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Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

The most interesting aspect to this project, to me, is that if you try as hard as you can to come up with something, I am almost certain that there's no way an agreement can be even remotely reached given the known positions of Ukraine and Russia... I would be incredibly happy if someone actually proposed something that could be acceptable to both parties... failing to do so is like admitting that war was the only way (not saying was is justified, just that given the known positions of both parties, that if one of them was willing to sacrifice themselves by entering a war with the other party - and we knew Russia was willing - and even then, no agreement could be reached, that we couldn't have expected any other outcome).

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your post is predicated on the view that it is just a conflict between positions of 2 countries, like say where to put the border. While theoretically "conflict of positions" description is true, the situation here is really different. The position of Ukraine which is its existence and existence of its people is in conflict with the Russian position of "non-existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians" (a bit more on that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30540609 ). In such situations there is no midway "half-existence". The peace agreement possible here is only like the one in 1945 with Nuremberg 2 for Putin and his clique. As Zelensky has said 20 minutes ago on Ukranian TV "Russians need to start learning the words 'reparations' and 'contributions'".

Lets give it a crack:

1. Immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian forces

2. Russia acknowledges criminal nature of the aggression and gives up the war criminals - Putin, his generals, top political leaders and oligarchs who approved and participated.

3. Russia compensates all the damage to Ukraine.

4. Russia returns Crimea and Donbass (with grace period for the people to relocate who want to stay in Russia and/or Ukraine agrees for Russian language to be a second official language there and some extended autonomy for those regions, may be gradually expiring in say 50-100 years, may be some UN force presence for the next 10-20 years)

5. Russia gives up nuclear weapons and agrees to the limits on military power so it would be suitable and sufficient only for pure defense.

6. Probably some changes to Russian Constitution like hard term limit for President, electability of regional powers, freedom of speech, judicial independence and other measures to make sure that a fascist regime like the current Putin's regime has no chances to arise again.

I find your answer emblematic of why the war has started and will probably only end after very bad losses for both sides (Ukraine specially, as the theater of war).

You speak as if Ukraine alone had demands to make, despite the fact that its territory is currently occupied and whatever leverage it had before the conflict started, it has lost already.

The only way to stop a conflict peacefully while your country is occupied is to make concessions. I understand you might think Ukraine must not make any concessions at all because Russia is on the wrong here... I agree Russia is bad and a bully in this story... but that doesn't matter if the objective is to stop the war. The objective, right now, is not to make justice, that's beyond anyone's reach by a long margin... it's to avoid further loss of life and Ukrainian infrastructure (which if destroyed, will take a full generation to be re-built, and will be paid for by several future generations).

Russia is somewhat weakened by the Western World's sanctions, but Ukraine is on its knees right now and quite frankly on its last few breaths as an independent nation, despite everyone rooting for them (there wouldn't be 60km of Russian tanks just outside Kyiv otherwise, with the other largest cities except Odessa already surrounded by the Russian army, and already badly damaged).

When a bully has a knife to your throat you don't get to make demands, unfortunately.

I am not sure bravery is something to be admired when you know that the cost of your bravery is your country being completely destroyed and whatever you were fithting for simply being bombed out of existence. Ukrainians will live on, and the less destruction there is now, the better equipped they will be to react appropriately when the time comes, but the time just isn't now.

your comment sounds like Ukrainians have a choice here, and that means you don't understand the nature of genocidal conflict. I grew up in USSR where the history of WWII is everywhere. Hitler declared destruction of all Jews and 90% of Slavic. So in December 1941 with Hitler 30km from Moscow your comment would sound the same and would be totally wrong the same way. There wasn't a way to make peace agreement back then and stop the bloodshed. The same way today - there is just no way for Ukrainians to make peace agreement with Putin and stop the bloodshed. It isn't about justice, it is about existence. The only way for Ukrainians to continue to exist is to fight and win that war, and this is what they do.

>Ukrainians will live on, and the less destruction there is now, the better equipped they will be to react appropriately when the time comes, but the time just isn't now.

That was the logic of 2014, and it was right, it worked, it gave them time to unify and to build better army. Now though Putin is intended to finally solve the "Ukrainian question".

You are being extremely dramatic... whatever it is Putin wants, there has been zero evidence he's looking to eliminate the Ukrainian people (there has been civilian casualties, obviously, even if you're American with high precision bombs, they still are going to end up in the crossfire someetimes - but if anything, conflict experts have been surprised by the slow intensity of the attacks and small deployment of weapons by the Russians - which may hint at them just being careful to not spend too much power upfront rather than just trying to not hurt innocent people, nobody really knows - e.g. they've only used around 75 aircraft out of thousands that they have at their disposal)... you are maybe confusing his desire to deny Ukraine is a separate entity from Russia... at least as I understand it, he thinks of Ukrainians as the same people as Russians, not as inferiors and definitely not as Hitler thought of Jews, for fuck sake. He seems to take issue with Ukraine's existence as a separate country, not just simply with its pure existence! I don't know where you're getting your news, but if this war is looking like a genocide to you, I would suggest you try to look into more reliable news sources (I won't suggest any to avoid biasing you in any way, take your pick).

>he thinks of Ukrainians as the same people as Russians, not as inferiors and definitely not as Hitler thought of Jews, for fuck sake.

definitely you aren't from Russian nor Ukrainian culture, and thus can't really "appreciate" the 2 last speeches of Putin where he took whatever gloves were still on. His approach here is more like Hitler's to Slavic than Jews - ie. some share of population will still be allowed biological existence while stripped of cultural identity and denied any self-governance.

>He seems to take issue with Ukraine's existence as a separate country, not just simply with its pure existence!

he denies existence of Ukrainians as a separate ethnicity, in his proclaimed view Ukrainians are just a version of Russians not capable of governing themselves, etc. while you can see his deep hate to the Ukrainians.

>they've only used around 75 aircraft out of thousands that they have at their disposal

thousands? you're really no aware what is going on. Russia has pretty small number of actually flying combat ready aircraft, and those 75 is all what they could use without leaving the rest of the country completely naked.

>whatever it is Putin wants, there has been zero evidence he's looking to eliminate the Ukrainian people

you can't listen to his speeches, so you are trying to get the best interpretation possible. Unfortunately Putin isn't going for such an interpretation. In a few days there have already been 1M people who left Ukraine, and will be many more. The resisting will die - he was clear about that, you can find the transcript. And whoever left in depopulated country will be converted to "Russian", and there will be no more Ukrainians there.

Forcing people out, and killing or converting the rest, all that on the base of ethnicity - that is textbook ethnical cleansing and genocide.

> definitely you aren't from Russian nor Ukrainian culture

Listen, I have Ukrainian/Belarussian family, pls address my arguments and avoid personal attacks like that.

> he denies existence of Ukrainians as a separate ethnicity, in his proclaimed view Ukrainians are just a version of Russians not capable of governing themselves

That's like saying the USA denies the existence of Texas because it sees Texans as Americans (noticing that Texas was annexed from Mexico not a very long time ago, in case you don't know it). It's ridiculous. I don't agree that Ukraine should be annexed by Russia, that's not what I am saying - what I am saying is that Putin appears to consider Ukrainians as Russians and that's why he wants to, if not annex Ukraine, keep it under Russian's sphere of influence.

> thousands? you're really no aware what is going on.

Yes, according to all data I've seen, e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/europe/russia-ukraine-mil...

Maybe you have "insider" information we don't?!

> The resisting will die - he was clear about that

What do you expect in a war? The resisting to be assisted?!? Does that make any sense to you?

> Forcing people out, and killing or converting the rest, all that on the base of ethnicity - that is textbook ethnical cleansing and genocide.

It sucks people have to flee to be safe, but this is not happening for the reasons you think it is. It's happening because Ukraine has only one choice on a fight with Russia: to use urban warfare (people have been calling it protracted war) because in open combat, the Ukrainian military would've been destroyed much more easily - which means that they know their only defense is to mix with civilians and they know well what's going to happen. Do you deny the Ukrainian military is hiding in the cities, which is why Russia is attacking the cities? Or you believe that even if Ukrainian forces came out on the field and stayed out of cities, Ukrainian cities would still be bombarded anyway? If you could prove the latter, I would believe you that there's some evil ethnical genocide going on, but fortunately, the only cities being attacked so far appear to be the cities where Ukrainian military is intentionally bringing the fighting to (I am sure they don't like to do that either, but they made a choice and will have to live with that choice).

>Listen, I have Ukrainian/Belarussian family, pls address my arguments and avoid personal attacks like that.

it wasn't a personal attack. It is just a statement of an obvious and important fact wrt. your obviously low level of awareness. And i was right - you have family from that context yet you aren't from that context yourself.

>Yes, according to all data I've seen, e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/25/europe/russia-ukraine-mil...

>Maybe you have "insider" information we don't?!

it is well known to everybody - 1300 total aircraft out of which only half at best is capable of flying, usually even less than that. So taking 75 to Ukraine already really hits Russian defense capability elsewhere.

>It sucks people have to flee to be safe, but this is not happening for the reasons you think it is. It's happening because Ukraine has only one choice on a fight with Russia: to use urban warfare (people have been calling it protracted war)

it is a very low morale propaganda statement of victim blaming, right from German Nazi playbook.

>because in open combat, the Ukrainian military would've been destroyed much more easily

The frontal combat like in Hostomel airport shows that Ukrainian military is fully capable of strong wins over Russian forces in key strategic battles.

> which means that they know their only defense is to mix with civilians and they know well what's going to happen.

you're using the main point of Russian propaganda - "human shield", "nazis hiding behind regular people". And that is lie. And extremely disgusting morale position - "You're making me to kill your civilians". Again German Nazi come to mind as they practiced that a lot.

I hope you just aren't aware, and not spreading those lies intentionally. You can see the videos on YouTube and Telegram - one of the main tactic by Ukrainian forces right now is to attack the convoys. It is obvious tactic at that stage. If Ukrainian forces were hiding behind civilians the Russian propaganda would have a lot of videos for that. They don't.

>Do you deny the Ukrainian military is hiding in the cities, which is why Russia is attacking the cities?

I definitely deny that. Russia is attacking the cities to take them. And Ukrainians, regular civil Ukrainians including, are fighting back throwing Molotovs and shooting RPG at Russian armor and hunting down Russian soldiers.

>Or you believe that even if Ukrainian forces came out on the field and stayed out of cities, Ukrainian cities would still be bombarded anyway?

this is what happening. Just watch those Harkiv bombing videos or any other Ukrainian city bombing.

>the only cities being attacked so far appear to be the cities where Ukrainian military is intentionally bringing the fighting to (I am sure they don't like to do that either, but they made a choice and will have to live with that choice).

that is clear Russian propaganda and blackmail - stop defending your cities or your people will die. "They made a choice" - how can you even write that, as that is again straight out of German Nazi playbook. Ukrainians definitely didn't bring the fight to Kiev, nor to any other of their cities. It were Russian airstrikes and tanks which brought the fight there.

Honestly, man, it is unbelievable that any reasonable man, like i'd suppose you're would bring in so much clear Russian propaganda which is right out of Nazi playbook.

If you make concessions in a circumstance like this, you just have the same problem again in a few years. If doing this gets Putin anything at all that he wants, it will keep happening. We know this because it already did, more than once, and because we've all seen it before many times. Every concession made strengthens Putin and reinforces his desire to keep trying this.

If Ukraine's goal is to exist, concessions of any kind at all to Putin make that harder. It's not "because Russia is wrong" that I don't think they should make concessions. It's because, if they make concessions, Russia will try again, because it worked.

Also, I think you're massively overestimating the strength of Russia's position here.

> If you make concessions in a circumstance like this, you just have the same problem again in a few years.

If everyone thought like that, no negotiation would ever result in agreement.

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