Europe experienced widespread relief on Monday, as the diplomatic emergency triggered by the introduction of a new 28-point plan for resolving the conflict appeared – momentarily – to have been stabilised. A American diplomat spoke of "substantial progress" after bilateral negotiations in Geneva. On Monday night, Moscow made its retaliation: another massive barrage of aerial bombardment on Kyiv.
The Pattern of Negotiation and Warfare
The succession of opposing developments captured the grim essence of the outgoing year. By day, negotiation efforts are waged: positive announcements are issued from various governments. Considerable effort is devoted on containing certain initiatives. By night, Russian leadership forcefully demonstrates the world that, for them, military action persists as the key method for achieving "settlement".
Nocturnal Warfare
As military strikes unfolded into the early hours of Tuesday, the current condition of Ukraine's vulnerability was laid bare. Ukraine is equipped to monitor rocket firings from across the border, a capability enabled by timely intelligence. From vantage locations, military aircraft that had been dispatched to engage hostile cruise missiles roared overhead – sophisticated military planes provided to Ukraine by Western partners.
Shortly after, Kyiv's missile defense activated: multiple launches fired to intercept a Russian ballistic missile. This was a advanced protection mechanism at work, presumably delivered by allied countries. Every launch shakes the surroundings, causing tremors. The brief panic quickly becomes grim resignation: perhaps the hostile projectile won't hit its mark this time, sparing the city from ruin and additional electricity failures.
Continuous Dangers
Following this, a heavy machine gun engaged a aerial vehicle in the vicinity, part of a mobile-fire group – most likely imported technology. Regrettably, the bullets missed the opposing UAV – it maintained course toward its destination.
With pauses, this continued until dawn. Kyiv greeted the morning news: several casualties, devastation and heating outages in many homes as a result of the nocturnal offensive. As customarily, everyone still went about their day – enduring hostilities. But those 24 hours illustrated Ukraine's essential dependence on international aid – a need that European nations are clearly incapable to fill in the near term.
Ineffective Peace Efforts
The detailed framework from American leadership sparked intense emotion, controversy and serious worry – and temporarily diverted attention from Ukraine's major integrity crisis in years. Yet, we have witnessed similar scenarios, after earlier high-level meetings and multilateral gatherings.
Every new initiative from US leadership follows the consistent cycle: a negotiation push against Ukraine, which Kyiv, with partner nations, effectively counters. They stabilise the situation but never actually achieve victory. This trend will, no doubt, persist.
Strategic Calculations
It is convenient to criticize particular leaders of persistently promoting Kremlin's demands. But that does not seem to be the whole story. American leadership operates on a assumption well known to experienced diplomats: you cannot win at the negotiating table what you have been unable to protect through force. The US administration believes that it is unfeasible to force Russia to relinquish the land that it already controls in Ukraine's south or east.
The challenge is that while accepting these circumstances, US leadership does little to prevent Kremlin actions, through diplomacy or military means, from believing that the situation will not shift further in its favour in the near future.
Opposing Positions
Therefore, Moscow is confident that time is on his side – that Ukraine and its allies are approaching exhaustion. Their reason to sign a deal that does not give them the largest achievable advantage is virtually nonexistent. There may be multiple initiatives to end hostilities, but they will carry on as long as Russia's leadership remains highly assured in the outcome.
On the contrary, Ukraine's government believes that Ukraine can still endure, progressively conceding civilians and areas but avoiding a complete military breakdown until situations evolve in its advantage.
Present Conditions
Factually, there are no genuine requirements for a armistice. Now, personal considerations are coming into play: personal goals to negotiate peace and obtain worldwide acknowledgment, and the government's dual difficulties – on one hand, not to distance important partners, and on the other, to rally Ukrainians around the country's interests against any initiative Kyiv finds unacceptable, so that their focus does not switch to homefront challenges. And although their objective will now be significantly challenging after current events, it remains quite doubtful that this will change their overall approach.
These opposing factors are driving the talks.
Conclusion and Outlook
It took a mere seven days to terminate the proposed articles of the current initiative. Assertive and inconsistent approach of the matter by Washington, pushback by Ukraine and the remaining European nations, along with calming attempts of negotiators, and finally, latest revelations, all did their job.
While new initiatives based on old ideas are approaching, Kyiv, London and other allied nations should arrive at a critical understanding: Ukraine and Europe will only be able to resist diplomatic offensives from Washington that are founded on Moscow's terms and show specific hesitation to change the course of events, if they stand together and strengthen their defence capabilities at a considerably quicker tempo. If they do, no combination of diplomatic or military actions will be able to break them. In the meantime, Ukraine's ability to repel nightly air assaults will, for the predictable period, largely rely on ongoing international assistance.
