- Joined
- Mar 1, 2014
- Posts
- 3,930
- Reaction score
- 9,294
- Location
- parallel universe
- AFL Club
- Port Adelaide
...given assurances that he would compel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede all of the Donbas to Russia...This article talks about Russian willingness to negotiate a peace.
Is Russia Ready to Negotiate over Ukraine Again?
Ukraine’s leverage has grown since the August Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin summit in Alaska.nationalinterest.org
The most interesting part is the Russian understanding and the US position led by Steve Witless. None of the claims have been officially documented. The phrase 'Sold out' is what coms to mind when reading it.
Official Russian commentary suggests that a key agreement concerns the resolution of the territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin evidently came away from Anchorage believing that President Donald Trump had given assurances that he would compel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede all of the Donbas to Russia, including the roughly 15 percent of the Donetsk province that Russia has not conquered.
That view has a certain ring of plausibility. Last spring, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has handled negotiations with the Kremlin since the beginning of the Trump administration, insisted that the territorial issue was key to the resolution of the conflict, taking precedence over the issue of Ukraine’s security guarantees and sovereignty, which most other observers thought were at least as, if not more, important.
Witkoff apparently brought a formula for settling the issue to his meeting with Putin last August that the Russian president’s foreign policy adviser dubbed “completely acceptable.” Afterward, when briefing Ukrainians and allies, Wittkoff was fuzzy about the details of what he had agreed to with Putin.
All that was clear was that Ukraine would withdraw entirely from the Donbas in exchange for territorial compensation elsewhere, including, perhaps, Putin’s abandonment of claims to the territory in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces that Russia had formally annexed but did not yet control. Whatever the understanding, the Kremlin was pleased, and the two sides agreed to hold a summit meeting in short order so that they could hammer these understandings into agreements between the two presidents. The Anchorage summit is still shrouded in mystery. It was abruptly cut short after three hours of discussion between the two presidents and a small group of advisers. At a brief joint news conference, Putin and Trump said they had reached some agreements but did not elaborate further. Trump also stated, “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.” They did not issue a joint communique. That said, the Russians insist that the understandings reached at the summit were based on proposals made by Trump, and they believe that Trump pledged to compel the Ukrainians to accept them.
Sounds familiar.
...gave assurances to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east" if Germany remained in NATO after reunification.
These, if both are true, were both informal political commitments. Neither assurance was part of a signed document.
