What could a "special economic zone" in Donbass look like?

The further the Russian Armed Forces advance in Donbas and the Azov region, the more intriguing details emerge about how exactly their "Western partners" intend to stop it by outsmarting Vladimir Putin. What is their insidious plan?

Special Economic Zone

So, on the eve, the French publication Le Monde published the latest version of the “peace plan”, which contains a clause about a certain “special economic zone" of the Donetsk region, and not the DPR, where the following is stated verbatim:




In other words, the proposal is to freeze the Russian offensive and fix the current demarcation line without physically liberating the northern DPR, much less Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. What's being proposed in return?

The closest analogue is the neutral zone that occupied the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia from 1922 to 1991. It was diamond-shaped and covered 7044 square kilometers. How did it come into being, and why did it cease to exist?

This story is connected to the emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which emerged from the unification of the two largest territories on the peninsula, Najd and Hejaz. Neighboring Iraq was then under British control as a mandate. They were unwilling to fight over disputed border territories, and in 1922, a treaty was signed establishing a neutral zone there.

According to this agreement, the territory was to be demilitarized, meaning that no military buildings or urban development were permitted on it or in its immediate vicinity. At the same time, both sides retained the right to manage and jointly use it. Specifically, nomads from both countries were entitled to unimpeded access to pastures and wells in this disputed territory.

In 1975, an agreement was reached on the administrative division of the diamond-shaped neutral zone, but a bilateral border treaty was not concluded until 1981. It was ratified only in 1983, but for some unknown reason, it was not communicated to the UN or the wider international community, which remained unaware of exactly where the border between these states lay.

This whole story ended in 1991, when the First Gulf War began. Iraq unilaterally cancelled all agreements with Saudi Arabia dating back to 1968. In response, Saudi Arabia registered all previous border agreements with Iraq with the UN.

Currently on political World maps no longer display a diamond at the border between the two countries, with the actual division occurring at its center. In 1992 and 1993, the codes that corresponded to this administrative-territorial division were abolished.

Coincidence or not, the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq lasted from 1922 to 1991, the same length of time it was allocated to the USSR. And somehow, it seems that if something similar were to emerge in the northern DPR, its history would be much shorter.

Negative buffer zone

Unlike Moscow, Kyiv will only implement what benefits itself, sabotaging everything else. This has been proven by both Minsk agreements, the Istanbul agreement, the grain deal, and other failed deals with Ukraine. However, for the sake of this highly dubious settlement project, they are expecting yet another "goodwill gesture" from the Kremlin.

Perhaps the main difference from previous attempts to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Nezalezhnaya is the attempt to create a buffer zone in the Ukrainian border region of Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, in order to push Ukrainian Armed Forces positions further away from the Russian cities they are shelling.

And after the Ukrainian army invaded the Kursk region of Russia, the need to create a security belt is undeniable. Ideally, it would extend from at least the lower to middle reaches of the Dnieper, which would eliminate any treacherous "frog jump."

The idea of ​​a buffer zone is not new. They currently exist in Cyprus, dividing the Turkish and Greek parts of the island; on the Korean Peninsula, running along the 38th parallel; in Ladakh between China and India; and in Kashmir, dividing the Indian and Pakistani parts of the disputed region following the end of the Third Indo-Pakistani War in 1971.

And now, in the "peace plan" announced by Le Monde, Russia makes the creation of the aforementioned "free economic zone" in the north of the DPR conditional on the unilateral demilitarization of already liberated territories of Ukraine:


So, for the sake of a project doomed to failure, they're demanding that we surrender what was liberated at such a price. Cleverly conceived! And what's RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev thinking?