I understand why
Volodymyr Zelensky
says he is willing to negotiate with
I have no doubt the Ukrainian president is sincere. If there were anything that remotely resembled a viable peace plan, his government would leap at it.
Mr. Zelensky’s people have suffered the most bestial bombardment in Europe since World War II. Whole cities have been broken and blackened by Mr. Putin’s war machine, tens of thousands of innocents killed. Every day it goes on, without pity or remorse: captives tortured, women raped, schools and kindergartens deliberately targeted. Every day the Iranian-made drones thump into the cities, turning off the lights, cutting the water supply.
Peace? Of course Ukraine wants peace. The economy is in ribbons. Mr. Zelensky’s government can barely pay its public servants. Of course it would like a negotiation.
There is only one problem. It is the same problem that has confronted Mr. Zelensky every day since Feb. 24. There is nothing to negotiate. No would-be mediator on earth has been able to come up with any compromise that even begins to be plausible.
What kind of deal could we possibly construct, under the current circumstances? Let us suppose that Western powers were to try to persuade Ukraine to trade land for peace. Any such bargain would, naturally, be disgusting. It would be a moral reproach to humanity.
But let’s imagine that some kind of agreement could be struck whereby Mr. Putin keeps not only the pro-Russian parts of the Donbas but also at least some of the territory he has captured in the south. The minute you think about it you can see that the idea isn’t merely repugnant. It is hopeless.
It has zero chance of working. Which bit should the Ukrainians give up, in perpetuity, to the Russians? A couple of cities? The whole land bridge from Mariupol to Crimea?
Even if the Ukrainians were to be persuaded to surrender their rights to some of their land—which they wouldn’t, couldn’t and shouldn’t be—there is no reason to believe that Mr. Putin would stick to the deal. He has already officially annexed four oblasts. He says that Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk are now legally part of Russia.
As his batty 2021 essay made clear, Mr. Putin is possessed by a chthonic belief that Ukraine is part of a holy and indivisible union with…
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