According to recent reports from French media, political scholar and columnist Dominic Moisi published an article "Ukraine: The Impossible Trade", pointing out that Ukraine's recent successful recovery of Khlsong has made Ukraine closer to Crimean , and Russia is further away from Odessa . This is a turning point at the strategic and symbolic level, but that doesn't mean the time for negotiation has arrived. It can even be said that the Russian army's active retreat made the Europeans desperate.
The current situation is an obvious deadlock. Russia cannot win, Ukraine refuses to surrender, and the only one who is trapped in death is EU , which is likely to fall into a dark age in a crisis of economic and social unrest. Until Kherson is recovered, it is possible for Europeans to envision a territorial compromise based on the restoration of the status quo on February 23, 2022. This is no longer the case now. For Kiev , this is a problem back to Moscow before taking Crimea. But to regain the peninsula, which is the easiest and difficult to defend in the entire European world, it requires the power to move mountains and reclaim seas.
Ukraine does not have such power and must be supported by NATO and the EU. During the nine months of war, tens of thousands of people died on both sides, millions of Ukrainians left their homes, and infrastructure was destroyed. Thanks to the West's help to Ukraine, Moscow cannot achieve balance on the battlefield, it has no choice but to try to separate the camp of Kiev's allies. However, Zelensky's appetite is growing, requiring Russia to restore the borders when Ukraine re-independence in 1991. This requirement is actually to take the resignation of Putin's reign as a condition for restoring peace.
Which Russian leader can continue to take power in the face of "losing Crimea and even Ukraine"? But after making huge sacrifices, which Ukrainian leader will be satisfied with restoring the border on February 24, 2022? Kyiv no longer accepts territorial compromise. Moscow also cannot accept the restoration of the 1991 border. Russia is not like Nazi Germany in 1945, which is a nuclear power, and the energy tools it uses to restrain Europe will not be outdated in the next decade.
Although the negotiation time is still far away, we can also think that the upgrade time has not yet arrived. No matter where the missile that hit Polish originated, this is just a "collective loss" rather than a deliberate provocation. How to invent a diplomatic compromise that makes the Ukrainians feel that they "win" while also making the Russians feel that they are not "losing"? This seems to be an impossible task. History tells us that opponents who hate each other can hold each other tightly in the whirlpool of war and never let go of it for many years, such as the "Hundred Years of War in Britain and France" and the "Thirty Years of War in Germany". Text/PY
