The historic first steps towards peace in Ukraine are apparently being taken with Ukraine agreeing to a 30-day ceasefire at a March 11 meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
But it won’t be easy. As President Donald Trump noted to reporters outside the White House on March 11, “It takes two to tango” and that he would be talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Yeah, I’ll talk to Vladimir Putin… Hopefully, he’ll also agree. I really think that would be 75 percent of the way, the rest is getting it documented… and negotiating land positions, etc.”
And on March 12, Trump followed up by threatening additional sanctions on Moscow if the ceasefire cannot go into effect saying, “It’s up to Russia now… [I]n a financial sense, we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating for Russia. But I don’t want to do that because I want to see peace.”
The U.S. has also resumed military aid and intelligence support for Ukraine, and Ukraine said it will be concluding the rare earth minerals deal originally proposed by President Donald Trump.
But fighting still continued in Ukraine as Russia is said to be “studying” the proposal while it also rejected French and British proposals to put NATO peacekeepers on the ground as a part of any peace deal, as well as demanding Ukraine cede Russia’s territorial gains since 2014 and pledge to never join NATO.
From Trump’s standpoint, he wants to see a ceasefire first and talks on the final details can come later.
How quickly both sides could come to the table is a good question. When negotiations began between North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1968, it took almost an entire year just to agree on the shape of the table and that each side could be represented at the talks. And even getting there was difficult, requiring an end to certain bombings in North Vietnam.
And even as Richard Nixon had campaigned on pursuing a peace plan in 1968, no significant breakthroughs were had until May 1972, when Nixon agreed to a ceasefire, and by Oct. 1972, there was a draft agreement. So, it went from no progress for years to rapid progress at the end.
That could mean there’s more fighting, even as the U.S. continues communicating with both Russia and Ukraine.
At this point, it could just be a question of whether there are talks with further sanctions on, or without. That is, without Russia accepting the 30-day ceasefire proposal, Trump is suggesting he’ll be levying more sanctions against Moscow.
As for the 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine agreed to, Secretary of State Rubio said that both sides needed to accept that the war in Ukraine was effectively a stalemate, saying on March 11, “The offer is to stop the shooting. The goal here is the only way out – to end this war is to negotiate out of it. There’s no military solution to this war. The solution to this war and the way to end it and to achieve the President’s objective of peace is to negotiate. But before you can negotiate you have to stop shooting at each other, and that’s what the President has wanted to see, and that’s what – that’s the commitment we got today from the Ukrainian side, their willingness to do that. Obviously, now that will be delivered to the Russians.”
Rubio added, “what we left – leave here with today is a commitment that the Ukrainians are ready to stop fighting. They’re ready to stop the shooting so that they can get to the table and bring about peace for their country and for the world.”
Assuming, that is, that both sides won’t be bickering over the size and shape of the table. This could take a while, but with at least one side saying it is ready for a ceasefire, the first steps are being taken. The question is, with more than a million dead on both sides in the war, does Russia want to stop fighting?
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
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