The Compromise Russia and Ukraine Have to Make

Last week, I heard of a 28-point proposal that the Trump administration presented to Ukraine and Russia to end their brutal war. I decided to take a look at it. Here's a link to it if you want to read it too. It's got a lot of interesting things in it. The way it has 28 points is interesting by itself, because this is exactly twice the points of Woodrow Wilson's "14 Points" you may have heard about in history class, which was the president's plan for ending World War I. That plan was followed to some extent, though it was only a part of ending that war. Does it therefore take twice as many points to end the Russo-Ukrainian War as World War I? Anyway, a lot of the 28-point proposal looks quite reasonable to me. I'd like to focus on two points in particular. I'm predicting some will disagree with my opinion of the proposal and the points I'm about to mention, but that's okay - we can talk about it if you'd like.

21. Territories:

a. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk to be recognized De-Facto as Russian, including by the United States.

b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to be frozen at the contact line, which would mean a De-Facto recognition at the contact line.

c. Russia to give up other agreed upon territories they control outside of the five regions

d. Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk region that they currently control, and this withdrawal area will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognized as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarized zone.

Here we have the section talking about territorial changes. I'm not sure what a "de facto" recognition would mean, as opposed to full recognition. Nonetheless, ever since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, it's been clear to me that Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk have been culturally Russian for a long time. Crimea was only given to Ukraine in 1954 (back then, it was a transfer from one Soviet republic to another). Ukrainians have never been the majority there, while (at least in the past few decades) Russians have. The method of annexation was certainly questionable, but Crimea does fit in more with Russia than Ukraine apart from geography. Similarly, Donetsk and Luhansk have had Russian-speaking majorities for decades, and those two oblasts were where pro-Russian separatists ignited the very next chapter of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Percent in each oblast speaking Russian, as of a 2001 census. Sevastopol, Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are the ones where Russian is the majority. Image by Alex Tora.

I slightly disagree with the next provision freezing the front line in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, but there is a substantial Russian population in Zaporizhzhia oblast, and only some would be given to Russia anyway. It also provides a land connection between Donetsk and Crimea for the Russian part of Ukraine. Ukraine would still have plenty of Black Sea coast, including the major port of Odesa. There are also points protecting both Russian and Ukrainian commerce on the Black Sea in the peace proposal.

As for the other two provisions from point 21, they both sound reasonable. Russian troops should withdraw from Ukrainian-majority areas that they are in now. The part about a DMZ in the Donetsk oblast is interesting, but I'm not sure what the reason behind it is, as in I'm not sure why that's better than either Ukraine keeping what it has there or Russia taking all of that oblast (which would be "de facto" recognized anyway).

Besides the argument from redrawing borders to correspond more with ethnic boundaries, there is also an argument to be made from a different country's history. During World War II, Finland was fighting a war to keep its independence from Russia. Between the World Wars, the Soviet Union was busy trying to get everything Russia had before World War I back into Russian (or rather Soviet) control. The Soviets succeeded in many areas, but failed in Poland (the first time, that is, in 1920). Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were also left, as was Finland. The Soviet Union got its way with Poland, the Baltic countries, and Moldova over the course of the war. As for Finland, there were two different Soviet invasions: the Winter War and the Continuation War. Finland, like Ukraine today, was technically on its own. As in Ukraine, the invasions only got so far before becoming stalemates, and yet another comparison is that Finland, like Ukraine, later launched a counter-invasion. The result in the end was that Finland lost somewhat small portions of its land to the Soviet Union, while most of Finland kept its independence. Interestingly, Finland stayed neutral in the Cold War afterward, joining neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.

Finland had to give up some land in World War II but still won the fight to keep its independence. Does a similar result await Ukraine?

Moving on:

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to pass in its bylaws not to accept Ukraine at any point in the future.

While this might be a hard-to-swallow pill for Ukraine, there is a geopolitical comparison to be made for this too, not just in Finland. Most people know about how Germany was divided into four occupation zones and then two (West and East Germany) after World War II. Fewer people know that the same initially happened with Austria. Vienna, like Berlin, was divided into four zones too. However, unlike Germany, Austria managed to reunite only a few years into the Cold War under the condition that Austria would join neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. To this day, Austrian law prohibits Austria from joining any military alliance. Therefore, throughout the Cold War, Austria was a neutral country between NATO and Warsaw Pact members. Similarly, Ukraine could become a neutral country between NATO members and Russia today. Did I just imply that we're in a new Cold War? Yes, but that's a topic for a different blog post.

With all that said, I think the 28-point peace proposal is the most reasonable I've seen so far for ending the Russo-Ukrainian War. I wouldn't have a much better proposal myself. Therefore, I hope this proposal works, and I hope you can see why it would be a good idea.