Trump and Zelensky push for peace and how not to end the war in Ukraine
President Zelensky made a clear statement about Ukraine’s desire for peace. President Trump acknowledged it and restated his willingness to push for peace. According to reports, the Mineral Deal will be signed shortly.
Foreign Affairs: How not to End the War in Ukraine: 2 Ukrainian academics looks at the mistakes of recent peace negotiations with Russia from 2014 to the present with warning about how not to repeat past mistakes. I quote it at length, but the entire article is worth reading.
Unfortunately, the new U.S.-led negotiations appear to replicate specific weaknesses from the Minsk process, such as excluding major parties to the conflict and rushing toward an undefined cease-fire with little enforcement and security guarantees. Like the current negotiations, the Minsk agreements sacrificed the complicated yet achievable prospect of durable peace for short-term diplomatic gains. If Trump truly wants to be the figure who brings the fighting between Russia and Ukraine to an end, he should not repeat Minsk’s mistakes.
By seeking an agreement in principle and postponing work on the details, in the mid-2010s the Kremlin set a trap that destroyed the Minsk agreements—a trick it appears to want to redo now.
Ukrainian interests were de facto eliminated from the Minsk negotiations
Today, Russia also seeks to use negotiations to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs, demanding that Ukraine conduct hasty presidential elections (which would likely fall short of democratic standards), return privileges to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and restore the prominence of the Russian language.
Because no cease-fire will satisfy Ukraine’s or Russia’s interests completely, any agreement will need strict third-party oversight and enforcement both during the deal’s negotiation and after its signing. Enforcement provisions were fundamentally deficient in the Minsk agreements. Neither text once referred to guarantors or any consequences for violating the agreement.
…that body (OSCE Special Monitoring Mission- ed) also lacked sanctioning mechanisms, and any capabilities it had to enforce the agreements were kneecapped in 2017 when Russia withdrew its representatives and replaced them with emissaries from occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, again deflecting its own responsibility for the conflict by fronting its proxy actors. With no enforcement or even oversight, Russia could then repeatedly violate the agreements without any immediate repercussions.
The Minsk negotiation process did facilitate a temporary de-escalation of hostilities. But ultimately, it undermined the search for a long-term solution, set the stage for a more devastating conflict, and tarnished the legacy of all involved with it.
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