How to Negotiate with Russia -- Timothy Snyder

[erronis]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-negotiate-with-russia

Account for history, law, and above all Ukraine

Last night, Russia attacked Ukrainian civilians with more than five hundred drones, cruise missiles, and rockets. Most were shot down, but one rocket got through to Ternopil in western Ukraine, struck an apartment building, and killed at least twenty-five civilians, including three children. Across the country apartment buildings, shops, post offices, and power plants were in flames. This is is latest enormous war crime in Russia’s criminal war.

Meanwhile, we learn that Putin and Trump (or their emissaries) have been secretly consulting about a settlement to the war that Russia likes. Given the inherent traps of allowing an aggressor to decide the outcome of his war, I will try to take a step back and give a quick historically-informed sense of how negotiations might actually work. Here are ten basic principles.

In effective negotiations, concessions are not made in advance. No one yet knows what we are conceding (in the name of Ukrainians) in the present proposal, but in the past the Trump administration has floated enormous concessions: that Ukraine should not join NATO; that Russians should not be tried for war crimes; that Russia not pay war reparations. It is counterproductive and unjust to make concessions in advance in exchange for nothing — and especially to make them in the name of other people.

. . . (Addition 9 points)

In an earlier post, I went into some detail about the likely issues — in greater detail than here. In an earlier video, I discussed some of the underlying problems of negotiating with Russia. I am hoping that this essay will be clarifying amidst the present confusion.

This war can be brought to an end, but the basic logic remains what it always was: the Ukrainians have to be supported so that Russia no longer aspires to destroy their country. That is the foundation. Negotiations will work when that has been achieved.