Disarm, no, but from Russia's POV they want to structure the agreement where this isn't just an underhand way for Ukraine to get a breather and get pumped full of weapons for round 2. It's a valid concern, that's why if you look at their asks one of them is they want a cap on Ukrainian military post peace, no NATO peacekeepers that in reality are just a large standing NATO army within Ukraine.
I don't think the expectation was that we would halt everything, but we're not just not halting we're upping the ante. Germany as of today 'lifts all restrictions on use of long term missiles into Russia'. Does this invite peace or is it like the 37th round of escalation we've seen for the last 3 years?
And we already know it's not 25 year old Ukrainians guiding and relaying target data for these type of strikes but western operators, because these are integrated systems and use satellite geolocating. So basically no limit on NATO operators striking within Russia. That's great, but there's this collective pretense that we want peace, when in reality we want Russia to accept the L.
Would Ukraine even have the manpower for a hypothetical round 2 in a couple of years, even if they were pumped full of weapons by NATO post-ceasefire? Isn't the argument we've been hearing for almost 2 years from the (tacit or explicit) pro-Russia camp that "Ukraine is acutely running out of troops" and that their defeat is therefore inevitable anyway, so any Westerns arms supplies "are pointless and only prolongate the suffering"?
Merz has kinda walked back his comments, by the way. He's now retreating to the claim that range restrictions had already been lifted for quite some time and that he has just spilled the beans on this fact.
As a side note: if Russia was really striving for peace negotiations, they wouldn't
intensify their drone and missile attacks. Hell, what's stopping Russia from announcing an unilateral pause for a
meaningful timeframe, say a month or so? If Ukraine keeps shelling them during this timeframe, they have a huge PR win and can claim that "the fascist regime in Kyiv has revealed its true colors to the world". If Ukraine reciprocates, great, now you have a significant deescalation and both sides made a gesture of good will.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 27 2025 04:34pm