Miklos K. Radvanyi, vice president of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute provided an analysis for Gulyáságyú Média. / Radványi Miklós, az egyesült államokbeli republikánus think-tank, a Frontiers of Freedom Institute alelnöke angol nyelvű elemzése a Gulyáságyú Média számára.
You can find all of Miklos K. Radvanyi’s opinion pieces on this link. Radványi Miklós összes írását ezen a linken találja.
Nyitóképünkön: Volodimir Zelenszkij ukrán elnök és Vlagyimir Putyin orosz elnök munkatalálkozóra érkeznek Párizsban, 2019. december 9-én, amikor az orosz, ukrán, francia és német államfők találkoztak, hogy megvitassák a kelet-ukrajnai konfliktust. Az ukrán és az orosz elnöknek ez volt az egyetlen személyes találkozója. Forrás: Facebook.
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The balance of power that existed in the European continent since the end of World War II in 1945 was completely upset by the Russian Federation’s illegal invasion and subsequent annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in March 2014. This situation has become even more intolerable for the other European states – and more difficult, complicated, as well as dangerous for the rest of the world – with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The West’s reaction was the legal condemnation and the imposition of a variety of incremental sanctions that initially did not materialize in actual enforcement mechanisms. This cautious approach was rooted in fear of escalation and the hope that Crimea would remain a contained crisis. Clearly, the sanctions were meant to signal disapproval, but not to reverse the annexation.
Even more problematic geostrategically, Western aid for Ukraine was mostly non-lethal – consisting of logistics, communications, training – and delivered with overwhelming hesitancy. This risk-averse strategic ambiguity rested on the political miscalculation that assumed in the deterrence capabilities of limited sanctions. In reality, these sanctions were punitive, but not truly deterrent. Moreover, from the Kremlin’s perspective, these sanctions were the costs of acquiring Crimea, and not a reason to give it up. In this manner, the costs for the Kremlin were bearable compared to the strategic gains that included permanent control of the Black Sea Fleet base, massive domestic popularity for Vladimir Putin, and a symbolic reversal of the presumed post-Cold War “humiliation” of Russia.
The Strategic Legacy of the 2014 Annexation
Today, there are striking analogies between the responses to the 2014 annexation and all the negotiating tactics since 2022, which foreshadow the future misery of Europe and beyond. Seemingly, diplomacy around the war is progressing with “full steam ahead.” Draft proposals circulate. Deadlines are whispered. Mediators speak of “realistic outcomes.” Yet, beneath these feverish activities hide a lethal confusion – a ceasefire is being treated as if it were peace – and compromises as if they were stability. However, they are not the same. The competing proposals now shaping the debate – from Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, D.C., and European capitals – reveal a deeper skulduggery. This is not merely about territory or sequencing. It is about whether the outcome of the war of Russian aggression will be restrained by international law and credible deterrence, or normalized through negotiation fatigue.
Ceasefire Versus Real Peace
Russia’s position is the most straightforward. It wants a ceasefire only if Ukraine accepts the political results of its invasion: territorial concessions, enforced neutrality, and limits on its future military as well as alliances. In the Kremlin’s framing, peace is not the absence of fighting, but the formal recognition of altered borders and a substantially weakened Ukrainian state. Without a doubt, this is not a negotiating tactic; it is Putin’s and Russia’s worldview. The Kremlin is seeking a settlement that validates force as a tool of revision – not just in Ukraine, but in Europe’s security system more broadly. A ceasefire without political surrender, from this perspective, is merely a pause before pressure resumes.
Ukraine, for its part, has learned what “pauses” mean in Russian. Its insistence on sovereignty, territorial integrity, and enforceable security guarantees is often caricatured as inflexibility. In reality, it is a rational response to history. Freezing the conflict without ironclad guarantees would leave Ukraine exposed to renewed attacks, with fewer resources and diminished leverage. That is not peace; it is deferred vulnerability.
Washington’s Shifting Peacemaker Role
Essentially, what renders the current situation more fraught with present and future uncertainties is the precarious role of the United States of America as a peacemaker. The White House’s approach to the war has shifted from enabling Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength to pushing for a rapid, externally engineered settlement. Draft frameworks emphasize deadlines, conditional guarantees, and economic reconstruction as substitutes for long-term deterrence. On the surface, this foreign policy tactic is tempting: stop the fighting, stabilize the map, rebuild, and move on. But this tactic assumes that Russia views peace as a shared endpoint rather than a temporary accommodation. It also assumes that guarantees can be both conditional and credible – a contradiction in a war defined by broken assurances. Lastly, removing Ukraine’s path to alliances, while offering a security promise hedged with escape-clauses may reassure domestic “peaceniks,” but it sends a dangerous signal to the Kremlin: pressure works, patience pays, and commitments weaken under strain.
Europe’s response to this approach has been telling. Rather than reject negotiations, European governments have sought to strip out provisions that appear to pre-empt Russian demands – particularly those that could lock in strategic constraints on Ukraine.
The Enforcement Problem at the Heart of Any Deal
At the heart of all these debates lies the real issue that no draft can evade: enforcement. Historically, ceasefires fail not because they are signed, but because they are violated without consequences. Any agreement that does not unambiguously define what happens when – not if – terms are broken, is not a peace framework, but a gamble. And it is a gamble Ukraine would be asked to make with its future, as already happened in December 1994, in Budapest, Hungary.
Some so-called foreign policy experts and practitioners argue that a flawed peace is better than a prolonged war that could result in a mutual nuclear annihilation of the planet. However, any settlement that rewards territorial conquest, constrains the victim’s ability to defend itself, and relies exclusively on conditional guarantees risks achieving exactly the opposite. It lowers the cost of aggression and raises the incentive to try again.
Thus, this war is not only about Ukraine. It is also about precedent. A serious peace process must begin with a hard admission: deterrence, not goodwill, keeps wars from restarting. Also, ceasefires can open doors. But if the room they open into legitimizes illegal conquest and leaves aggression profitable, the silence that follows will not be peace. It will echo the sound of the next war being prepared by a historically tyrannical regime.
Az idei év különösen nehéz lesz a maradék magyar független sajtónak, hiszen Orbán Viktor már az év elején kiadta az ukázt a sajtó megsemmisítésére. Így arra kérjük Önöket, hogy mindenki, akinek számít még a sajtószabadság, az támogasson legalább egy független sajtóterméket. Amennyiben tehetik, legyen ez lapunk, hiszen mi még a független sajtón belül is nehéz helyzetben vagyunk. A támogatási lehetőségek: http://gulyasagyu.media/tamogatas
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