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Ukraine: Y'all do know there is no peace treaty in sight, right? [1]

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Date: 2025-03-09

Ever since Trump won the November election I’ve seen the idea that a peace treaty is imminent between Russia and Ukraine. Reporters frequently reference this supposedly upcoming treaty without ever questioning the reality of it. European leaders talk about the post war situation like it’s going to be next week. Of course Trump has been promising peace in 24 hours for a very long time now. Everyone seems to be attempting to wish cast it into being. But what I never see is how exactly we are going to get from here to there.

Here, right now as I write, neither Ukraine nor Russia is anywhere close being done. Putin continues to demand a full surrender from Ukraine. And Ukraine is having none of giving up its land and people to Russian brutality. I get this sense that some people are expecting Ukraine to suddenly cave on a bunch of points and accept some version of freezing the lines where things stand but they never seem to come out and say it. On the other side, I never see anything close to an assumption that Russia will pack up and leave. There always feels to me like an expectation in the press that Ukraine will have to give in most of the way and Russia will give in on a few minor details. Perhaps it’s just me. I have no definitive example of this. But if it’s truly there, then it is not much different than what the press was saying in February of 2022 when they all agreed that Ukraine had no chance at all and Russia would win in a couple of weeks tops.

Sure, Trump keeps promising a peace deal anytime now. But he’s a twit. And a backstabbing twit at that. But for all his backstabbing of Ukraine they are nowhere near a place of giving up that I can see. Their economy is fine, certainly much better than Russia’s. They’ve been killing Russians at a prodigious rate while not having to give up too much land in the process. Sure, Russia is pushing them in Kursk, but only because Russia is redirecting all their efforts to Kursk.

On the Russian side Putin has never changed from his maximalist demands. He still is basically asking for a Ukrainian surrender including giving up lands Russia doesn’t even control. As some commentary has pointed out, it’s not even clear Putin could survive a peace in Russia’s favor. His economy is so twisted around war that it’s not clear how he is going to transition back to a peace time economy. Of course he may just stay on a war-time footing for a short while before attacking again. But I haven’t heard even a whisper of a softening of demands.

So why are people acting like peace is around the corner when Putin is no closer to compromise? And when Ukraine is facing an existential threat from Russia and anything anywhere close to Putin’s offer of accepting their surrender will doom the country? Ukraine knows Putin can’t be trusted. Ukraine also knows any of its citizens left in occupation will continue to suffer horribly.

Trump is doing everything he can to kneecap Ukraine, but thankfully Ukraine has already learned the lesson not to count on the United States and appears to have been preparing for the current situation. By some estimates, Ukraine is kicking out over a million drones per year and should be getting close to 4 million per year by the end of this year. Europe will be stepping up where they can. Ukraine will have some holes left by the loss of US support, but I don’t see any of them to be immediately fatal. It will certainly be painful in terms of lives lost for Ukraine, but not a situation leading to them surrendering.

The mineral deal doesn’t mean peace happens. It just means that the US hopefully puts back some of its support. Mostly the mineral deal is a side show of the two sides (Ukraine vs Trump and Putin) jockeying for position.

Instead I see us still in an attritional grinding down of both nations as we wait to see which side commits a fatal mistake first. Will the Russian economy collapse? Will Russia be able to maintain recruitment? What will Russia do when the last of the Soviet equipment is used up? Can Ukraine stay strong enough while the US withdraws support? Can Ukraine keep its own recruitment going? Will either side face a critical shortage of a mission critical item? Will either side secure a significant advantage in drone technology?

As we’ve seen before, things can look stable and then in a blink of an eye the table gets turned over. Had the Wagner march on Moscow gone differently the war could have been over right there and then with Russia going into civil war. The first Republican betrayal of Ukraine in October of 2023 flipped Ukraine from being on the offensive straight into a desperate defensive situation from which they eventually recovered.

My money is still on the Russia army or economy collapsing first. But just about anything could happen the way events swing with this thing. Sure, they could sign a peace deal tomorrow because of any number of different events putting everything on their heads. But if the current trajectory stays in a steady state I see no chance of a peace deal anytime soon, and I wish folks would stop talking like one is just around the corner.

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