Avoiding a Wider War in Europe: Managing Freedom’s Victory in Ukraine
The West’s challenge: Avoiding a wider war in Europe as the Kremlin grapples with the failure of its Ukraine invasion and the impacts on Russia of the economic embargo.
This document:
sets out the current strategic situation,
explains the core narratives guiding Kremlin decision-making,
projects Putin’s likely next moves — internal Russian FSB intelligence estimates project Putin will likely escalate the war by means of an attack on military targets on NATO territory, and
proposes a solution that secures Western gains and Ukraine’s freedom whilst avoiding a spiral into catastrophe.
In Part I, we describe the problem and its context — how Russia and the West got into this mess — and we assess the present danger.
In Part II, we explore emergency de-escalatory pathways for interrupting the spiral toward a catastrophic war in Europe whilst securing Ukraine’s core strategic goals of securing its freedom and its European orientation.
In Part III, we put forward, as a basis for discussion, a proposal for the key points of a possible peace settlement to end war in Ukraine and avoid a war in Europe, with specified commitments by Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union.
What is now needed is understanding and compromise, not maximalist posturing amid credible threats of a wider war in Europe.
PART I. UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
Strategic assessment, Ukraine & Allies vs. Russia conflict, late March 2022
Ukrainians, supported by the world’s democracies, are winning the war in defense of their homeland’s freedom imposed on them by the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. This is very good, but it is also very dangerous, because as Western intelligence assessments show, Mr. Putin now realizes that although his armies can destroy Ukrainian cities, Ukrainians will not submit. Russia’s armies will continue to be subject to relentless attrition, and they will not be able to achieve a successful occupation of Ukraine. Putin now fears his regime could collapse under the pressure of harsh Western economic sanctions and the humiliating failure of his invasion. These setbacks will increasingly undermine the legitimacy of his rule in the eyes of Russian organs of state — the army, intelligence agencies, banks and other economic institutions.
Faced with this disaster, Putin will not back down; he will double down. Therein lies great danger. Since the start of the invasion, a series of situation reports have been leaked to a Russian dissident, Vladimir Osechin, by a disaffected senior FSB analyst in Moscow who has become known online by the moniker “WindOfChange.” According to a US military officer with whom I checked, these reports are deemed by American intelligence agencies to be genuine: he told me that his intel contacts assess that WindOfChange is in fact an active FSB analyst, and that the reports he is putting out seem credible. On the other hand, some commentators have expressed skepticism. In any case, what WindOfChange has written does seem in keeping with what game-theory suggests a ruthless sociopath keen on winning a game might do (a game which he initiated and is currently losing) — if unconstrained by concerns over causing vast human suffering.
According to WindOfChange’s reports, the FSB expects that Putin will try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by raising the stakes of his war, directly attacking NATO targets and demanding Europe’s and Ukraine’s capitulation to his demands, promising devastating damage to Europe and Ukraine as the price of refusal.
· If at first Europeans refuse to capitulate, as can be initially expected, Putin will, the FSB currently believes, escalate further in a series of ever more extreme hybrid military and cyberwarfare attacks on central and western European targets. He will ready his nuclear forces to red-alert level and warn that he will use them if NATO counterattacks into Russia. He may detonate one or more tactical nuclear weapons, probably inside Ukraine, to demonstrate the seriousness of this threat.
· Putin is unlikely to back down, because from his perspective, he is now in a winner-takes-all game, a staring contest in which whoever blinks first loses. If he backs down and admits defeat in Ukraine, he will lose everything. Conversely, if he forces Europe to end its support to the armed Ukrainian resistance and to accept his terms for a cease-fire between NATO and Russia, he could win everything: regime survival, concessions on the future status of Ukraine, regime change in Kyiv, and even the collapse of the NATO alliance, as nations abandon a common Article 5 response in the face of a credible threat of nuclear attack.
· Putin/FSB expect Poland and the Baltic states to take a hard line against concessions to Russia, but Putin will be counting on Europeans of other nations to sue for peace once the pain applied to them becomes too great to bear. He thinks most Europeans will decide that defending the independence of Ukraine’s government against Russian domination isn’t worth the destruction of Europe. Crucially, he will be betting that the United States will refrain from launching a full-scale all-arms attack on Russia in response to his series of escalatory attacks on European targets.
Given Putin’s sociopathic character, and his previous history of ordering ultraviolent actions resulting in heavy civilian casualties in the wars Russia fought in Chechnya and Syria, we can infer that the suffering imposed on Europeans by his imposing a wider war will not deter him, and nor will the injustice of his cause. To predict Putin’s actions, we must understand his character, his personal at-risk situation, his motivations, and above all, the narratives guiding his actions. This does not mean accepting the legitimacy of his narratives; our purpose is merely to understand why he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in the first place, and what he is likely to do next now that his armies are bogged down in an unwinnable quagmire there and Russia is the target of potentially regime-destabilising financial and economic embargoes.
Russia’s strategy in context: Ukraine and NATO in the Kremlin’s narrative
Given the range of options available to a dictator who lacks moral restraints, we can assess that according to the game-theoretic logic of the bad situation Putin now finds himself in — as well as predictive situation reports provided by “WindOfChange,” the disgruntled senior FSB analyst — Putin will escalate the war by attacking targets in Europe and triggering NATO’s Article 5, and he will blame the collective West for this escalation.
He will say that Russia is acting in legitimate self-defense. He will say that the West “forced” Russia to attack targets in Europe, e.g. weapons depots in Poland, because it ignored his warnings to not interfere with his “special military operation” to “de-nazify and de-militarize Ukraine” and “defend Russians within Ukraine and in the independent republics of Donbass against genocide.” He will say that the West effectively declared war on Russia by imposing economic war on Russia and by flooding weaponry into Ukraine for purposes of killing Russian soldiers. He may say that in so doing, “the West chose to start World War III.”
As outrageous as this narrative may seem to Europeans given that it inverts the roles of aggressor and victim, we must understand that it is likely sincerely held: a typical characteristic of bullies with sociopathic character disorder is that when they make mistakes and things go badly wrong, they always blame someone else — very often the victim of their actions, who “provoked” or “forced” them to become violent; they never blame themselves.
The US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership as seen by the Kremlin
In the narrative long dominant within Putin’s inner circle, Ukraine’s becoming a military ally of the US — whether by joining NATO or through a bilateral defense pact — presents an existential threat to Russia.This view, too, may be sincerely held, however mistaken it may be from a neutral observer’s point-of-view. From the Kremlin’s point of view, the bilateral pact signed by the governments of the United States and Ukraine in a ceremony in Washington on November 10, 2021, entitled “US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership,” was tantamount to a declaration by the United States that it would establish a permanent state of military pressure vis-à-vis Russia, using the disputed status of Donbass and Crimea as a pretext for this pressure, and an ever more capable Ukrainian Army as the instrument of pressure, with a significant likelihood that the Ukrainian Army would be backed up by the stationing of American nuclear-armed missile batteries on Ukrainian territory within the foreseeable future.
Putin and his circle saw the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership pact as a deliberate and serious provocation,especially in the context of the Kremlin’s repeated vehement warnings that it would never accept Ukraine becoming a military “vassal” or “instrument” of the United States. As became clear from the televised speeches he gave immediately before the invasion of Ukraine and in light of many previous statements, Putin was personally angered that these warnings were simply dismissed and ignored by the Americans. Indeed, it is true that these warnings were entirely dismissed by Ukrainian and American foreign policy makers: The Strategic Partnership pact proposed the full integration of Ukraine in the Euro-Atlantic network, in all military and security aspects as well as in economic terms. It promised that the US would provide assistance to Ukraine to achieve Kyiv’s ever-deepening integration into US-aligned Euro-Atlantic institutions and to progressively enhance its military capabilities. Moreover, the Strategic Partnership document explicitly stated in strong language that the US and Ukraine would never cede Ukraine’s claims to sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbass.
Proximate causes of the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine
In this narrative context, given the Kremlin’s insistence that a Ukraine allied to and armed by Washington and hosting Western military bases would present a direct existential strategic military threat to Moscow, and given Ukraine’s insistence on continuing to demand the “return” of Crimea to its jurisdiction, the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, which surprised most analysts, becomes less surprising.
Once the Strategic Partnership was in place, Russia had to act sooner rather than later, according to Putin and foreign minister Lavrov’s reasoning, because otherwise Ukraine would rapidly grow in military capability under American tutelage and would increasingly become integrated into NATO-adjacent and Euro-Atlantic institutional structures. Ukraine would soon pass beyond the point at which Russia could take “military-technical action” against Kyiv without provoking an allied military defense of Ukraine, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
From the Kremlin’s point of view, once the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership had been signed, Russia was at the point of “losing” Ukraine permanently. To prevent that outcome, immediate action was required to force Kyiv to exit the Partnership.
The Kremlin’s war objective is to force Ukraine out of its alliance with the United States, and to cancel the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership. Moscow’s failure to achieve these goals in negotiations meant that only forcible regime change in Kyiv could achieve them.
The three months of negotiations — at daggers drawn — between December 2021 and late February 2022 between Russia and US-Ukraine provoked no concessions whatsoever by Washington or Kyiv on the Kremlin’s core demands for Ukraine to commit to:
(i) Ukrainian military neutrality, to be enshrined in Ukraine’s Constitution, replacing the existing clause (put there in 2019) committing Ukraine’s government to seek NATO membership;
(ii) de jure recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, and
(iii) de jure recognition of the independence of the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (whose people we can expect will soon “vote” to join the Russian Federation in a dodgy referendum).
Consequent to its failure to gain concessions on these points, and on its additional, rather extreme demands for NATO to pull its military assets back to 1997 positions in central Europe, leaving the Baltic states and Poland with no allied defense against Russia (a demand which may have been included as maximalist positions to bargain away in negotiations), Putin greenlighted the invasion of Ukraine, mistakenly thinking that it a blitzkrieg approach would quickly push into Kyiv and topple the regime.
Putin expected the invasion to achieve rapid success in part because he appears to have viewed Ukrainian President Zelenskyi with contempt, and likely expected him to flee the country. Zelenskyi is a former television actor and comedian with no previous political experience prior to winning the Presidency; prior to the current war, he was widely seen — by most Ukrainians as well as by Western political analysts — as well out of his depth in his new role as President of Ukraine.
Net Assessment
The net assessment is as follows:
· We have backed Putin into a corner. He feels he could lose everything if he does not manage to turn the tables.
· Given his narcissistic perspective as the unchallenged autocratic ruler of Russia, as a quasi-Tsar, he appears to identify Russia’s fate with his own personal fate and that of his personalist regime — for him, a humiliation of Putin is a humiliation of Russia.
· Rather than backing down, he will double down by initiating a series of escalatory steps by attacking through an unpredictable tool-kit of hybrid and conventional military attacks on European targets, deliberately triggering Article 5; he will characterize these attacks as “defensive” and blame them on the “collective West”, which he will accuse of having declared de facto war on Russia, in light of the West’s harsh economic sanctions on Russia and its supply of weapons to Ukraine’s army.
· He hopes that any NATO military response to this will cause Russians to rally round the flag and support his government. Given his near-total domination over public media messaging, this expectation may be correct.
· An open question is whether cooler heads in Russia’s military and security agencies will continue indefinitely to go along with Putin’s increasingly high-stakes gambling.
· Given his sociopathic nature, as well as his ethnonationalist commitment to “protecting Russians” whilst seeing people who are not ethnic Russians as largely outside his circle of concern, he is not constrained by ethical or empathetic considerations over the enormous suffering he will cause by widening the war beyond Ukraine into central and western Europe.
· Nor is he likely to be constrained by the risk of potentially sparking a general conflagration by triggering Article 5: he believes the West is “decadent” and will not be willing to incur devastating costs to defend Ukraine’s political position.
· Moreover, rather than accepting defeat in Ukraine, he is tempted by the prospect of even greater winnings if he is able to stare down NATO and bully it into capitulation to his demands. He believes he could cause the collapse of NATO, as countries unwilling to risk nuclear destruction of their territories back off from their commitments to Article 5.
· He may increase his demands as he increases the spiral of escalation — specifically, he may demand that the United States withdraw all its military forces from Europe as a condition of his ceasing to launch a variety of harsh hybrid attacks on European cities and infrastructure. This outcome is the great goal, the top prize, the central objective of Russian geostrategy, according to Eurasianist ideologues like Alexander Dugin, whose thinking has long influenced Putin.
Inference: Unless the war is ended earlier by negotiation, we are days away from entering a spiral of escalation with a wholly unpredictable trajectory.
How could the West prevent this?
PART II: CHARTING EUROPE’S AND UKRAINE’S PATHWAY TO VICTORY WITHOUT CATASTROPHE
The way forward is to give Putin enough of what he wants to allow him a face-saving off-ramp from the war in Ukraine — one that does not require him to attack NATO targets — whilst securing Ukraine’s freedom and independence and thus its victory.
It is crucial to do this soon, before Putin enters the escalatory spiral and begins making ever more hallucinatory geopolitical demands that he will then feel unable to climb down from. He has spent his entire career aligned with the principle that once a threat is made, it must be stuck to, in order to avoid losing credibility. We must de-escalate now before he makes catastrophic demands coupled with threats that will not be acceded to, such as demanding the pull-out of all American military forces from Europe on pain of all-out attack.
There is a tendency, in crisis situations, for policy-makers to get caught up in very short-term tunnel-vision thinking. Europeans and NATO allies must now stay calm and remember the long view. It doesn’t really matter very much if some concessions are offered to Russia over the status of Ukraine in the current moment. Any and all agreements can be revised through later negotiations, when the situation has calmed down, when more reasonable and collaborative counterparties are in charge in the Kremlin. Putin will not be in office forever.
Indeed, he may not be in office for very much longer. He has already lost this contest; the military and FSB already know that he is to blame for a terrible miscalculation vis-à-vis Ukraine. His prestige is tarnished. Any dictator’s survival in power is contingent on the support of his security and military services (not so much on the support of the wider population — that only becomes relevant if massive popular demonstrations occur and the security services decide they are unwilling to continue to crack down on those demonstrations).
In Part I, I outlined the three minimum core demands the Kremlin has made of its goals for the future of Ukraine. These are “minimum goals.” A maximalist agenda would be for the Kremlin to absorb Ukraine entirely as a province within the Russian Federation (and sooner or later, probably Belarus as well). Perhaps Putin and his coterie, sunk into a narrative dream-state induced by reading histories of the Russian Empire and surrounding himself with sycophants and ethnonationalist ideologues, and completely out of touch with the realities on the ground in modern Ukraine, believed this maximalist agenda to be a realistic prospect prior to the invasion. However, the course of the war has shown that any such hope is illusory. Ukrainians have united in opposition to a Russian invasion and conquest, and they will not forgive the invaders.
At this point, Putin would be lucky to achieve the three-point agenda of Ukrainian military neutrality and Ukrainian de jure cession of Crimea and Donbass to Russia.
Proposals from Europe for Ukrainians to accept these terms will likely be met with hostility in Ukraine insofar as the people feel they are beginning to win the war (and likely to be able to punish the Russian Army ever more harshly the more Western allies flood powerful weapons into the battlespace across the border from Poland into Ukraine in coming days and weeks.
Many Ukrainians are in no mood for compromise. They are inflamed with nationalist passion, raging with anger at the Russians, mourning their dead, and keen to inflict revenge on Russia by reconquering these regions.
However, the reality is that short of a wholesale defeat of Russia proper, which would likely require a nuclear war which everone (including Ukraine) would lose, Ukraine will not be able to reconquer Crimea or Donbass from Russia. Ukraine can either accept this fact now, or accept it several weeks or months from now, after much of Ukraine and potentially also much of Europe lays in smoking ruin.
In addition, it seems very unlikely that Russia will stop its destruction of Ukraine until and unless its core demand is met that Ukraine backs off from becoming a military dependency of the United States (or of NATO). This means Kyiv must cancel the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership, and it must change its Constitution to commit to military neutrality.
This doesn’t mean “capitulating to Russia.” Far from it. Russia has already been severely damaged by economic sanctions and its regime’s political stature has taken a heavy below. There will be no normalization of relations with Russia as long as Putin stays in power. Sanctions may be eased, but it seems likely that those of the sanctions which target Russia’s ruler and his cronies will not be lifted until there is a political transition. At the same time, the US geostrategic position has been strengthened in Europe, and Russia’s has been weakened, with a renaissance of NATO and a collective decision by Europeans to reduce or even completely stop buying Russian oil and gas as soon as this is technically achievable.
It is time for the US State Department and NATO planners to end this round of the game, collect their winnings, and step away from the brink. Continuing to pressure the cornered Putin regime until it lashes out in fury with escalatory attacks on Europe would be an act of historic miscalculation, even insanity. The complete military integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic alliance is not a strategic necessity either for European NATO members nor for the United States — certainly not in the short term, and not in the long term either, when one considers the matter dispassionately. The US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership pact was either a major diplomatic mistake or a tool which succeeded in providing a basis for provoking a hybrid war which — albeit at Ukraine’s expense as collateral damage — led to a renaissance of NATO and an opportunity to severely damage Russia and the Putin regime geoeconomically and politically. If that was its purpose (whether inadvertently or intentionally, it was certainly the result), that purpose has now been served. Military alliances are not ends in themselves. They are means to an end.
Russia will retain control over Donbass and Crimea, but Russia will pay heavily for that privilege — economically and geostrategically. It will remain a pariah state until its criminal regime of kleptocrats and Great Russian fantasists fades from power. There is no need for Europe or for the State Department to continue to press the Putin regime against the wall now. Europe may hope that the resulting explosion will be an internal regime change in Moscow, but it must not underestimate Putin: he will organise an explosion in the form of an external escalation of the war into Europe instead, in order to regain his footing.
If Russia’s minimal terms for an end to hostilities in Ukraine and the withdrawal of its armies — i.e. Ukraine’s military neutrality plus de jure cession of Crimea and Donbass to Russia — are complemented by an agreement — as Russia’s side of the bargain — to respect Ukraine’s freedom to democratically elect its own governments in fair elections and to enter into any economic partnerships it chooses, including with the European Union, barring only military aspects of these partnership, then Ukraine will achieve a status similar to that of Austria, Finland, or Switzerland. The West can enforce Russia’s agreement to these terms by means of a schedule of economic sanctions: i.e. any attempt by Russia to interfere with Ukraine’s political independence would come at a clear and heavy economic price.
The negotiations for the lessening of the economic sanctions against Russia are nearly certain to include provisions requiring Russia to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Given that Western central banks are in possession of perhaps €300 billion of Russia’s reserves, and could also apply surcharges to any imports of Russian oil and gas, the funds for reconstructing Ukraine will be available.
Logic and reason must now triumph over the passions of war. It is not clear what improvement Ukraine could hope to achieve in its position by refusing to cede title to Crimea or Donbass and continuing to fight rather than accepting the terms outlined above. If in 10, 20, or 30 years, Ukraine is a vastly more prosperous country with its own robust independent non-aligned military, and Russia has by then undergone a democratic transition, that would be a time at which Russian and Ukrainian negotiators could discuss whether the status of Donbass might be reconsidered.
European leaders must now make it clear to President Zelenskyi and to the Russian government that Europe will support these terms — and that the sooner Russia agrees to them, the more generous Europe will be in reconsidering the harsh economic sanctions regime that has been put in place. Europe, not the United States, must take the lead in imposing a peace — it has far more at stake in this, since Russia’s strategy does not include military strikes on US territory, which Russian war planners — even Putin in his current distress — surely realise would be suicidal. Washington is much more likely than Berlin, Warsaw, Paris or Rome to be willing to continue to press its advantage in an effort to retain the US-Ukraine Strategic Partnership and to keep the war going to inflict as much damage as possible on the Russian military, and to underestimate the costs and risks of a Russian attack on Europe outside Ukraine. It is time to cool things down and return to the negotiating table. European leaders must come together and impose a peace settlement, regardless of the preferences expressed by Washington, Moscow, or Kyiv.
They must do so immediately, within the coming few days, before Putin initiates the series of escalatory steps he is reportedly planning — and which game-theoretic coupled with personality type assessment suggests he naturally would be inclined to engage in.
The future of Europe is at stake in this moment. Far from crumbling in the face of Russian pressure or allowing themselves to be manipulated as tools by US State Department policy-makers tasked with European and Russian policy, now is the moment when European Union leaders can and must come together to take control of the continent’s destiny. Everything is at stake.
PART III: A PROPOSAL FOR THE KEY POINTS OF A EUROPEAN UNION IMPOSED PEACE SETTLEMENT
The following points are offered as a basis for discussion between negotiators.
An immediate cease-fire must be agreed and humanitarian corridors established. The flow of weapons from all sides into the territory of Ukraine should ideally be halted during the negotiations, which should be led by the European Union and seek to achieve a quick resolution, within days or at most weeks, not months. However, monitoring the flow of weapons during a cease-fire will be difficult, and both sides will have an incentive to cheat. Both sides will be concerned that the balance of weaponry might shift against them due to resupply operations during an extended cease-fire. This provides an incentive for rapidly coming to an agreement if both sides fear the other side could gain an upper hand during a cease-fire more than they hope they themselves will materially improve their position. In any event, even if there is no agreement on halting weapons flows, a cease-fire should be called.
European Union member Foreign Ministers, Ukrainian, Russian, and American negotiators must be summoned to Brussels under the aegis of the European Union to discuss the future of Ukraine. The EU position for a settlement should be approximately as follows:
Commitments and concessions from the Russia side:
· Russia must pull back its troops from Ukraine, excepting for Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and Crimea
· Russia will agree for UN supervised referenda to be held in Donetsk and Luhansk, with details to be agreed by consensus between the EU and the Russian Federation, to enable the residents of the region to choose their preferred affiliation (i.e. whether the regions will belong to Russia or Ukraine)
· Russia will pay reparations for the reconstruction of Ukraine; international adjudicators will be convened to assess the damage done and set the amount of reparations fairly and transparently. Russia will accept that measures including diversion of central bank reserve funds (some of which have been frozen in Western central bank accounts) as well as surcharges on future Russian oil and gas sales are legitimate sources for these reconstruction funds
· Russia will commit to refraining from any future military incursions into Ukraine, whether conventional or hybrid, will seek lasting peace with Ukraine, and will commit to fully respecting the political and economic independence of Ukraine, including any decision Ukraine may make to make economic association agreements with the European Union and to apply for European Union membership
· Russia will welcome negotiations with the European Union and NATO over restrictions on weapons of mass destruction in western Eurasia (i.e. Europe and western Russia), and will explore deconfliction measures on a consensus-building basis, free of threats or coercion, to mutual benefit of all parties
· Russia will seek a lasting peace settlement with the European Union and engage in long-term confidence-building measures on a consensus basis
· Russia will enter into good-faith negotiations to achieve a consensus settlement over the future of Transnistria involving Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and the European Union
Commitments from the Ukrainian side, guaranteed by the European Union:
· Ukraine will remain a free, democratic, and sovereign nation within Europe, and will seek to develop as a bridge of peace and reconciliation between Russia and Europe, rather than as a zone of contention
· Ukraine will delete from its Constitution its statement of aspiration to join NATO and will instead commit in its Constitution to military neutrality, with the examples of Austria, Switzerland, and Finland as leitmotifs for the structure and nature of its neutrality
· Ukraine will maintain its own independent defensive armed forces, and will seek to develop deconflicted and friendly relationships with the armed forces of neighbouring and European Union countries, e.g. by cooperating in joint integrated European and Eurasian multinational engineering corps for deployment in UN SDG-inspired civilian infrastructure development initiatives in developing countries, and for natural disaster response missions, focusing on jointly building peace rather than preparing for war
· Ukraine will not allow extremist ultranationalist armed groups with revisionary territorial claims or antidemocratic agendas to play a role in its armed forces or its police agencies; the European Union and OSCE will help ensure this is respected
· Ukraine will be free to make economic association agreements with any states and with the European Union as it prefers, and it will be free to apply to join the European Union, provided the issues of sovereignty over Crimea and Donbass have been permanently settled and there are no remaining territorial disputes with neighbouring states
· Ukraine recognises that it has a long way to go in its institutional evolution before it can qualify to become a member of the EU. The EU will assist in this process if asked by Ukraine, and will also assist with Ukraine’s infrastructure development consistent with EU goals and policies for a prosperous future based on fossil-free energy supplies and commodities
· Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States will recognise the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over Crimea
· Ukraine will allow water to flow into Crimea in an agreed amount similar to historically precedent amounts; an OSCE arbitration panel could be established to ensure this is dealt with fairly in a way that respects the interests of the people of the Crimean Peninsula
· Ukraine will agree to respect the results of an internationally supervised and organised referendum in regards to the choice of the people of the Donbass region over whether they want to be under Russian or under Ukrainian sovereignty — and Russia will also respect the results; if either party rejects the results of a referendum deemed free and fair by the international adjudicating bodies (e.g. joint UN and OSCE missions), the immediate result will be severe economic and diplomatic penalties on the party refusing to accept the results, with a pre-defined set of sanctions that would be imposed by the European Union, to ensure that everyone affected clearly understands the heavy price of non-compliance. The aim is to permanently settle this question and permanently end this source of conflict between Russia and Ukraine
· The Donbass referendum will be organised by international agencies, not by the local governments or by the governments of Ukraine or Russia, and will be subject to total transparency of rules and procedures to eliminate any reason for sincere concerns over the accuracy of the results
· If the referendum results are adjudicated by the administering body as procedurally questionable, e.g. if armed intimidation came into play against voters, the adjudicating body can require that the referendum be re-held under more equitable circumstances
· Ukraine will withdraw from the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership and will not enter into any similar military alliance agreements with the United States unless the government of the Russian Federation gives explicit written permission for Ukraine to do so (thus leaving the door open for future closer ties in a world in which, perhaps, Russia itself becomes an ally of the United States through voluntary choice, as was discussed by V.V. Putin in the year 2000)
· Ukraine’s freedom and security will be guaranteed primarily through its own development as a democratic republic, secondarily through its close association with the European Union, and thirdly through multilateral European and UN organisations
