It is misleading when Western governments and the Western media say that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has not made compromises and is unwilling to negotiate. Though Russia has not changed its essential goals since the start of the war, it has compromised significantly around the edges of those goals.
The concession not to object to Ukraine’s membership in the European Union grants the key wish of the Maidan protestors of 2014. Raising the ceiling on caps on the Ukrainian armed forces and the recognition that Ukraine deserves robust security guarantees, barring the presence of NATO member troops on Ukrainian soil, are large security concessions. Possible compromises on the postwar borders demanded at the beginning of the war are significant territorial concessions.
But Moscow has insisted that there can be no compromise on the entirety of Donbas and Crimea being part of Russia. That demand is a difficult one for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to acquiesce to, and it is unfair. But little in war is fair, and nothing in this war has been fair. It was unfair for the U.S. and NATO to lie about eastward expansion. It was unfair for the U.S. and NATO to ignore Russia’s security concerns, take core issues off the table, and refuse the request for diplomacy on the eve of the war. It was unfair for the U.S. to promise Ukraine as much as it needs for as long as it takes if they go to war with Russia and then to break that promise. And it was, of course, unfair for Russia to go to war with Ukraine.
And it is especially unfair for Russia to compel Ukraine to cede land diplomatically that it has not lost militarily. Russia, though, has hinted at a willingness to exchange land outside the eastern Donbas that it has conquered for land inside Donbas it has not. Agreeing on borders after a war with mutual swapping of territory to make the borders coherent is not unheard of, and the failure to do so in the past has, at times, sown the seeds of future conflict.
The real unfairness is the demand for Ukraine to cede territory at all, because it is illegal under international law to acquire territory by force (though Russia would claim that the land was acquired by the will of the people as expressed by a referendum and not by force). Article 2.3 of the UN Charter demands that member states “settle their international disputes by peaceful means,” and Article 2.4 requires all members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This norm has no exemptions and cannot be modified, including, according to the International Court of Justice, in self-defense.
Though it is undeniably unfair for Ukraine to have to cede all of Donbas to Russia, there are five practical reasons for it to do so.
The most urgent is the need for Ukraine to end this war. The loss of Ukrainian lives is horrific and unsustainable. Ceding the last 10 to 14 percent of the Donbas could be part of the key to doing that. Russia has two core goals in this war: preventing NATO from absorbing Ukraine and protecting ethnic Russians in Donbas. The first has been achieved. That leaves the second. After the diplomatic betrayal of the West and the resultant failure of the Minsk Agreements that would have given the Donbas provinces autonomy within Ukraine, that left, from Russia’s perspective, incorporating the region within itself. That goal now seems nonnegotiable. Yielding to it could end the war.
The most practical reason is that Ukraine can cede Donbas to Russia diplomatically, or they can lose Donbas to Russia by war. The outcome is inevitable; the choice is real. The Donbas will be lost, but it is better to lose it with no more loss of life if possible.
The third reason is that a border drawn at the west of Donbas makes ethnic and historical sense. Ukraine has always been a nation divided. Northwest and central Ukraine has historically oriented its gaze westward to Europe; southeast Ukraine has historically oriented its gaze eastward to Russia. Elections and culture have traditionally reflected this divide. Though pushing a boundary beyond the Donbas makes no ethnic or cultural sense, drawing it at Donbas does. And arguably it reflects the will of the people as expressed in multiple referendums going back to the ’90s. It might also prevent Ukraine from slipping back into civil war once the international war with Russia is over.
Ceding the Donbas to Russia might also go some distance in accomplishing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees. The need for Ukraine to acquire security guarantees against Russian attack is now demonstrably clear. But Russia attacked based on its perception of an existential threat posed by NATO and possible war in the disputed territory of the Donbas and Crimea if Ukraine became a member of NATO. Removing those causes reduces the odds of future Russian attack. Ceding the Donbas, along with Crimea, which already seems to be conceded, could be not just a key to ending this war, but a key to preventing future war.
There are other ways in which ceding the Donbas to Russia could help Ukraine to better move forward. A sovereign Ukraine on 80 percent of its original territory integrated with the West with membership in the European Union could be sold, very plausibly, as a victory for Ukraine. But Ukraine can only clear a path to EU accession by conforming with the organization’s requirements for guarantees of freedom of religion and linguistic diversity. The monist vision of what it means to be Ukrainian, with its suppression of the language, cultural, and religious rights of ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine, dominates in Ukraine and has only gotten stronger since the war. The path to EU membership could be facilitated by allowing the separation of predominantly ethnic Russians in the Donbas.
For similar reasons, ceding Donbas to Russia could help a sovereign Ukraine avoid immediately descending back into the same civil strife that preceded the war with Russia in which the enemy is internal ethnic Russians.
And finally, the de jure recognition of the Donbas as Russian could help prevent the stage being set for future battles of a Donbas that has only de facto been recognized as under Russian control. De facto recognition allows for negotiations down the road. But it could also allow for conflicts down the road.
It is unfair for Ukraine to be forced to agree to losing all of Donbas to Russia because it is against international law to acquire territory by force. But there are many practical reasons why ceding the Donbas to Russia could benefit Ukraine by ending the war without unnecessary additional deaths and by moving into a future integrated with Europe and with greater security against both external and internal conflict.
Read the full article here
