"Verdun in the Donbas. The future of Ukraine and Russia, of European security, and of US-Russian relations now all hang on a few small half-ruined towns in the northwestern part of Donetsk province. Indeed, given the continued risk of a radical escalation leading to actual conflict between NATO and Russia, the stakes may be higher even than that."
"How on earth did we get to this point? If during the Cold War you had said that European security depended on who controlled the northwestern Donbas, even the very greatest hawks would have called you a lunatic. At that time, let us remember, Soviet armies stood in the "Fulda Gap" in the middle of what is now a united Germany, barely a hundred miles from the French border. The Donbas is more than 1,200 miles east of Fulda."
"Key to an understanding of this grotesque situation is that since the end of the Cold War, two different issues have become horribly entangled, and to achieve a peace settlement requires disentangling them. On the one hand, there is the wider geopolitical issue: the way in which the expansion of NATO and the European Union expelled Russia from the European security order, leading to Russia's attempt to force its way back in again. On the other, the"
The fate of Ukraine, Russia, European security, and US–Russian relations hinges on a few small towns in northwestern Donetsk province. The Russian government demands that Ukraine withdraw from this territory as part of any peace settlement, and Russian domestic politics make that demand politically impossible to abandon. Ukrainian domestic politics make any Ukrainian withdrawal politically impossible as well. Most other issues could be resolved by direct negotiation and significant concessions on wider security questions, but control of these towns is non-negotiable for both sides. Since the end of the Cold War, geopolitical competition over NATO and the EU has become entangled with local territorial and national disputes, requiring disentanglement to achieve peace.
Read at The Nation
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