Feanor said:
At the time of the Istanbul deal the terms of the deal included Russia returning territory. You're playing word games and it appears intentionally conflating different parts of their statements. Ukraine had a deal on the table that involved a return to February '22 borders with recognition of what they didn't have as lost.....
.....
I believe this is the full text in English with some portions marked as still under discussion when the talks broke down. Note the date on the draft in question.
This draft is terribly incomplete (and that's what I heard about it before, without being able to
provide evidence LOL.). First of all, it doesn't contain any geographic description of the new border both parties were supposed to agree with.
You will notice that the word "the map" is marked as not agreed upon by Ukraine, indicating that they were no agreement yet on this subject.
That's very strange for a deal that was
ready to be signed until Boris Johnson suddenly showed up to stop the hand holding the pen. Territorial negotiations can take months, and is the essential part of any peace agreement. Saying "to the 2022 borders" is only a speculation since their is no such mention in the draft and no such a thing as "2022 borders" as they always have been contested since 2014. It only mentions a "map" that is not joined with the document and which Ukraine didn't agree with at that time.
The draft only talk about Ukraine not being engaged in any military alliance with other countries. And Ukraine agreed about this principle.
Everybody thinks about NATO. In fact, the reason why Ukraine agreed with it is that it works both ways: Russia will also be forbidden to forge a military alliance with Ukraine, and more importantly, to station troops inside Ukraine. In other words, it prevents the type of alliance which exists between Russia and Belarus. Neutrality means also that they can't be allied with Russia. NATO is not mentioned in the draft.
The second thing that the draft talks about is the limitation of the Ukrainian military. Here again, the Ukrainians didn't agree with the numbers. My conclusion is that this draft was far from being ready to be signed as the rumours goes.
Feanor said:
You think Russia and Ukraine will have good relations?
It's like asking in 1942 if Poland will ever have good relations with Germany.
Today, they have good relations. So, everything is possible. In the modern world, good relations are always more profitable than bad relations.
Ananda said:
Bit contradict on that. At one side you say Xi Bet Wrong Horse with Putin, and other side you say Putin open door for China to own everything on Russia. By that logic Xi is betting the right horse with Putin.
Short term and long term projections are often contradictory.
China seemed to have made a long term decision related to
The Eternal Friendship with Russia. (Eternal is quiet long term). And, as things unfolded, China benefits from several opportunities thanks to the war in Ukraine and various sanctions imposed on Russia.
I didn't say that China will own
everything in Russia. I said that they will own all the profitable non-petroleum industries.
These are short term benefits whereas they are publicly boasting an alliance with the wrong guy. Americans, and Trump in particular, but Joe Biden too, are a little bit responsible for that. But it's still the wrong guy to be allied with. I already said, that there can't be anything good out of a friendship with someone who is attacking his neighbours with missiles and tanks. Putin is going to lose against the West and his regime will collapse by internal discontent. Putin himself plays another bad horse with Iran. It's only a matter of when, not if, his regime will collapse. Simply because he takes the wrong decisions.
KipPotapych said:
the Financial Times said:
Kyiv and Moscow had come to a “tacit agreement” last autumn to not strike each other’s energy facilities.
I don't remember that Russian had stopped bombing Ukraine with long range missile at any moment in the whole time line. By the end of 2022, Russia had already used one third of its missile arsenal and two thirds of its advanced missiles.
Maybe they didn't strike energy infrastructures, but they stroke everything else.
That Russians would not have attacked energy facilities had Ukrainians not struck oil depots or refineries in Russia is ridiculous. Of course it's what Putin says every time he commits a war crime: That it's in retaliation for something.
The only reason why they bombed not earlier than February was that they needed time to replenish their stock of missiles. Ukrainians even predicted when the next massive attack will be by the rate of Russian missile production.
In fact Ukraine strikes Russia anytime it can, anywhere it can with all the means available, as soon as there are available. They don't care about
tacit agreements, red lines or any other consideration but their survival. Even better: If they know that something will cause Putin's anger, they will do it because it means that it's effective.
rsemmes said:
We have to add a 3 months training, then, are they going to be 25 years old men or 50 years old? Zelensky already got the money and the equipment for them?
That's the main reason why young Ukrainians don't want to enlist. There is no decent weapons to fight with. And I suspect that the pay is also too low.
I also heard that Ukraine has dozen of tank crews but no tank for them. People don't want to fight with rusted riffles and no body armour.