Where could Vladimir Putin and Volodymy Zlensky meet, if diplomacy were a branch of mathematics? Of course it is not, but allow me this academic digression. Well, given that the proportion has already been established: Putin is at Alaska as Alaska is in Trump, it would be natural to ask which place in the world would be the medium proportional between Putin and Zelensky. In my opinion, Crimea, which gives us the opportunity to talk about territories and in particular of Crimea.
The choice of Alaska was, if not motivated, at least concomitant to the following circumstances. He is on the border between the two countries involved in the meeting: he is in that of Trump and Putin could get there almost on foot from his own. Alaska is the most Russian of the States of the American Union: indeed, a century and a half ago was sold by Russia to the USA; Which, as the first important deal between the two powers, evoked the prospect of more or less imminent business in the Arctic region, especially in relation to the enormous resources of oil and natural gas in that region, half of the coasts are Russian. Finally, but perhaps not least collateral benefit, sufficiently far from the querula Brussels, Alaska underlines the irrelevance of the EU in the negotiating process of this, very much desired, peace.
The embarrassing irrelevance of the old continent has proved to be all at the last meeting. Hopeful parties to somehow influence Donald Trump regarding the mysterious agreements taken with Putin, the European leaders not only returned with the poe in the bag, but they made a pathetic figure. To the insistence of the French one to want to send soldiers, Trump cut short, ensuring that he does not send any. At the litany of the “cessate-the-calendar” of the German leader, Trump cut even shorter remembering that he would already interrupted many wars without the need for any ceased-the-centers. As for the lady from Brussels, who tracked out of phantom Ukrainian children in Russia (probably orphans of the Donbass who, because of the war, were displaced in Russia – and where if not?), Trump treated it as a schoolgirl, saying it off the topic.
The meeting seemed one of those jokes that begin: “A Frenchman, a German, a Belgian and an Italian go to America …”. These jokes end up highlighting the Italian sagacity, and in fact the only one who made a great impression for the balance of words was our Giorgia Meloni. His proposal-because it is his and is of many months ago-evocative of article 5 of the Atlantic Pact, seems the only reasonable, in the sense of acceptable by Moscow: it being understood that Ukraine must remain neutral (that is, outside the NATO) and de-military, nothing would host that some willing countries take the commitment to assist it in the event of renewed Russian aggression.
In addition to the failed cessable-cybocus, the negotiation has failed also because the question of the territories has not been appointed. You can ask why the core of the same was ignored. I would say why the territories are not negotiable: Putin requires control of the entire Donbass and the occupied territories of the other two regions. Indeed, he would have proposed it recently: I stop here, says Putin, if Kiev retires from the front line and also from that 10% of the Donbass who still does not control. Zelensky’s response who does not intend to make any gift to the invader implies that there will be no ceased-the-croissant and that if Moscow wants the whole Donbass he must take it with the strength. Amen.
What about Crimea? “Mathematically” speaking could be the alaska analogue. Not, like Alaska, sold by Russia, but by this donated. In addition, a meeting would be a meeting in Ukraine in Zelensky’s head; And it would be a meeting in Russia in Putin’s head. In short, nobody should mumble, since everyone would feel at home.
But who is the Crimea? The agreements will give the final response, but at the moment it should be remembered some things. It is true that for centuries there has always been the desire by a substantial Ukrainian ethnicity to be in an independent state, but the desire became reality only in 1917, when the Popular Republic formed was formed: about 20 million souls in a territory that is no longer large in Switzerland in the heart of the current Ukrainian. After just 4 years, the popular Republic became socialist republic, and at the same moment when he adhered to the USSR, Lenin assigned many Russian territories (including those of Donbass) until he became very similar to Ukraine known by us. In short, today’s Ukrainian is – in fact – a state created by Lenin in 1922. With an administrative reorganization inside the USSR, in 1954 the jurisdiction on the Crimea passed from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukrainian. Vladimir Putin said that passage was illegitimate, but you are wrong: if you read the acts of the parliaments of Moscow, Kiev and the supreme Soviet, the transfer was legitimate.
Then, with the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine was the only republic to get out of it with much wider territories than those with which it had entered it. In any case, in 1991 the Parliament of Moscow recognized the thing. So much so that for the Russian base of Sebastopol, Moscow paid a rent to Kiev of $ 100 million a year. This is another parallel with Alaska: like this business object between Russia and the USA, Crimea was the subject of business between Russia and Ukraine.
We know the rest: coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 with the advent of Russian governments, referendum in Crimea with separation from Kiev and adhesion to the Russian Federation. A sequence of misunderstandings with a single true irremediable victim: ordinary people of Ukraine.
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