Peace in our time?

A summary of Russia's peace proposal

Earlier today a photograph of the Russian peace memorandum was released via Russian media¹. Knowing that Western media will either ignore, or misrepresent the terms presented by the Russian delegation, I decided to provide a short summary of the eleven points included in Section 1 of their memorandum (see below).

To a large extent the contents are the same as the December 2021 draft agreement that Russia produced with a central focus on Ukrainian neutrality and protecting the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. In addition the “de-nazification” item also remains. The biggest change over the past three and a half years is that Russia now wants official legal recognition of the fact that the four oblasts captured since February 2022 plus Crimea have all acceded to the Russian Federation (disputed).

Reuters has released text which is apparently the Ukrainian memorandum². Several potential show-stoppers flash up between the two versions. Primarily these are i) Ukraine’s insistence that it can enter into international alliances, including allowing foreign troops to be present in Ukraine and ii) no legal recognition for areas absorbed by Russia since 2014.

There are other highly contentious questions, but between the lines it is acknowledged that the regions that Russia wishes to have recognised are somewhat beyond the March 2025 contact line (pink areas to the West of red line³). Here at least the Ukrainian side acknowledges that “The contact line is the starting point for negotiations”.

The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinski (who ironically was born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) went on to do a deep dive on the issue of missing children, which I will summarise tomorrow.

What happens next?

Fundamentally there appears to be little common ground on the issues that reportedly triggered the war in February 2022, namely Ukrainian neutrality and overall European security architecture. However a number of important things have happened since then, most importantly Russia is still making slow, but steady movement westwards despite the USD 130 billion in military aid (part of a USD 300 billion plus overall package). The likely plan to carry out a quid pro quo swap of territory taken by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region for territory taken by Russia in eastern Ukraine collapsed since Russia repelled this incursion. The Russian economy continues to grow, 4.3% in 2024 and estimated 2.0% in 2025 and exports are holding up.

As I mentioned in my last post, the most negative assessments of Ukraine’s military position comes from official U.S. government sources (⁴).

Three factors suggest that the Trump administration will likely cut Ukraine loose:

• MAGA is first and foremost worried about the rise of China (rightly or wrongly) and have indicated that they will focus on this issue at the expense of Ukraine.

• Ukraine is struggling on the battlefield despite high profile sabotage attacks inside Russia and my guess is that President Trump doesn’t want to be associated with military failure.

• A number of the loudest Washington war mongers are Biden-Harris Leftists (see Ben Hodges tweet and my earlier post) and team MAGA may not feel obliged to pursue a Biden affiliated project.
  

As I mentioned, I have a dog in the fight due to a long association with Russia and would very much like to see this war end (although unfortunately I suspect that war will only shift towards a confrontation with China). The European political class will continue to burn up taxpayer money in this conflict, but they will probably balk at the prospect of putting boots on the ground at scale and beyond instructors and other special forces?

In most conflicts both sides seem to lose and this conflict is no exception, but in a war of attrition the larger country can be expected to prevail (all things being equal). I suspect that virtually everyone actually involved in this conflict would like to see a negotiated settlement as soon as possible and only armchair warriors sitting thousands of miles away want the conflict to continue for the sake of the “international order”. There hopefully is a deal to be done and some middle ground can be found and I hope that this happens sooner rather than later.

Let me have your thoughts below.

Summary translation of Russia’s peace proposal – 2^nd June 2025

Section 1

1. International legal recognition of the fact that Crimea, Luhansk People’s Republic, Donetsk People’s Republic, Zaporozhe and Kherson regions acceded to the Russian Federation and the withdrawal of all Ukrainian armed forces from those regions.

2. Ukrainian neutrality, implying her refusal to enter into military alliances and coalitions including a ban on third party country military activities on the territory of Ukraine.

3. Cancelation of and withdrawal from international agreements incompatible with item 2.

4. Confirmation of Ukraine’s status as a non-nuclear (and other weapons of mass extermination) state.

5. Creating a limit to Ukraine’s armed forces and the disbanding of nationalistic unts within Ukrainian armed forces.

6. Guarantee the rights of Russian and Russian-speaking population, make Russian an official language.

7. A legal ban on promoting Nazi and Neo-Nazi ideology.

8. Remove all sanctions between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

9. Deal with multifaceted problem of reuniting families.

9. Announcement of a date for Presidential elections and elections to the Upper Chamber (Verhovnoi Rada) which should take place within 100 days of the cancelation of war footing.

10. Signing of a Agreement to execute the items laid out in Section 1

(note there appear to be two items numbered 9.)

1. https://dzen.ru/a/aD3ZYStrxHhD1lUi

2. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-proposals-june-2-talks-with-russia-istanbul-2025-06-01/

3. https://informer.rs/planeta/vesti/1000768/kijev-prekid-vatre-linija-fronta-putin-tramp#google_vignette

4.