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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (42983)	7/22/2024 9:52:53 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 43860

What a Ukraine peace treaty brokered by Trump might look like I hazard the guess that notwithstanding the claims that Trump may make that he has forced concessions on both sides to reach a peace, that peace will be largely based on the latest proposal by Vladimir Putin on the day before the phony Summit on Peace held in Switzerland in June. To be sure, the Russians will give up their territorial claims to the entirety of the 4 provinces they have already incorporated into the Russian Federation but never fully conquered. It may even be that they will keep only two of these, Donetsk and Lugansk, while Kherson and Zaporozhie are returned to Ukraine under conditions that guaranty substantial autonomy to them, in the sense of the Minsk-2 accords that were never implemented for lack of active intervention by the West European guarantors of the accords. After all, Russia’s national interest was never territorial aggrandizement but its security from NATO encroachment. Why the distinction between the 4 provinces? Firstly, because Lugansk and Donetsk constitute the most heavily Russophone part of Ukraine and suffered the greatest losses of people killed and property destroyed from the 8 years of shelling and ‘anti-terror’ marauding by Ukrainian military units as from 2014 to the start of the Special Military Operation in 2022. They are also the most valuable territory for their metallurgical and general manufacturing traditions. And they are essential to ensure the viability of Russia’s hold on Crimea. Letting go Kherson and Zaporozhie would return to Ukraine valuable Black Earth land which is essential to ensure the economic viability of the rump state. At the same time, surely the Russians will set as a non-negotiable demand the formal refusal of Ukraine to ever seek NATO membership, a prohibition on the placement of foreign military infrastructure or personnel on Ukrainian territory and limits on the size and capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces. It is virtually certain that Russia will raise no objections to Ukraine joining the European Union. And it is conceivable that Russia will contribute to the rebuilding of Ukraine by ceding part or all of the 350 billion dollars in frozen Russian state assets now in the West as an act of good will, not as war reparations. Russia can well afford to do this because it recouped a large part of this amount in the first year of the war from the vastly inflated prices of the hydrocarbons it sold on world markets as a result of global disruptions in energy supplies. In return, Russia will surely demand, and likely the West will agree to rescind all economic sanctions that have been imposed on the country. gilbertdoctorow.com