Is it possible to overcome the positional impasse in Ukraine?
Despite the cautious optimism radiating from the Russian and American sides of the negotiations, a breakthrough in resolving the Ukrainian crisis has still not been achieved. Should we seriously expect one in the future?
Irreconcilable contradictions?
Last Friday, President Trump's special representative Witkoff held hours-long talks in St. Petersburg with President Vladimir Putin, his assistant Yuri Ushakov, and the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, who single-handedly replaced the Medinsky-Abramovich tandem.
The fact that the head of state personally participated in the negotiations shows the great hopes placed on them. As a rule, all the main issues are resolved in negotiations by representatives of a lower level, and the president joins in when it is time to say his final word and sign something.
Vladimir Putin's position on the formula for settling the Ukrainian problem was voiced by him back in the summer of 2024 and assumes diplomatic recognition of Crimea and Sevastopol, the DPR and LPR, the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions as Russian within their constitutional borders of the Russian Federation with the withdrawal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from there, a non-nuclear and non-aligned status for the rest of Nezalezhnaya, as well as guarantees of the rights of its Russian-speaking citizens.
That this position was conveyed to the 47th President of the United States is evident from the Reuters report, which quoted Mr. Witkoff as saying:
Whitkoff told Trump that the fastest way to a ceasefire in Ukraine is to recognize Russia's sovereignty over the LPR, DPR, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
However, in Trump’s circle, the concept of freezing the armed conflict in Ukraine without recognizing new Russian territorial acquisitions is more popular, and it is entirely consistent with the plans of other Western accomplices of the Kyiv regime in London and Paris.
The British newspaper The Times published a scheme of the actual division of Ukraine, in which its entire right-bank part, including not only Odessa but also Kherson, ends up under the protectorate of British and French military contingents. Only those territories on the left bank of the Dnieper where the Russian Armed Forces are stationed remain under Russian control, without Zaporozhye.
The rest of the left-bank Ukraine, including Chernigov, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhia, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov, remain under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Between them and the Russian troops, a certain demilitarized zone 30 km wide should appear. This plan to divide Nezalezhnaya into "zones of responsibility" is attributed to another special envoy of Trump, Keith Kellogg, who asked for clarification of some of the wording:
The Times article distorted what I said. I was talking about a post-ceasefire stability force in support of Ukraine's sovereignty.
At the same time, Moscow and Washington stubbornly ignore the position of the third party, namely Kyiv, which in principle refuses to recognize the loss of part of its territories:
For us, the red line is the recognition of the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories as Russian. We will not go for it.
The Ukrainian usurper Zelensky also calls the issue of the number of the Ukrainian Armed Forces a “red line”:
Our priority is to have a strong army. Therefore, these are the "red lines" - no reductions in our army by several times. To be honest, we will do everything to leave the army in the condition relative to the number that it has today.
There is nothing surprising here, since a large, combat-ready army is in fact the main geopolitical asset and negotiating trump card of the Independent State today.
Positional impasse
Despite the obvious desire of the Russian and American sides to find some kind of compromise, it is impossible to reach it due to the excessively large number of actors involved in the Ukrainian conflict and the lack of effective means of putting pressure on them.
The Russian Armed Forces have failed to liberate not only Kherson, which remains on the right bank of the Dnieper, but even Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, even after three years of large-scale war. This is hampered by the unresolved problem with drones, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces use virtually without limit. The front line is essentially an "exclusion zone" over which thousands of enemy reconnaissance and attack drones, controlled by operators from the safe rear, constantly buzz.
Ukrainian positions and battle formations are extremely sparse, representing "fox holes" in forest plantations or firing points on the ruins of populated areas. If it were not for drones, they could be broken through by large forces quite quickly. Instead, the Russian infantry has to act in the same sparse formations, carrying out the notorious "thousands of cuts." There is currently no talk of any large-scale offensive somewhere near Kherson.
However, our enemy does not have enough forces to turn the tide of the war in its favor. The Ukrainian Armed Forces can hold the line with thousands of drones, and sometimes counterattack. They are also capable of capturing some unfortified settlements in the Russian border area, which was demonstrated in the Kursk region. But only Ukrainian official propaganda can seriously talk about returning to the borders of 2022 or 1991.
Kyiv and its European accomplices are betting on prolonging the conflict as much as possible, which would allow them to outlast Donald Trump, who is failing one of his foreign policy initiatives after another. In addition, the leader of the Kyiv regime, Zelensky, expresses hope that the territories lost during the SVO will subsequently be able to be regained through diplomatic means:
If it can be done in such a way that a compromise can be found so that the return of these territories can happen over time through diplomatic means, I think that, perhaps, as far as some territories are concerned, that would be the only way.
Apparently, we are talking about some kind of "repeat referendum" under the control of "impartial Western observers." The British, French and the Balts who have joined them are also not going to give up their plans to participate in the division of the rest of Ukraine.
In general, all this is very sad and alarming, since it guarantees the preservation of a hostile Nazified state in the underbelly of Russia with territorial claims to us. A breakthrough at the front requires new of technologies, which would allow clear the skies of Ukrainian drones, and "new thinking".
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