US army secretary briefs ambassadors at ‘nightmare meeting’ in Kyiv on Friday after talks with Ukrainian leader
US officials have told Nato allies they expect to push president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into agreeing to a peace deal in the coming days, under the threat that if Kyiv does not sign, it will face a much worse deal in future.
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, briefed ambassadors from Nato nations at a meeting in Kyiv late on Friday, after talks with Zelenskyy and taking a phone call from the White House. “No deal is perfect, but it must be done sooner rather than later,” he told them, according to one person who was present.
The mood in the room was sombre, with several European ambassadors questioning the content of the deal and the way in which the US had conducted the negotiations with Russia without keeping allies informed.
And who exactly are these leaders working on behalf of? Because it sounds like this absolutely dogshit deal favors the Russians and gives them everything they want. They’re holding Ukraine at gunpoint and threatening them to accept a very unfavorable deal. With the Russians beside them.
Possibly on behalf of Ukrainians. 68% of them want a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. Are you sure you’re speaking on behalf of the Ukrainians?
…yeah. Did you read the article? Of course no one wants to be at war, especially when that war is going on at home. But ceding the territory the Russians invaded, amnesty for war crimes committed, and Russian as the official language? The US and Russia were the only ones negotiating, without Ukraine, without other allies.
This is Russia and the us strong arming—together—Ukraine into accepting a terrible deal. Trump has been negotiating for Russia and with Ukraine the whole time.
All of this is you speculating what Ukrainian citizens want and what they don’t want out of a negotiated peace.
For example, regarding Russian as the official language, in some eastern regions of what was Ukraine up to 2013, such as Crimea, Donets and Lugansk, there was a majority of people who considered themselves ethnically Russian. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, many of these people wanted an independence referendum, quite parallel to Catalonia but regarding annexation to Russia. This was antidemocratically forbidden by the central government in a clear violation of the human right to self-determination, and instead in these regions, which formerly had the possibility to access public education in Russian, this stopped being the case and Ukrainian became the only language in which people could attain an education.
This doesn’t justify Russia’s invasion, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think I’m in a position to criticize negotiation attempts when a vast majority of Ukrainians desire it, without knowing exactly what they would be willing to give up in exchange.