There is an old Irish saying: “If I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here”. So it is with the Ukraine conflict. The west has completely botched up. Russia will never trust the west again, so is is seriously doubtful any “deal” is possible, because a deal requires trust in the other side, and the EU and US do not deserve any trust at all.
Putting it simply, if you say “Nato not one inch further west” and then deliberately undermine regimes to push the Nato expansion up to the border of Russia, you are not in any sense worth trusting at all.
I do not believe a “deal” is possible. Instead, Russia will continue with the conflict until it imposes on Ukraine a peace that it can police, one that doesn’t require any co-operation or reliance on the EU to do anything … except not to go to war.
Moreover, the scale of lies in the western media is such as to make it impossible for Russia to agree to anything without first demonstrating the lies were lies. Which, means achieving something so concrete that no lie is big enough to hide it. The success of Russia does not require the acquiescence of the lying western media, they just cannot help reporting Russia’s success.
As such, the quickest route to peace is the collapse of all western support for Ukraine … which is going to happen sooner or later, just later means a lot more deaths.
