The American delegation moved to Berlin and led by the ubiquitous Steve Witkoff y Jared Kushner This Monday he leaked his optimism regarding the peace negotiations.
According to the United States, the agreement would be 90% closed, with small details to be finalized regarding how the demilitarized free trade zone will be organized in the Ukrainian part of the Donbas and exactly what security guarantees the West will offer to Ukraine so that what happened in 2014 and 2022 is not repeated.
Right now, the hypothesis being used is an agreement similar to NATO Article 5. That is, a commitment so that an attack against Ukraine would be considered an attack against all signatories.
Now, it is not at all clear that the United States is going to commit its own troops now that it appears to be withdrawing from Europe and that is why the European Coalition of the Volunteers has taken the opportunity to organize its own meetings with both Volodímir Zelenski as with the American delegation.
The root problem is not so much what can be offered to Ukraine, but what Russia would accept.
The Trump Administration has decided that it is Russia that is winning this war and that it must decide how to end it. It is not going to contradict the Kremlin’s wishes in this regard, and if Moscow says that a solution is unacceptable, it is discarded, period.
Witkoff and Kushner are convinced that Russia accepts the NATO-style proposal, but that remains to be seen. Sometimes, especially Witkoff, they allow themselves to be carried away by unjustified enthusiasm.
European leaders receive Donald Trump’s negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin.
Reuters
Europe offers its troops again
And the point is that these guarantees, which actually represent 10% of the total to be agreed upon, are decisive for Ukraine to withdraw from its part of Donetsk and therefore hand over the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, where it concentrates the vast majority of its military resources.
Zelensky asks for something that is not like Minsk, but that is not like the Budapest memorandum of 1994, by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for the protection of its neighbor, the United States and the United Kingdom.
In other words, Zelensky, who is still unclear about whether Russia can keep its invaded part of the Donbas and have troops there and only Ukraine will demilitarize its own, wants men and weapons on the ground. That, if at a given moment, Russia dares to break the agreement and take over that demilitarized “free trade” zone, it can intervene at the moment.
Therefore, he requested a commitment to defend “Ukrainian skies and waters” and the endorsement of his own citizens before ceding anything to the Kremlin.
Faced with this request, the European partners immediately picked up the gauntlet and offered to send troops to Ukraine, something that France, the United Kingdom and Germany had previously considered.
The problem is that right here is where everything blocks and the situation goes into a loop.
To reach an agreement, the United States, on behalf of Russia, demands territorial cessions – it remains to be seen if Russia would agree to that because at the moment it has not expressed it clearly -, Ukraine in turn requests security guarantees… and those security guarantees seem to involve the presence of NATO troops, something that Russia flatly refuses.
Yuri Ushakov and Vladimir Putin during the meeting with Steve Witkoff, with their backs turned in this photo.
Reuters / Sputnik
The vicious circle from which we do not get out
In that sense, there are several reasons for pessimism: first, the fact that this is being negotiated by two businessmen with hardly any diplomatic experience—although it is true that Kushner played an important role in the Abraham Accords—obsessed with creating trade zones where there are only imperialist interests.
Besides, the fact that no one is capable of breaking the aforementioned vicious circle. And that would only be the first part, because, it must be insisted, the territorial demands on Ukraine simply respond to what Trump believes could satisfy Putin.
As Zelensky is aware of this, he keeps asking for a direct meeting with the Russian president, something he refuses, alleging his counterpart’s lack of legitimacy for not calling elections.
Here we have another loop: Zelensky says he needs the express support of his citizens before giving up any part of his territory. To do this, he could opt for a referendum or presidential elections in which he includes this promise. Now, in the midst of bombings, attacks and counterattacks, it is difficult to think that ballot boxes can be placed in polling stations and votes counted as if nothing had happened.
Therefore, the order should be: first, a ceasefire in the current front positions; then, calling for elections; Next, a meeting between Putin and the Ukrainian leader who is elected… and let it be the two of them, without all this broken telephone that we have been experiencing for months, who decide the future of their countries.
Since Russia refuses this ceasefire because it considers that time is in its favor and that its negotiating position can always be improved with weapons, these negotiations remind us of Sisyphus pushing his stone to the top of the mountain only to see how it ends up falling again and again, to the despair of his own and others.