Putin's 6 demands to end the war

An accidental mediator appeared in the Ukrainian war: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. He enjoys the trust of Vladimir Putin. They both have the same authoritarian style of governing. They had close contact as the armies of the two countries intervened in the Syrian civil war.

Turkey was very carefully positioned to be the middleman with Russia and Ukraine, and it seems that this move is paying off. Turkey is a member of NATO and also has direct dialogue with members of the Western military defense organization. In the United States and Europe they look at it with great distrust, but it is the open channel they have with Moscow and they are willing to take advantage of it.

On Thursday afternoon, Putin called Erdogan, and told him what Russia's precise demands were for a peace agreement with Ukraine. On the Turkish side, the adviser and spokesman for the presidency, Ibrahim Kalin, listened to the conversation, who later gave details to the Istanbul press and in an interview with John Simpson of the BBC.

According to Kalin, a prestigious academic specializing in Islamic issues, Russian demands are divided into categories and “the first four are not too difficult for Ukraine to meet.”

Putin's main demand has to do with his “workhorse”: that Ukraine stay away from NATO and that it pledges that it will never apply to join the organization. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that his country no longer aspires to be part of the Western military alliance. It was a direct response to Putin as his delegates continued to negotiate with the Russian peers.

The other three Russian demands of this first “category” are aimed at “washing the face” of Putin. These are points that the Russian leader could present to his acolytes as a crushing victory in this war: Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure that it is not a threat to Russia. It would have to protect the Russian language in the Ukrainian areas where it is still spoken. And he should commit to doing something that Putin calls “denazification”, but that no one understands exactly what it is about.

This is deeply offensive in particular to Zelensky, who is Jewish and some of whose relatives died in the Holocaust. Also because his government is of liberal characteristics and has nothing to do with the Nazi extreme right. And because Ukraine suffered greatly from the Nazi invasion from 1941 until 1945. Turkish mediators believe that it may be enough for Ukraine to condemn all forms of neo-Nazism and promise to suppress them.

The second category of Russian demands to end its bloody offensive has to do with the territories it already occupied and annexed in 2014, the Crimean peninsula and the separatist enclaves of Luhansk and Donotsk.

Putin is convinced that the population of 2.4 million Crimea is Russian and that this territory must return to the Great Russian Motherland, as it was during the Russian Empire and the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union. According to the legislation of that country, Crimea has been part of Russia since March 18, 2014, when Kremlin troops occupied it. A referendum then turned that territory into a federal district under Russian tutelage. The international community does not recognize this status, but the fact is that Ukraine lost sovereignty over that part of its land. It is a fait accompli, although Russia has no legal right to own Crimea and signed an international treaty, after the fall of communism but before Vladimir Putin came to power, accepting that Crimea was part of Ukraine.

In the same situation is the Donbas region and, in particular, the two pro-Russian enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk. The Ukrainian separatists were armed and trained by the Russian army, which, in turn, has had defence troops there for eight years involved in the fighting. In that war, 14,000 Ukrainians have already died. And, again, those two enclaves were already recognized as independent republics by the Kremlin.

According to Kalin, Putin does not demand to keep all the rest of the territory of eastern and southern Ukraine that he claims as his own. It is in these areas that Russian troops made their greatest advance, they control the city of Khersov, at the mouth of the Dnieper River in the Black Sea, and are surrounded by Mariupol. If they manage to take it, they will have closed the circle to unite Crimea with the separatist enclaves and could even dominate Kharkiv, the second Ukrainian city. This is the area where Russian-speakers are in the majority, but in these three weeks of war, many of them expressed their firm repudiation of the invasion and demonstrated it in front of Russian troops.

To discuss the details of the sovereignty of these territories, according to the Turkish mediator, Putin intends to have a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky. Something that the Ukrainian president said he agreed and willing to travel to a neutral territory to realize it. It could be Istanbul or Ankara. However, the signing of a peace agreement would take much more time and time. In the meantime, a ceasefire and a cessation of the bombing could be achieved until the two presidents meet. But in that case, any disagreement would be fatal.

And while Putin could present the acceptance of these points as a resounding victory without question, for Ukraine it would be a de facto capitulation. Zelensky could say that in this way he saved many more lives, but he will be too weak or unable to continue to lead the Kiev government. The war was (it is) precisely about the Ukrainian refusal to comply with Putin's demands that it now reiterates to Turkish President Erdogan. Accepting them after 20,000 deaths and a major destruction of social and economic infrastructure would make no greater sense. Ukrainians are already warning you about this via social media. They tell Zelensky that, even if he signs the surrender, they will continue to resist a guerrilla war that will make it impossible for the Russians to control the country.

The bloodshed and destruction that Russian troops caused in Ukraine make what could have been agreed before the war, now very difficult to digest. It is also true that the Ukrainian government cannot continue to fight until the last consequences because the casualties would be exorbitant. But that point has not yet been reached. Ukrainian troops are still holding strong resistance and the Russian advance seems to be, at least, slowed down.

Everything indicates that negotiations still need time and, above all, to find some points that will allow Ukraine to “save its clothes” and to be able to sing a victory — pyrrhic, of course — as glorious as Putin's.

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