Expect the conflict to drag out until January 2025. Will US vote to end the conflict over Zelensky's objections? No love between Zelensky and Trump. Biden to play up Trump's relation with Putin. GOP to play the Hunter card. US to act like US always does.
US happy that it is at bad relations with the commies again. US arms industry booming, but short on chips.

The devil is in the details, obviously, and a peace deal with Putin will depend on Ukraine’s ability to maintain an army capable of defending the country, as well as outside assurances of security from other countries. (This is tricky, because the U.S.,
the U.K., and Russia said they would guarantee Ukraine’s security if the country gave up its nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that deal clearly has not been upheld.) But the Financial Times reported that the “biggest
sticking point remains Russia’s demand that Ukraine [recognize] its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist statelets in the eastern Donbas border region.”


On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Russia and Ukraine had made “significant progress on a tentative 15-point peace plan” that would end Russia’s invasion and require Ukraine to become a permanently neutral state with its own military
in the mold of Sweden or Austria. Ukrainian officials have already played down the prospects of the plan, alternatively calling it a Russian ploy for time and a “draft, which represents the requesting position of the Russian side. Nothing more.”

Analysts, however, noted that—depending on the final terms—the Russian position would seem to be a considerable descent from Vladimir Putin’s initial goals when he launched his brutal campaign three weeks ago with demands for “the
demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine” and the aim of toppling the democratically elected government in Kyiv.

The devil is in the details, obviously, and a peace deal with Putin will depend on Ukraine’s ability to maintain an army capable of defending the country, as well as outside assurances of security from other countries. (This is tricky, because the U.S.,
the U.K., and Russia said they would guarantee Ukraine’s security if the country gave up its nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that deal clearly has not been upheld.) But the Financial Times reported that the “biggest
sticking point remains Russia’s demand that Ukraine [recognize] its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist statelets in the eastern Donbas border region.”



If the Russian climbdown is real—and with the additional caveat that there’s much we don’t know about the state of negotiations—then Kyiv must still be leery that Putin does not turn such a deal to his long-term advantage. It is worth considering
the lessons of one previously aborted peace initiative when thinking about how Ukraine can prevent an unfavorable outcome now. That proposal, which would have benefited Putin significantly, came from a Russian spy who tried to get former President Donald
Trump to endorse his plan. Looking at the contours of that draft initiative shows the sort of concessions that should be avoided now if at all possible.

The idea of an autonomous Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas is hardly new. And it was central to the 2016–18 plan we have insight into thanks to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2020 report outlining Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Konstantin Kilimnik, the onetime righthand man to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, proposed and pushed this plan as part of an effort to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine to Putin’s ultimate advantage. (Kilimnik was described by
the report as a “Russian intelligence officer” providing information to Russian intelligence, and last year the U.S. Treasury Department, in issuing sanctions against Kilimnik, said he was a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing
influence operations on their behalf.”)

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