Negotiations 101: Uneven parties equal uneven results

No fair-minded person would want Vladimir Putin to prevail in a cease-fire accord with Ukraine. Unfortunately with a population four times larger than that of Ukraine and Putin’s ability to eventually destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and make Ukraine uninhabitable, Putin will get more of what he wants and Ukraine will get less of what it wants.

So, what does Putin want? Putin wants the land he has seized inside Ukraine to be recognized as his. Putin wants a brief respite from Ukraine’s drone and missile attack on his oil and gas refineries and on his oil and gas export facilities. Russia’s economy is a one-trick pony that relies on its oil and gas exports.

Ukraine needs a rest for the killing of its men and women of military age before they are too few to fight and a respite from Putin’s destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure, which will, in time, make Ukraine uninhabitable. Ergo: both sides get something; however, Putin will get more than Ukraine. Unfortunately, with regard to Crimea, Putin even has history on his side. Every Russian school child knows, Catherine the Great annexed the Crimean Peninsula to Mother Russia in 1783. The vast majority of Crimea’s population speaks Russian. For 171 years, the Crimean Peninsula was part of Mother Russia.

But wait in 1954, then Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, inexplicably gave the Crimea to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine; however, the USSR retained possession of its naval base at Sevastopol, Crimea. Khrushchev’s gift of the Crimea -- with Russia’s only warm-water port -- was just one of Khrushchev’s several dumb ideas that caused his Politburo comrades to force him to “retire” in 1964, to become a “non-person.” In 1971, “Pravda” (the main Soviet newspaper) devoted just one sentence to the death of Nikita Khrushchev.

In Moscow, in July of 1989, Wonder Wife and I, and ten other American journalists, interviewed Sergei Khrushchev. Unfortunately, none of us thought to ask Sergei why his father had given the Crimea to Ukraine. Note: later, Sergei told other reporters that the Crimea was given to Ukraine because Crimea’s infrastructure was in total ruins and his father did not have the money to repair it.

Obviously, Nikita Khrushchev did not foresee the end of the USSR or he would not have given the Crimea to Ukraine, which officially broke away from the USSR in 1991. Nevertheless, Nikita Khrushchev continues to make trouble even from the grave. Had Khrushchev kept the Crimea inside the USSR, we might not be reading about it today.

If we do see a ceasefire in the war started by Putin, no one in the West is likely to be happy with it. And because the accord will please so few, it is likely to be hailed by the Progressive Left and the MSM as a defeat for President Trump who, by the way, did not start the war and would just as soon be shed of it.

Meanwhile, it would be wise to recall that Demographics and Geopolitics are major factors. Two factors that give Putin the upper hand for now.

©2025. William Hamilton.