I don’t understand why this was downvoted, if such a proposal had been made in 2022 during first Istanbul talks, it could have prevented another three years of meatgrinder. As during those talks Russia openly discussed getting troops back to pre-2022 border as possible option, and European alliance instead of NATO (i.e. no US troops and nukes in Europe) is also offer that is hard to ignore. So after some negotiation it might become a deal; sadly noone offered that.
Because this isn’t 2022, territorial reality has changed, the deal Russia was offering back then is no longer on the table, it’s gone forever and not coming back.
The new regions are part of Russia according to the Russian constitution and will not be given up, and even in 2022 Russia would not have accepted Ukraine in any European military alliance, when the whole reason for this war is that a militarized and hostile Ukraine is unacceptable to Russia’s security. And Europe has chosen to be intractably hostile to Russia for the time being.
This won’t change even if the US disappears out of Europe entirely, and the deal Russia is willing to offer will keep getting worse for Ukraine the longer this goes on.
Because the idea of a European alliance is nonsense. NATO IS the European alliance. And NATO’s strategy for defending against Russia is a nuclear killchain with one critical position in Ukraine. What would a European alliance do? Not defend against Russia? Or defend against Russia in a different way? Would they do that while still in NATO or would they have to dismantle NATO first and then build this alliance?
It’s nonsense. You can’t just make a new transnational military that is capable of defending against Russia by just saying “European Alliance”.
I don’t understand why this was downvoted, if such a proposal had been made in 2022 during first Istanbul talks, it could have prevented another three years of meatgrinder. As during those talks Russia openly discussed getting troops back to pre-2022 border as possible option, and European alliance instead of NATO (i.e. no US troops and nukes in Europe) is also offer that is hard to ignore. So after some negotiation it might become a deal; sadly noone offered that.
Because this isn’t 2022, territorial reality has changed, the deal Russia was offering back then is no longer on the table, it’s gone forever and not coming back.
The new regions are part of Russia according to the Russian constitution and will not be given up, and even in 2022 Russia would not have accepted Ukraine in any European military alliance, when the whole reason for this war is that a militarized and hostile Ukraine is unacceptable to Russia’s security. And Europe has chosen to be intractably hostile to Russia for the time being.
This won’t change even if the US disappears out of Europe entirely, and the deal Russia is willing to offer will keep getting worse for Ukraine the longer this goes on.
Because the idea of a European alliance is nonsense. NATO IS the European alliance. And NATO’s strategy for defending against Russia is a nuclear killchain with one critical position in Ukraine. What would a European alliance do? Not defend against Russia? Or defend against Russia in a different way? Would they do that while still in NATO or would they have to dismantle NATO first and then build this alliance?
It’s nonsense. You can’t just make a new transnational military that is capable of defending against Russia by just saying “European Alliance”.
The difference is that Trump doesn’t seem interested defending Europe. The EU should use this to bargain with Putin regarding Ukraine.