russia has also recently meddled in elections in both Romania and in Moldova. While we consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine, understand that we are only talking about one front. What else will stop all of this other than a military defeat for Moscow?

And if we’re looking for models for this, we have a spectacular recent one in Syria, where a murdering tyrant, who was an ally of the Russian regime, has now been deposed. Russia, in defeat, retreated. The same can still happen in Ukraine