The arguments are well rehearsed and now they have to meet reality.
A 30-day ceasefire is, without hesitation, good news, at the outset. But a truce is the most complex and wounded idea of this conflict that has been going on for a decade. And the way it lasts will define the support, sovereignty and survival of Ukraine.
After probably hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian dead, it will be difficult for either side to refuse the concept of respite. Moscow will be under pressure to show that it is not an obstacle to the goal of US President Donald Trump to end the war at almost all the cost.
This is a surreal place for Kremlin to occupy after three years of wild aggression and little public desire to end the war outside US-Russian diplomacy of the last two months. To maintain the illusion that he is Trump’s partner on this issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin will probably accept some form of peace. It may not be an immediate ceasefire, and it can, as Russia has done before, choose to start its beginning to pursue the military goals first, particularly in the Kursk region, where Ukraine is close to being expelled from Russia that has been held since August.
But at that time, reality will confront the theory of telephone diplomacy. The first argument to be tested is that one cannot trust Kremlin to get involved in significant diplomacy, since his story shows that he rarely does. The second argument is that Kiev maintains maximalist ambitions to recover his territory and is refusing to freeze the front lines, because that would mean the probable permanent loss of one fifth of its territory and because Ukraine will probably not be rebuked with the same vigor as Moscow and will be at disadvantage when Russia again attacks. Also these ideas will be concerned.
However, it is now clear that most Ukrainians feel that a counterfensive to regain territory is a feverish dream, when the basic task of defending themselves from Russian attacks is affected by the scarcity of ammunition and labor.
But it is unlikely that the chaos and courage of this war will be favorable to a truce. Instead, any ceasefire will probably turn into a camp battle to blame for your collapse.
Kremlin’s main goal, for now, is to continue to reinforce Trump’s suspicions that Zelensky is the impediment to his peace. Putin cannot refuse a ceasefire without losing the fictitious high moral earth. But that’s what comes next – or during any pause in hostilities – that will define the result of the war.
Firstly, it is a total ceasefire on all lines of the front for an entire month. This is, by itself, a very large request. Over hundreds of kilometers, both sides have used the armored for years, then the artillery, and then the drones to be fiercely chasing each other in the middle of what is now called “beets” – the horrible coverage of combat -eliminated corpses – zero line. The expectation is that for a month, suddenly, all this can stop. That there is no mistakes. May no one open fire in panic, or to adjust accounts. May a kitchen gas cylinder not be detonated by mistake and trigger a shooting that definitely breaks peace.
For this reason, some European guardians and Ukraine initially proposed a partial ceasefire of air, sea and energy infrastructures. His argument was that this ceasefire would be more easily monitored – that violations would be more easily attributed to either side. However, this argument was rejected in Jeddah for something much more comprehensive. If Moscow agrees, everything has to stop suddenly for a month.
It is almost impossible that there are no mistakes or confrontations. In the past, Russia was excellent in misinformation, in Maskirovka – mistake as a battlefield tactic – as well as false flag operations when incidents are staged to give the boost to retaliation. There will be times, in any monthly break, when confrontations with slight weapons or drone attacks will prove to be impossible to attribute to either side as the aggressor: where AI manipulation, false reports or fully fictitious incidents will fill in the information space.
The algorithms will seek to amplify falsehoods. The world leaders will have difficulty understanding the small details of those who fired against whom on the front line. The areas where seismic events occurred will prove out of the scope of the researchers due to the violence that again erupt.
The evidence of the last decade should lead to pessimism, and the mistake has been almost all in a sense. Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, but pretended to have not done so. Russia agreed with a ceasefire in 2015 and, in its early days, took the Ukrainian city of Debaltseve. Russia said it would not launch a large -scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but ended up doing so. At first Russia said it was not using prisoners on the front line, but now some of its arrests are almost empty.
Moscow’s history should serve as a basis for all evaluations on the durability of any peace. To quote the poem Trump quoted to defend his hostile position on migrants: “They knew very well that I was a snake before welcoming me.” We must be clear about Kremlin’s goals. These will not be reached with the front line freezing. Putin needs a broader victory to justify losses so far and to satisfy his exaggerated idea of the threat that the West currently represents to him.
The risk of course: a truce fails, probably due to Russian action, Trump incorrectly believes that Ukraine is guilty of spoiling his peace, and Ukraine’s help is again frozen, this time with a more vindictive character, as the aggressor was considered. Moscow states that it is the victim again and launches another intense attack on Ukraine, where a brief calm led to a slowdown of Western aid and military readiness.
As Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, said about Moscow, “The ball is now in their field.” This is true and admirable as a result. But it also happens that Russia is excellent to grasp the ball, to make it your pocket, to discuss the rules of the game and the points lost for three setsbefore saying that the ball was stolen by the other team.
The White House is about to have a masterful class about Kremlin’s true diplomacy. Disruptive and sometimes sudden Trump methods have brought us here. If Moscow is applied with the same blunt and disruption, they can reduce the greatest threat to safety in Europe from Nazis. But they may also seem too fleeing in the application and too basic in the context to deal with the coldness of Moscow’s mistake and glacial patience.
