- Turkey has positioned itself with great care to be the go-between with Russia and Ukraine – and this seems to be paying off.
- And there is something called de-Nazification.
- If the fine details of any agreement aren’t sorted out with immense care, President Putin or his successors could always use them as an excuse to invade Ukraine again.
Turkey has carefully positioned itself as a go-between for Russia and Ukraine, and it appears to be paying off as reported by BBC News.
Russia’s precise demand
On Thursday afternoon, President Vladimir Putin rang the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and told him what Russia’s precise demands were for a peace deal with Ukraine.
Mr Kalin was part of the small group of officials who had listened in on the call.
The Russian demands fall into two categories.
The first four demands are, according to Mr Kalin, not too difficult for Ukraine to meet.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has already conceded this.
Disarmament process
Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it wasn’t a threat to Russia.
There would have to be protection for the Russian language in Ukraine.
And there is something called de-Nazification.
Perhaps it will be enough for Ukraine to condemn all forms of neo-Nazism and promise to clamp down on them.
The second category is where the difficulty will lie, and in his phone call, Mr Putin said that it would need face-to-face negotiations between him and President Zelensky before an agreement could be reached on these points.
Illegal annexation
The other assumption is that Russia will demand that Ukraine should formally accept that Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, does indeed now belong to Russia.
If this is the case, it will be a bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow.
For Ukraine, though, there are going to be serious anxieties.
If the fine details of any agreement aren’t sorted out with immense care, President Putin or his successors could always use them as an excuse to invade Ukraine again.
A peace deal could take a long time to sort out, even if a ceasefire stops the bloodshed in the meantime.
Rehousing refugees
Ukraine has suffered appallingly over the past few weeks, and rebuilding the towns and cities which Russia has damaged and destroyed will take a long time.
So will rehousing the millions of refugees who have fled their homes.
There have been suggestions that he is ill, or possibly even mentally unbalanced.
Did Mr Kalin detect anything strange about him in the phone call?
Mr Putin had apparently been clear and concise in everything he said.
More and more people will realise that he overreached himself badly, and stories of the soldiers who have been killed or captured are already spreading fast.
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Source: BBC News
