It was precisely when the Financial Times reported progress had been made in ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine that heartbreaking news came of a direct strike on a theater in Mariupol, where hundreds of women and children had been sheltering from the fighting.
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They say it's always darkest before the dawn, but in the case of Ukraine, it seems the rays of sunlight refuse to emerge at this time. The Russian military, which has lost lives and equipment, continues to strike Ukrainians in the north, east, and south of the country. A majority of strikes in recent days were directed at civilian targets. It appears the bank of military targets has been emptied, and now all that remains is to empty their shells at residences and theater halls.
Hunger is raising its head in Ukraine, where they have yet to forget the horrors of the Holodomor, or Great Famine, which saw millions of Ukrainians die between 1932 and 1933 as a result of the destructive economic policies of the Soviet regime. Civilians continue to flee the country. To them, talk of a ceasefire seems a tempting if gut-wrenching illusion. Is there any truth to progress being made in talks toward a ceasefire framework mediated by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett?
Mikhail Podolyak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office and a member of Kyiv's negotiating team, tweeted that the framework cited in the Financial Times report presents only the Russian position on the matter, and the Ukrainians had their own opinions on the matter. No doubt there are a few proposals, including an official guarantee from Ukraine that it will not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Western security guarantees, possibly Ukrainian recognition of Russian sovereignty in the Crimean Peninsula, and of course, a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces.
There's no doubt that a majority of these clauses could have been reached without a brutal war, which has already left thousands of civilians and soldiers killed and the earth scorched in Ukraine's cities.
One can also assume that such a framework would be acceptable to the Ukrainian side. But the question is whether, for Moscow, which has set a goal of removing Zelenskyy's government and making Ukraine a Belarus-style satellite state, this will suffice. Russian diplomacy lost any credibility prior to the current war, and every discussion of a ceasefire and such a framework must be taken with a grain of salt.
It may be that due to its losses and failures on the ground, officials in Moscow have slightly altered their roadmap toward political and military change in Ukraine. In the short term, if Russia accepts such a framework, it will in practice recognize the failure of its "special military operation" in Ukraine. There is no way to present this as a victory back home. However, if the talks are prolonged and Ukrainian cities continue to be wiped off the map, the economy will collapse and a few more millionaires will leave their country. This kind of damage will be much more difficult for the state. It will become a failed state.
In such an instance, the ceasefire will come on Russia's terms, after it has pummeled the population and turned Ukraine into Syria's identical twin in a move that will effectively void any such framework toward comprise of meaning.
It is not, then, merely the content of this or that framework that will determine the outcome but rather the pace at which a deal is reached and the fine print involved. With every additional day that passes, Ukraine heavily bleeds, even if its soldiers continue to fight with extraordinary heroism.
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