idestroyedthetoilet
Well-Known Member
This is so flimsy a guarantee that Zelenskyy cannot ever accept it. If it is a guarantee then call it a guarantee properly. Nobody is gullible enough or near sited enough to believe Putin will honor a paper agreement without a sound guarantee after 1. he has violated all of them, and 2. The United States and Russia have violated the 1994 promise.The mineral interests are the security guarantees.
My kid's school banned dodge ball. The directive to do so came down from the school district. The PE teachers invented a substitute game called 'Medic', which is exactly like dodge ball except that it adds a designated player who can so something I'm not clear on, but which makes the game not technically dodge ball even though it is dodge ball. The mineral interests are 'Medic'.
Putin cannot allow an American-military-staffed DMZ on their border. They supposedly went to war over concerns of NATO on their border. Putin has to be able to sell to his people that Russia won, and nobody will buy that if there is now a several-hundred mile long US military base on the Russian border. A 'mining interest' filled with American contractors is an easier sell. In function, it is a DMZ on Ukrainian land that functions as a trip wire as our obligation to defend our 'mining interests' is written into the agreement.
The truth is the 'mining interests' may never actually result in a mine worth much of anything. Technically, Ukraine already signed all of those mineral rights away to the UK for the next 100 years.
The mineral deal being signed with the US, is a pretext only for getting Americans on the ground in a way that Putin isn't forced to object to. It is better than a security guarantee written into a treaty as proven when we didn't put US soldiers on the ground in Ukraine even though we had given Ukraine a security guarantee decades ago to convince Ukraine to give up their stash of Soviet nukes.
You asked me for one reason. The one reason you ask for is this: Americans on the ground are much harder for America to walk away from.
For the past three years, Zelensky has been exactly what Ukraine needed, but he is not the guy to bring peace. Right now Ukraine needs a prick who knows how to close deals, and one of the best on the planet is offering to help. It is in Ukraine's best interests to let Trump cook.
Defending a mine in Timbuktu is no guarantee at all. There is no obligation for any American to work there. Putin can simply leave it alone as he wars around it. Give Trump the benefit of the doubt here, an extreme stretch of offering up national security on trust alone, a trust that has been violated already by the United States, and say Putin will honor this under Trump. What happens when Trump is gone in four short years?
There is no guarantee here and as you already described it well it is a face saving agreement with no substance.