Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential candidate, has joined former President Donald Trump in believing that proper deals can be made with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is a position that French President Emmanuel Macron also took in December last year, who highlighted the prospect of negotiating with Putin security guarantees for Russia within the framework of a new security architecture in Europe.
Try telling Yevgeny Prigozhin that the Kremlin keeps its word on deals. Two months ago, after Prigozhin’s attempted coup, Russian security services said they would not press charges, and Prigozhin was misled into receiving security guarantees. Putin’s real verdict was delivered as an explosion in a private jet at 28,000 feet.
Any Ukrainian can tell you that Russia’s assurances that it will not invade the country are worthless. Moscow was supposed to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and provide Kiev with security guarantees under the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum under which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal, but Putin has not bothered to honor that international agreement.
Prigozhin certainly did Ukraine no good – he sent his mercenaries on “meat” attacks at the Battle of Bakhmut. However, his assassination may provide a sobering, cautionary lesson for politicians around the world who blithely believe that Putin can it is trusted and deals are made with him.
“There is no way anyone can reach an agreement with a serial liar like Putin and expect it to be respected. The UN Charter, the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty, the Minsk Agreements, the Black Sea Grain Initiative – how many more treaties does Putin have to break before they all understand that talks with him are pointless?”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, told Politico.
Ramaswamy recently explained to CNN that he would freeze the current lines of control and make a commitment that NATO would not accept Ukraine. He said the US could even force Ukraine to make concessions as it “pays the bills”. In return, he would simply ask Putin to withdraw from the military alliance with China.
And he would trust Putin for all this?
“Whether he’s dealing with his own commander, who is a war criminal, or with an outside power, the Russian president will use any means necessary to achieve his goals. Only a solid Russian military defeat in Ukraine can lead to a just and lasting peace.” Kuleba claims. “Those who argue that Ukraine should agree to a quick cease-fire, cede territory or freeze the conflict do not want an end to the war. They are calling for Ukraine to die. This is the path to a bigger war once the Putin should be given a break.”
Broken deal
The Black Sea Grain deal – an initiative to export Ukraine’s vast wheat reserves, especially to poorer countries – is another example.
It was signed in July 2022 with the mediation of the UN and Turkey.
For a year, Ukraine won the opportunity to ship its grain to the world and stabilize food prices, but Russia continued to insist that the grain deal should include more privileges for the Kremlin and constantly complained about the ineffectiveness of the initiative until retired in July 2023
Since then, the Kremlin has shelled Ukrainian ports and grain terminals, destroying food destined for developing countries.
“This is a clear demonstration that negotiating anything with Putin is like asking a serial rapist to promise he won’t do it again. It doesn’t work, and Prigozhin is proof of that,” Ukrainian political scientist Mykola Davydiuk said. in front of Politico.
In public, Putin has claimed that he is ready for peace talks and that the US, NATO and Ukraine are the ones pushing for the continuation of the war. On August 2, however, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that these negotiations must be on Russian terms. On August 6, he said there were no grounds for peace and that Russia wanted to keep the five Ukrainian regions it illegally annexed, even though it did not fully control four of them.
“For me, the attempt to annex part of the Ukrainian territories is yet another confirmation of the Kremlin’s complete inadequacy in assessing the political and military situation,” Ukraine’s Secretary of State Security and Defense Oleksiy Danilov told Politico.
Ukrainian officials have warned the Kremlin that a decision to annex Ukrainian regions in 2022 would kill any chance of ending the war on the negotiating table. But the Kremlin did it anyway.
“Negotiations and concessions to Putin will be a geostrategic fiasco for the West and will mark the beginning of the countdown to the start of the anti-democratic counter-revolution and the advance of autocracies along the entire front from Latin America to China,” Danilov said.
Source bgnes
Working on the post:
2023-08-26 06:30:00
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