Motive isn’t justification, you’re smart enough to not conflate the concepts.
Explaining Hitler’s motive for invading Russia isn’t ‘justifying’ Hitler’s motive. It isn’t giving Hitler an ‘excuse’.
Merkel explains why NATO expansion will trigger war, she doesn’t justify it. How can you not see the difference?
On March 29, the talks achieved a breakthrough.
“The treaty envisioned in the communiqué would proclaim Ukraine as a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil. The communiqué listed as possible guarantors the permanent members of the UN Security Council (including Russia) along with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Turkey.”
The communiqué also said that if Ukraine came under attack and requested assistance, all guarantor states would be obliged, following consultations with Ukraine and among themselves, to provide assistance to Ukraine to restore its security.
“Remarkably, these obligations were spelled out with much greater precision than Nato’s Article 5: imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force,” the authors said, citing the text of the communiqué.
The question of Ukraine’ membership of the EU was left open, but Russia had no objection to its accession in principle.
The communiqué also included another “stunning” concession: it called for the two sides to seek to “peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea” next ten to 15 years. Russia has refused point blank to talk about the status of Crimea since it was annexed in 2014.
The tricky question is why Putin would agree to this deal, given he has the upper hand in the war on paper with hundreds of thousands of troops on-the-ground fighting an under-armed and under-supplied Ukraine.
“We can only conjecture as to why. Putin’s blitzkrieg had failed; that was clear by early March. Perhaps he was now willing to cut his losses if he got his longest-standing demand: that Ukraine renounce its Nato aspirations and never host Nato forces on its territory. If he could not control the entire country, at least he could ensure his most basic security interests, stem the haemorrhaging of Russia’s economy, and restore the country’s international reputation,” the authors wrote.
Instead Boris Johnson convinced Zelensky to fight on.
We’ll have to compare the eventual agreement with what was rejected in April to see what has been gained/lost by continuing the fight.
