Peace at last appears a possibility in Ukraine. The proposals advanced by the Trump administration are surely a basis for negotiating an end to the conflict that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, both military and civilian, and wreaked untold destruction in Ukraine itself, while ratcheting up international tension.
Clearly, Trump has his own interests at the forefront of his considerations in presenting the plan. He is not a peace-monger by any means, and there should be no illusions reading his motivations.
He wishes to lay exclusive hold of Ukraine’s mineral and other resources while also striking profitable deals with Putin’s oligarchy in Russia, all in the interests of US monopoly capital.
However, the plan itself broadly corresponds to what most of the world, including the anti-war movement, have been urging for years past.
It represents both a defeat for the most far-reaching of NATO’s ambitions of bleeding Russia white prior to its dismemberment, while it would also be a dilution of the wilder schemes of Russian nationalism to entirely dominate its neighbour.
First, Ukraine’s membership of NATO is categorically ruled out. NATO expansion up to Russia’s borders has undoubtedly been one of the causes of the conflict.
NATO powers have been waging a “proxy war” through the medium of Ukraine throughout. And given its record of international aggression over the last 25 years or so this is far from unusual.
Second, there should be an enduring ceasefire broadly along the existing military lines, which have not shifted much for more than two years.
While Russia presently holds a military advantage, most of the land it occupies it secured in the first weeks after the 2022 invasion. It has made only incremental advances since, alongside larger losses around Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson in the latter part of 2022.
Ukraine’s much-vaunted NATO-organised offensive in 2023 failed to achieve any of its objectives. The war could and should have been halted then at the very latest.
The US proposal involves Putin abandoning his demand, never likely to be met, of controlling those parts of the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces which he claims but his military have not been able to conquer.
These territories, and Luhansk, will likely exist in a form of international legal limbo, under de facto Russian control but not recognised as such.
Ideally, the peoples themselves, including refugees, should eventually determine their status but clearly the conditions for such an expression of democratic will do not presently exist.
Third, Crimea – which Moscow annexed in 2014 – should be recognised as Russian territory. Unlawful as Putin’s annexation certainly was, it was scarcely more arbitrary than the peninsula’s transfer to Ukraine from Russia within the Soviet Union in 1954, and its present disposition likely corresponds to the wishes of most of its population.
Sanctions which have damaged third parties and the international economy more than they have impacted Russia’s military will also be lifted under the US proposals.
Ukraine’s Zelensky has rejected these terms, bringing down Trump’s wrath upon his head. While they are politically unpalatable, particularly in Ukrainian nationalist circles, the truth is that Zelensky offers no plausible alternative beyond an endless continuation of a conflict at the expense of Ukrainian and Russian blood and US dollars.
Nor has Putin signed up to the plan as of this article’s writing. It seems assumed that he will, although it is not impossible that he may still believe more can be gained from continuing fighting.
In the meantime, civilian lives continue to be needlessly lost, including in the latest Russian attack on Kyiv.
Keir Starmer opposes any moves towards a resolution, preferring public scare-mongering while prolonging the war in pursuit of unattainable objectives.
He still seeks to deploy British and French troops to Ukraine, but insists on US support for such an expedition, since British troops can scarcely operate at scale without Washington’s logistical, communications and intelligence control.
This would introduce NATO into Ukraine in all but name, a manoeuvre Moscow has said it will never accept.
Trump appears uninterested in such guarantees, preferring to get on with looting Ukraine’s economy. His senior envoys pulled the plug on Starmer’s war summit in London this week by the simple expedient of not attending.
It is time for Starmer to drop his war-mongering which threatens any peace deal, sustains irrational Ukrainian belligerence, and is a significant drain on British resources to boot.
He is placing warfare above the people’s welfare at every turn, invoking mythical threats to justify pouring more and more money into the arms industry at the expense of basic provisions for the disabled, pensioners and the poor in general.
Lasting peace for Ukraine and Russia can only be secured by a lasting agreement between the two countries themselves, in the context of Europe-wide arrangements which offer security to all by threatening none.
Starmer and belligerent British diplomacy should get out of the way and give peace a chance. His militaristic posturing, all of a piece with his indulgence of the Gaza genocide, disgraces Labour.