Two ceasefire proposals have been released in the past week from Washington, Moscow, and Europe, all of which contradict each other this month.
On April 17, US President Donald Trump’s administration announced its proposal to Ukraine, describing it as “the final offer from the United States to both sides.”
On April 23, Ukraine countered its own proposal, which was supported by European officials, but US Secretary of State Marco Rubio allegedly canceled a meeting to discuss it.
In honor of Victory Day on May 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin observed a three-day, unilateral ceasefire on May 9, in honor of its contribution to World War II’s victory.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, called Putin’s proposal “another attempt at manipulation,” claiming that “for some reason, everyone is supposed to wait until May 8 before ceasing fire – just to provide silence for his parade.”
Trump appeared to press hardest on Kyiv to put an end to hostilities, but Reuters reported that his proposal made significant concessions that the Europeans opposed.
Trump acknowledged that Russia actually owned the four provincial divisions it has partially conquered, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson.
Before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in January 2014. According to the UN Charter, Kaja Kallas, the head of international affairs, has stated that Europe will not tolerate violent annexations of land.
sanctions, weapons, and NATO membership are divided.
Additionally, Trump’s plan left those guarantees to “an ad hoc group of European states plus willing non-European states,” leaving Ukraine with no post-war guarantees.
The US should be included in the guarantor states, according to the Ukrainian-European counterproposal, which suggested halting all territorial negotiations until after a ceasefire.
There were other disagreements as well.
Russia’s demands that Ukraine not join NATO and that Western sanctions against Russia be lifted immediately were accepted by the US.
According to the European-Ukrainian counterproposal, sanctions “may be gradually eased once a sustainable peace is achieved and resumed in the event of a peace agreement’s breach.”
Additionally, it stated that there would be “no restrictions on the Ukrainian Defence Forces” and “no restrictions on the presence, possession, and conduct of friendly foreign forces on Ukrainian territory.”
Russian officials have repeatedly rejected both of these assertions, saying that Ukraine must reduce its own military to a token force and that it will never accept NATO- and European forces on Ukrainian soil.
The Trump administration’s outlook is fundamentally different from the EU’s.
On April 16, Kaja Kallas, vice president of the European Commission, told journalists: “If you want the killing to stop, you should put pressure on Russia, who actually commits the crime.
Trump, in contrast, halted all military ties with Ukraine in March to pressure Kyiv into finding peace. Russian forces pushed Ukrainian troops out of the majority of the land in the Kursk region of Russia during this week.
The US’s Rubio reportedly canceled the meeting, according to The Washington Post, so the country’s defense and foreign ministers decided to not meet with their British and French counterparts when they presented their peace plan in London on April 23.
Russia attacks Kyiv.
The following day, Putin launched a massive attack on Kyiv, injuring dozens and killing 12 civilians.
Russia launched a deadly airstrike on Kyiv while claiming to seek peace. This is a mockery of peace, not a quest for it. Russia, whose war goals have not changed, is the real obstacle, Kallas asserted.
“The Russian strikes on Kyiv have me offended. Trump expressed regret on his social media platform Truth Social in a egregious act of impatience toward Putin on a rare instance of timing that was necessary.
He threatened Putin with sanctions two days later when he met with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome.
Putin “has no reason to have fired missiles at civilian targets, cities, and towns over the past few days,” he wrote. It makes me wonder if he doesn’t want to end the war, that he is simply trying to manipulate me and needs to be handled differently through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions”?
According to Zelenskyy, “Meetings in the Vatican and Rome demonstrated that our partners are aware of what is happening,” referring to what he claimed was Russian deception.
Meanwhile, Putin’s forces claimed that Kursk’s entire evacuation on Saturday had “created the conditions for further successful actions of the Russian Armed Forces.”
Russian and North Korean officials praised the military support the North Korean forces had offered in Kursk, a fact that they had refuted ever since that assistance first started in November.
Russian commander of the military, Valery Gerasimov, claimed on Saturday that North Korea had offered “significant assistance.”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, praised the strategic cooperation agreement between Russia and North Korea on its effectiveness on May 1 and said Russia would give in to the military assistance as needed.
Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, stated that the Kursk operation was a “sacred mission to further strengthen the strong friendship and solidarity” between Russia and North Korea, and the Central Military Commission of North Korea also officially acknowledged the cooperation for the first time on Monday.
Russian actions and statements, in fact, suggested that Moscow was establishing itself along its border with NATO and the European Union.
Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu complained about the rearmament of Poland and the Baltic states in particular in an interview last week. “In the past year, the military forces of NATO countries deployed near Russia’s western borders have increased by nearly 2.5 times.
Source: Aljazeera
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