Three peace scenarios for Ukraine. Battle for Crimea will decide fate of war

Now there is no doubt that details are important. That the name of the street is more important than whether it is lit and asphalted. That there is a difference near which monument you wait for the girl you are in love with. Waiting for her at the monument to the Chekists is no longer a good idea.

And now, at the peak of the war, we have to find the answer, which victory will suit us. What scenario of the future will allow us to exhale and change our boots for festive shoes. When, like the Cossack Mamai from the famous painting, there will be time for a short rest and thinking about the heroic battles of the present time.

On the occasion of Zelenskyy's visit to the US, The Washington Post published an article about the fact that the US has three models of what a negotiated end to the war could look like, and each of which has supporters in the administration of US President Joe Biden.

The first scenario is part of the peace plan proposed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It envisages that Russia withdraws from the entire territory of Ukraine that it occupied, including Crimea, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. That is, a return to the borders of 1991.

The second one is the Russian troops' withdrawal to the frontline of 2014. That is, what are called "February 24" borders.

The third scenario is the Russian troops' withdrawal from the territory of Donbas, but not Crimea. Options regarding Crimea are regularly advanced to the West by the father of the current "shuttle diplomacy", the famous American diplomat and a bit of a Russophile, Henry Kissinger. He proposes to leave Crimea to Russia, and if the Russian Federation is against it, a referendum can always be organized. I just wonder who will choose Ukraine with Russian weapons near their temples. It is worth giving credit to Zelenskyy — at all meetings in the US, he made it clear that he does not support the second and third scenarios. And he clearly insisted that peace can come only when the Russian occupiers retreat from the entire occupied territory. This was an important message to the entire Western world regarding the red lines for Ukraine. It was a clear hint that weapons are important and their supply must be uninterrupted.

Putin also announced his plan for 2023 - it is the defense of the corridor to Crimea, in fact, the recruitment of the personnel army and the struggle for superiority in the air. No matter who says that the Russian army is full of worthless mobilized soldiers  - they draw conclusions from the defeats in Ukraine and aim to bet on saturation with drones. Russia clearly understood the inevitability of its defeat, but it really needs to keep Crimea for itself, to connect it by land with Donbas. And only this option number two can justify hundreds of thousands of soldiers in body bags.

Shoigu and Putin announced the deployment of 20 new divisions of ground forces to maintain the Crimean corridor and for the war against Ukraine.

“To form three motorized rifle divisions, including as part of combined arms formations in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as an army corps in Karelia;

Reorganize seven motorized rifle brigades into motorized rifle divisions;

Additionally, form two airborne assault divisions;

Form five artillery divisions of military districts, as well as artillery brigades of high power; on the basis of the existing brigades of the marine infantry, five divisions of the marine infantry will be formed.” All this is an announcement that the fate of the current war will be decided in the Tokmak-Melitopol-Berdiansk triangle. And this is the challenge that, judging by the interviews of Zaluzhnyi and Syrskyi, Ukraine understands very well. And proves it to NATO partners.

“In order to reach the borders of Crimea today, we need to overcome the distance of 84 km to Melitopol. By the way, this is enough for us, because Melitopol would give us full fire control over the land corridor, because from Melitopol we can already fire at the Crimean Isthmus, with the same HIMARS and so on,” Zaluzhnyi explained in an interview with The Economist. 

Our next year will decide who will win the battle for the south. And in the end, in the future — for Crimea.

In the meantime, our diplomacy and all of us who know how to convey an opinion need to knock on doors and windows and break stereotypes.

For many, after Zelenskyy's high-quality visit to Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron's statement that it is not time for Ukraine to join NATO in order not to strain Russia became a cold shower. The statement is fantastically ugly.  But here it is necessary to understand its roots.

Macron has set his sights on the leadership in the European Union after frantic political showdowns and spying scandals in Germany.  The French president very clearly feels that more and more European countries are seeing the experience of Ukraine and are resolutely applying for American weapons. And here Macron decided to "grab his piece of the pie" and offer the services of his market to the military-industrial complex. Cynically? Yes. But this is the pragmatism of a G7 country and a nuclear power.

The battle for a place under the sun is not only decided for Ukraine. Our neighbors, friends and enemies are also thinking about how to use the Ukrainian issue for their own purposes.  But we learned the lesson - nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. And we will also join NATO. Because multi-vectorism and anti-Americanism were too hard for us.

This was understood by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who used to be difficult to call an ardent supporter of Anglo-Saxon political culture. But the fact that he finally chose the path of peace in the borders of 1991, without looking into Putin’s eyes, without hopes for peace in exchange for concessions to the Russians, is a useful evolution. In the same way, millions of Ukrainians realized for the first time that Ukraine is not only dots on the globe. This is your safety and a reliable guarantee that you will wake up in the morning from an alarm clock, and not from another missile attack.  Because one crazy old man really wants to bring back his youth and the "Cold War" in the style of the seventies.

Author: Maryna Danyliuk-Yarmolaeva