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This stopped being a territorial dispute long ago.

Russia is only interested in a ceasefire as a pause before occupying most of Ukraine.

Not a single time Russia has even hinted to accepting presence of any sort of third party force in Ukraine for peacekeeping.

Russia just wants to retreat to pre-1922 borders.

Including the baltic states and Poland.

I'm afraid that Putin's only option left is to escape forward.

Have you heard about "Eurasianism"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasianism https://www.jstor.org/stable/4400555

Alexander Dugin? https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/aleksandr-dugin-vladimir-...

And please, don't forget China and the ideology if Tianxia (天下) and the revisionism on the 100 year humiliation (百年国耻).

Imperialism and expansionism is often rooted in the idea that the peoples of different countries and their respective governments have different merit or value, and one should rule over the other.

Once you start talking about hierarchies among nations and ethnicities, you are starting to establish connections with other concepts that relate to one type of people being exceptional and entitled to rule over others: nationalism and racism.

Imperialism, nationalism and racism are deeply interconnected: if all peoples had similar value or merit there should be no need to change borders because what's outside your borders is similar to what's inside your borders.

The way imperialists talk by highlighting how exceptional your nation and people are or can be, and contrasting against other nations and peoples. And how expanding and ruling others would further improve things.

That would not be a barrier for peace in Ukraine. The war is not between Russians and Ukrainians, but Russia and Ukraine - in fact, that area voted for Zelenskyy. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_el...

Reportedly they voted for him, because he was an actor who played good guys, so people expected him to stay away from big politics.

No, where are you getting this from? His value proposal was that he was a) an outsider in politics, b) russian speaking ukranian. He was elected on on the platform of reducing corruption and negotiating the end to the Donbas conflict.

As a rumor. I admit my knowledge about it fragmentary at best.

Electing a president on the promise that he would stay out of politics. Ha!

Idk if he came up all on his own with the idea of becoming president by first playing one on TV, but I've got to admit it's absolutely brilliant.

The logic seems to be that if he's played good guys on TV, it means he already knows what common decency looks like to regular people, unlike the hardline nomenklatura gangsters who live by their own sort of thieves' honor.

Fascinating approach, and one common to East European worldviews: "these people are evil because they don't know how to be good". It's a supremely compassionate view, even if it's proven more than a little counterproductive over and over.

Do you think people expected Ronald Reagan to "stay away from big politics"?

> A good example of an effective peace treaty was the Camp David accords that put an end to the Yom Kippur war of 1973

You ignore the fact that in Begin and Sadat, Carter had parties on both sides very willing to sign a permanent peace deal. With Sadat even sending multiple proposals to the US & Israel prior to the 1973 war [0]. While Sadat & Begin are no saints, the incumbent and entrenched wartime leader in Golda Meir had to be thrown to the cribs for peace to come to fruition, something that the Trump Admin now seems to demand of Zelensky.

[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036402

Every peace negotiation process can be messy. But in the end they found a compromise that both parties were content with and have had peace for decades. That's to me a good ending.

But they are not demanding that of Putin.

What stops Putin coming back in 5 years - as he did in 2022 after the 2014 invaison?

>[0]

This is a common take, but a pretty dishonest one (by the article author of course). It ignores the Egyptian conditions (accepting a withdrawal _in advance_, but negotiating peace afterward), the Israeli reply (offer to unilaterally withdraw from the Canal - set to December 1973 following Israeli elections), and the Egyptian need to fight to 'restore their honour' (as Sadat's wife stated).

Zelensky is no saint (the press ignores his flaws), but actually all parties to the conflict are rather close. The one remaining issue is guarantees to Ukraine (a very reasonable demand), and if Putin finally bends on that an accord will come very quickly.

Trump and Vance also emphasized that Ukraine’s very weak, on camera, and then Trump spent a very weird amount of time taking about how tough Hunter Biden’s laptop was for Vladimir Putin, or something, which he just brought up out of nowhere.

I think it’s a safe assumption their deal sucks.

[edit] I don’t care about downvotes but if anyone downvoted because they think I made this up… watch the video.

My interpretation is that this conversation had many layers. One of such layers was that the Trump team claimed Zelenskyy campaigned for the opposition, Kamala Harris.

And one of the objectives of this whole situation was to frame the discussion as a humiliation ritual or character destruction to show what happens when you are not aligned to deter others from doing the same in the future. Shaming individuals who are not aligned is a recurring theme in rallies. e.g.: "Do you see this? Do you want to be seen treated like this? don't campaign for our opposition".

Yes this episode about Putin and Biden was bizarre. The world was watching how Trump was arguing for sympathy for Putin, e.g. quoting Trump: 'Putin went through a hell of a lot with me ... it was a Democrat scam ... and he had to go through that, and he did go through that'.

Well it's not totally out of nowhere.

Trump got impeached for asking Zelensky to fabricate evidence against Biden by threatening to withhold US support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...

> The inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid[a] and an invitation to the White House from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden, and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine– not Russia– was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election.

- some peacekeeping help

Ukraine wouldn't even get much of that: this was Zelensky's point, the deal lacked any safety guarantees from the US.

There is no such deal on the table. The meeting was for a minerals deal. All the other stuff was press questions about the future of the relationship.