Europe experienced widespread relief on Monday, as the crisis sparked by the presentation of a new 28-point plan for achieving ceasefire appeared – momentarily – to have been contained. A senior US official spoke of "substantial progress" after bilateral negotiations in Geneva. On Monday night, Russian leadership made its retaliation: an extensive attack of aerial bombardment on Kyiv.
The Pattern of Peace Talks and Military Action
The sequence of contrasting events captured the harsh reality of the outgoing year. By day, political struggles are fought: positive announcements are released from different nations. Significant resources is expended on managing specific proposals. By night, Russian leadership forcefully demonstrates the world that, for them, military action persists as the key method for achieving "settlement".
Nighttime Reality
As military strikes developed into the early hours of Tuesday, the present situation of Ukraine's defenselessness was exposed. Ukraine is able to track missile launches from across the border, a capacity provided through up-to-date information. From vantage locations, defense planes that had been deployed to intercept incoming guided weapons flew past – sophisticated military planes provided to Ukraine by NATO members.
Moments later, Kyiv's missile defense engaged: several firings fired to intercept a hostile projectile. This was a advanced protection mechanism at work, most likely provided by Western nations. Every firing creates sudden vibrations, rattling buildings. The moment of terror quickly becomes grim resignation: maybe the incoming missile won't cause damage this time, sparing the city from devastation and additional electricity failures.
Ongoing Risks
Soon after, a heavy machine gun engaged a drone in the vicinity, part of a mobile-fire group – most likely allied-provided weaponry. Regrettably, the shots failed to hit the hostile drone – it maintained course toward its target.
Periodically, this carried on until dawn. Kyiv awoke to the morning news: seven people killed, devastation and heating outages in many homes as a result of the evening attack. As customarily, everyone still maintained normal activities – enduring hostilities. But those entire period illustrated Ukraine's vital need on Western support – a reliance that neighboring countries are clearly incapable to substitute in the immediate future.
Unsuccessful Negotiations
The detailed framework from Washington generated strong feelings, controversy and serious worry – and temporarily diverted attention from Ukraine's largest corruption scandal in years. Yet, we have witnessed similar scenarios, after earlier high-level meetings and multilateral gatherings.
Every new initiative from US leadership follows the consistent cycle: a negotiation push against Ukraine, which Kyiv, with other European capitals, succeeds in resisting. They stabilise the situation but never actually secure success. This pattern will, certainly, persist.
Political Considerations
It is tempting to accuse certain parties of persistently promoting Moscow's conditions. But that does not seem to be the entire situation. American leadership operates on a principle well known to seasoned negotiators: you cannot secure via talks what you have been unable to protect through force. The American government assumes that it is unfeasible to force Russia to surrender the territory that it currently occupies in Ukraine's south or east.
The issue is that while acknowledging this situation, Washington does minimal to prevent Kremlin actions, through statements or actions, from assuming that the status quo will not change more in its favour in the months ahead.
Opposing Positions
Therefore, Russian leadership is convinced that duration works to their advantage – that Ukraine and its allies are coming close to fatigue. Their incentive to accept conditions that does not give them the maximum possible gain is close to zero. There may be numerous efforts to achieve ceasefire, but they will carry on as long as Russia's leadership remains highly assured in the outcome.
On the contrary, Ukrainian leadership believes that Ukraine can still persist, gradually sacrificing lives and land but preventing a complete military breakdown until conditions improve in its advantage.
Existing Situation
Realistically, there are no genuine requirements for a ceasefire. Now, personal considerations are becoming relevant: personal goals to mediate resolution and obtain worldwide acknowledgment, and the government's twin challenges – on one hand, not to estrange crucial supporters, and on the other, to rally Ukrainians around the flag against any initiative Kyiv finds unacceptable, so that their focus does not switch to homefront challenges. And although their mission will now be considerably more difficult after current events, it remains quite doubtful that this will alter their fundamental strategy.
These two forces are guiding negotiations.
Assessment and Future
It took a only one week to terminate the 28 points of the current initiative. Forceful and unpredictable management of the matter by US administration, opposition by Ukraine and the rest of Europe, along with soothing efforts of representatives, and finally, recent disclosures, all achieved their purpose.
While new plans based on previous concepts are imminent, Kyiv, London and other Western governments should reach an essential realization: Ukraine and Europe will only be able to resist political attacks from Washington that are based on Russian demands and show specific hesitation to change the course of events, if they remain united and strengthen their defence capabilities at a considerably quicker tempo. If they do, neither political nor armed coercion will be able to defeat them. In the meantime, Ukraine's ability to defend against evening bombardments will, for the coming months, primarily depend on ongoing international assistance.
