Truce or trap? Ukraine makes sure peace talks go nowhere

Any progress towards a settlement will be incremental, slow and painful

Jun 2, 2025 By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

On Sunday, in the Russian regions of Bryansk and Kursk, both bordering Ukraine, bridges collapsed on and under trains, killing seven and injuring dozens of civilians. These, however, were no accidents and no extraordinary force of nature was involved either. Instead, it is certain that these catastrophes were acts of sabotage, which is also how Russian authorities are classifying them. Since it is virtually certain that the perpetrators acted on behalf of Kiev, Western media have hardly reported these attacks. Moscow meanwhile rightly considers these attacks terrorism.

On the same day, Ukraine also carried out a wave of drone attacks on important Russian military airfields. That story, trumpeted as a great success by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service, has been touted in the West. The usual diehard Western bellicists, long starved of good news, have pounced on Ukraine’s probably exaggerated account of these assaults to fantasize once more about how Ukraine has “genius,” while Russia is “vulnerable” and really almost defeated. Despair makes imaginative. In the wrong way.

The reality of Ukraine’s drone strikes on the airfields is not entirely clear yet. What is certain is that Ukraine targeted locations in five regions, including in northern and central Russia as well as Siberia and the Far East. Kiev’s drone swarms were launched not from Ukraine but from inside Russia, using subterfuge and civilian trucks. Under International Humanitarian War (aka the Law of Armed Conflict), this is likely to constitute not a legitimate “ruse of war” but the war crime of perfidy, a rather obvious point somehow never mentioned in Western commentary.

Yet at least, in this instance the targets were military: This was either an act of special-ops sabotage involving a war crime (the most generous possible reading) or plain terrorism or both, depending on your point of view. Three of the attacked airbases, it seems, successfully fended off the Ukrainian first-person-view kamikaze drones. In two locations, enough drones got through to cause what appears to be substantial damage.

Ukrainian officials and, therefore, Western mainstream media claim that more than 40 Russian aircraft were destroyed, including large strategic bombers and an early-warning-and-control aircraft. Official Russian sources have admitted losses but not detailed them. Russian military bloggers, often well-informed, have quoted much lower figures (“in the single digits,” thirteen), while noting that even they still constitute a “tragic loss,” especially as Russia does not make these types of aircraft anymore.

In financial terms, Ukrainian officials claim that they have inflicted the equivalent of “at least 2 billion” dollars in damage. Even if it should turn out that they have been less effective than that, there can be little doubt that, on this occasion, Kiev has achieved a lot of bang for the buck: even if “Operation Spiderweb” took a long time to prepare and involved various resources, including a warehouse, trucks, and the cheap drones themselves, it is certain that Kiev’s expenses must have been much less than Moscow’s losses.

In political terms, Russia’s vibrant social media-based sphere of military-political commentators has revealed a sense of appalled shock and anger, and not only at Kiev but also at Russian officials and officers accused of still not taking seriously the threat of Ukrainian strikes even deep inside Russia. One important Telegram “mil-blogger” let his readers know that he would welcome dismissals among the air force command. But he also felt that the weak spots exploited by Kiev’s sneak drone attack have systemic reasons. Another very popular mil-blogger has written of “criminal negligence.”    

Whatever the eventual Russian political fall-out of these Ukrainian attacks, beware Western commentators’ incorrigible tendency to overestimate it. German newspaper Welt, for instance, is hyperventilating about the attack’s “monumental significance.” In reality, with all the frustration inside Russia, this incident will not shake the government or even dent its ability to wage the war.

Probably, its real net effect will be to support the mobilization of Russia. Remember that Wagner revolt that saw exactly the same Western commentators predicting the imminent implosion not merely of the Russian government but the whole country? You don’t? Exactly.

In the case of the terrorist attacks on civilian trains, the consequences are even easier to predict. They will definitely only harden Moscow’s resolve and that of almost all Russians, elite and “ordinary.” With both types of attacks, on the military airfields and on the civilian trains, the same puzzling question arises: What is Kiev even trying to do here?

At this point, we can only speculate. My guess: Kiev’s rather desperate regime was after four things:

First, a propaganda success for domestic consumption. Given that Zelensky’s Ukraine is a de facto authoritarian state with obedient media, this may actually work, for a moment. Until, that is, the tragedy of mobilization, all too often forced, for a losing proxy war on behalf of a fairly demented West, sinks in again, that is, in a day or so.

Second, with its combination of atrocities against civilians and an assault on Russia’s nuclear defenses, this was Kiev’s umpteenth attempt to provoke Russia into a response so harsh that it would escalate the war to a direct clash between NATO (now probably minus the US) and Russia. This is a Ukrainian tactic as old as this war, if not older. Call it the attack’s routine aspect. Equally routinely, that plan went nowhere. 

Then there was the attempt to torpedo the second round of the revived Istanbul talks, scheduled for Monday, 2 June, by provoking Russia to cancel or launch such a rapid and fierce retaliation strike that Kiev could have used it as a pretext to do the same. That is, as it were, the tactical dimension, and it also failed.

While the above is devious, it is also run-of-the-mill. States will be states, sigh. The fourth likely purpose of Kiev’s wave of sabotage and terror strikes – the strategic aspect, as it were – however, is much more disturbing: The Zelensky regime – and at least some of its Western backers (my guess: Britain in the lead) – are signaling that they are ready to wage a prolonged campaign of escalating terrorist attacks inside Russia, even if the fighting in Ukraine should end. Think of the Chechen Wars, but much worse again. This, too, would not succeed. One lesson of the Chechen Wars is precisely that Moscow has made up its mind not to bend to terrorism but instead eliminate its source, whatever the cost.

Regarding those Istanbul talks, they have taken place. Ukraine was not able to make Russia abandon them. Otherwise, the results of this second round of the second attempt at peace in Istanbul seem to have been very modest, as many observers predicted. Kiev, while losing, did its usual grimly comedic thing and offered Moscow a chance to surrender. Moscow handed over its terms in turn; and they have not changed and reflect that it is winning the war. Kiev has promised to study them.

Given that the gap between Ukrainian delusions and Russian demands seems unbridgeable at this point, even a large-scale ceasefire is out of reach. And that may be, after all, what both the Zelensky regime and its European backers want. As to Moscow, it has long made clear that it will fight until it reaches its war aims. In that sense, the new talks confirmed what the attacks had signaled already: peace is not in sight.

Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky did, however, offer smaller, local ceasefires of “two to three days” that, he explained, would serve to retrieve the bodies of the fallen for decent burial. In the same spirit, Russia has committed to hand over 6,000 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers and officers.

There was something for the living as well: more prisoner exchanges, for those severely ill or injured as well as for the young, have been agreed. Figures are not clear yet, but the fact that they will take place on an “all-for-all” basis reflects a Russian gesture of good will.

Finally, Medinsky also revealed that the Ukrainian side handed over a list of 339 children that Russia has evacuated from the war zone. He promised that, as in previous cases, Russian officials will trace them and do their best to return the children to Ukraine. Medinsky pointed out that the number of children on Kiev’s list massively contradicts Ukrainian and Western stories – as well as lawfare – about an immense, “genocidal” Russian kidnapping operation.

In that sense, the talks at least helped to deflate an old piece of Western information war. Perhaps that is all that is possible for now: truly incremental humanitarian progress and a very gradual, very slow working toward a more reasonable manner of talking to each other. Better than nothing. But that’s a low bar, admittedly. 

June 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

A peace deal in Istanbul won’t happen until NATO is off the table

Failure and being seen to fail on NATO will deliver a huge political blow to western leaders who will keep kicking the peace can down the road

Ian Proud, Jun 03, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/a-peace-deal-in-istanbul-wont-happen?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=165018630&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Russia will not end the war until, at the very least, Ukraine revokes its commitment to join NATO. If and when that happens, European leaders will have to confront their failure, justify it to their voters and explain why they prolonged the war for so long.

The next round of Istanbul peace talks commenced today, with UK media playing down the chances of a breakthrough. Helpful signs emerged of another prisoner exchange. Ukraine will consider Russia’s draft memorandum. There is a more clearly stated intent to continue talks towards a possible future meeting of leaders.

In a war that has long passed the one million mark in numbers of people killed or injured across both sides, no one will emerge from this process completely victorious when the fighting ends if, indeed, it ends this year.

But for President Zelensky and for western leaders, particularly in Europe, it is not victory but rather the fear of failure that presents the biggest stumbling block to a quick peace deal. Lacking sufficient financial and military support from western sponsors, and under pressure from the Trump administration to settle, Ukraine may at some point be forced to revoke its aspiration to join NATO.

NATO is by far the most stubborn ‘root cause’ that Russia is looking to address through negotiations, although the list of issues including on minority language rights, the division and status of territory, and Ukrainian children (raised today in Istanbul) is very long.

And NATO membership for Ukraine is an issue that President Trump and US officials including defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, negotiator Steve Witkoff and Ukraine Envoy Keith Kellogg have all acknowledged as unrealistic.

Undaunted, Zelensky, European leaders and the NATO secretary general still cling to an ever more tenuous line that the path to Ukrainian membership is irreversible.

That is untenable.

Russia has the military and economic means to continue the attritional fight, at a time when its slow but steady rate of progress in the Donbas is accelerating into the summer. There is not a scrap of evidence that Ukraine can recover its position, nor financial or military rabbits that increasingly cash and vote strapped European politicians can pull out of the hat.

Ukraine cannot win the war. It is cynical and self-serving for the hordes of mainstream politicos and pundits to suggest otherwise.

Ukraine will eventually have no choice but to let go of its demand for NATO membership. That will take Ukraine back to March to April 2022, when its negotiators agreed to the inclusion of a clause on neutrality in the draft Istanbul 1 peace treaty, that was derailed by Boris Johnson.

The key substantive difference between Istanbul 1 and a possible Istanbul 2 treaty, will be that Ukraine has since lost hundreds of thousands of troops to death or injury and is a matter of months from losing the whole of the Donbas.

After the first, brief, set of peace talks in Istanbul on 16 May, President Zelensky was quick to assert that there could be no return to the Istanbul 1 draft as a starting point for talks.

But I am afraid that the neutrality issue is not going away.

Ukraine is not going to join NATO.

Not joining NATO is the stinging nettle that Zelensky will sooner or later have to grip. And having clung so long to the NATO aspiration and sent so many Ukrainian troops to their deaths, the political ramifications will be searing

It is therefore this fear of failing and being seen to fail that is acting as the biggest stumbling block to a peace deal, as talks resumed today. That fear of failure is shared by Ukraine’s European sponsors.

Going back to the start of the war, then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that ‘Putin must fail and must be seen to fail.’

Unfortunately for Johnson, when Ukraine is forced to give up its NATO aspiration, he will have failed and be seen to have failed.

Despite its enormous losses of men and materiel, Russia will have seen off the world’s biggest military bloc. The very idea of this is politically terrifying to the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Keir Starmer who spent their time in office telling us that victory over Russia would be a doddle.

The UK mainstream media still clings to the victory narrative like a comfort blanket. Even today, the UK state-owned broadcaster, the BBC, reasserted the line that Putin failed in his bid to overrun Kyiv at the start of the war, remove Zelensky, and install a puppet government. And that is a legitimate claim to make.

But this war has never really been about the violent overthrow of a neighbouring Head of State. It is now and has been since 2022 an existential struggle to prevent further NATO expansion up to Russia’s border.

Western pundits argue endlessly that Russia has no right of veto over NATO. But when it boils down to it, governments decide the core strategic interests of their countries, not foreign pundits. NATO and its members should never have forced the issue of membership for Ukraine unless they were willing to fight Russia over it.

And NATO has never been willing to fight Russia for Ukraine’s right to choose.

The warning signs were there at President Putin’s 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech, during Russia’s brief war with Georgia in 2008 and following the overthrow of Ukrainian President Yanukovych in February 2014.

Through endless sanctions and efforts to impose international isolation, Russia’s position on NATO has never changed and will never change.

British and western media continue to promote a host of questionable assertions to keep hopes up that Russia really is losing and has been losing from the start. Russia’s imminent economic collapse, a likely coup d’etat made more real by Prigozhin’s rebellion, overwhelming battlefield losses of the Russian army, compared to the Ukrainian (even though there is a large body of analysis suggesting the picture is the complete opposite). And that just a few more billion dollars should be enough to finish the job.

The western propaganda path to victory has been gaslit like a badly cobbled Victorian street.

Putin must fail and must be seen to have failed.

Yet, when a peace treaty is finally agreed between Russia and Ukraine, it will become clear that western leaders failed. And they will be seen by their voters to have failed, with potentially disastrous domestic political consequences for traditional parties all across a Europe in economic and cultural decline.

Moreover, Europe will have to swallow the bitter pill of being pressured by Trump to accelerate Ukraine’s membership of the EU at a financial cost to ordinary European citizens far greater than the war itself. Little wonder then that indulging Zelensky and maintaining a slowly losing war has cynically been an easier choice for many, rather than striking for peace.

So don’t hold your breath for a quick peace deal out of Istanbul. The queue of European politicians lining up to kick the failure can down the road, from Von der Leyen, Rutte, Merz, Macron, Stubb, Starmer and the whole lot of them, is very long indeed.

June 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment