I recently listened to a long podcast with Mearsheimer. One of the hosts discusses Putin floating the principles of a possible peace deal.
I don’t see how it can happen. The US and Europe have admitted that they went into the Minsk agreements intending not to keep them, and that is after the US betrayed Russia over Libya, getting their vote based on telling them that it was not intended to be a regime change operation.
Putin is said to have spent a couple days watching the video of Gaddafi being raped with a knife, then killed. Focuses the mind on what happens if you trust the wrong people and what the West wants done to its enemies. (People wonder why Putin hates Hilary, this is why.)
So, there can be no deal, because Russia and Putin don’t believe that the West in general and the US in particular (they have contempt for EU leaders who the know simply follow US orders) can’t be trusted to keep it.
That means there’s really on one way to have a peace deal: hostages.
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It’s an old idea. If there’s no trust, in the old days you had people the other side cared about, usually family members, live with you. Break the deal and they get it in the neck.
So if there’s to be a deal with Ukraine, there have to be hostages, and they have to be given to Russia. Not people, in this age, but something the US cares about. Perhaps the contents of Fort Knox? Perhaps something else? (Suggest possibilities in the comments.)
I personally can’t think of anything that would be enough, so I can’t see a peace deal now.
The deal will happen when it’s a surrender deal. When the Ukrainians firmly admit they are losing and losing badly. And world war I style deal, where the victor sets the terms.
As such, I don’t see Ukraine keeping Odessa, for example. The deal will be ugly.