If a ceasefire in the Winter War of 2022 is accomplished, Ukraine needs a buffer zone large enough to prevent Russia from using "take and talk" tactics to nibble away at Ukrainian territory. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe could be a template to protect Ukraine and provide a fig leaf for Russia about NATO "retreat" that conceals a Russian pivot east.
The war goes on. Ukraine inflicts disproportionate casualties on the Russians who persist in slowly advancing. Russia hopes to freeze Ukrainians with aerial bombardment and Ukraine seeks to throttle Russia's offensive with their own aerial offensive. The shiny object in the deadly grind was Ukraine attacking a Russian Kilo submarine in a Russian Black Sea port, apparently with a suicide UUV. It is unclear how much the sub was damaged.
According to Zelenskyy and Ukrainian officials, the discussions in Berlin focused on a package of five documents that would underpin an eventual peace deal, several of which are dedicated to long‑term security guarantees for Ukraine.
Russia won't accept that. And even if they are really desperate enough to pretend to accept that, we cannot become confused by that outcome. It is not enough to end the war. Russia has to be pointed away from Ukraine and NATO.
Getting a ceasefire without setting Ukraine up for the killing blow as Russia reloads and resumes the war from advanced positions inside its Ukrainian conquests is the problem. We should insist on a new Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
That treaty limited troops and weapons in Europe to eliminate the chance of a "bolt from the blue" offensive. Having enough troops to go to war would require detectable large-scale ground force movement. The original agreement limited armaments within a geographic region:
The CFE Treaty set equal ceilings for each bloc (NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization), from the Atlantic to the Urals, on key armaments essential for conducting surprise attacks and initiating large-scale offensive operations.
In addition:
To further limit the readiness of armed forces, the treaty set equal ceilings on equipment that could be deployed with active units. Other ground equipment had to be place in designated permanent storage sites.
And:
The treaty further limited the proportion of armaments that could be held by any one country in Europe to about one-third of the total for all countries in Europe – the "sufficiency" rule.
All sea-based Naval forces were excluded from CFE Treaty accountability.
Further sub-limits addressed sensitive regions:
In addition to limits on the number of armaments in each category on each side, the treaty included regional limits intended to prevent destabilizing force concentrations of ground equipment.
I think the new geographic scope for active duty ground troops should be from the new, NATO state territory bordering or near Russia and Ukraine to Russia's Ural Mountains. This has advantages for NATO states, Ukraine, and Russia:
- Nobody in "old" NATO wants to deploy many troops east. This means they don't have to.
- Putin could claim this troop limitation amounts to "rolling back" NATO to protect Russia.
- Regional limits could offer reassurance for Russia in Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg, Transnistria, and Crimea; Ukraine could get reassurances in specific regions to protect Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa, for example; and European NATO could have reassurances about limits on Russia's military presence in Belarus, for example.
- Russian security and puppet forces in occupied Ukraine would be limited to non-combat ground forces.
- NATO would have limited "outside" forces in the east; but could instead focus on the logistics infrastructure to move and host reinforcements from old NATO countries in a crisis--which Russia already has on their side of the line.
- America gets justification for maintaining a limited role in NATO in order to achieve American objectives in Europe.
- By pushing Russia's forces east, it implicitly allows Russia to pivot east to face China without explicitly naming China as the real threat. Surely Russia wants its deepening humiliation in the east to end.
- And with more Russian troops weighted to the east, Russia gains the ability to attract allies to counter China.
And really, this deployment would broadly reflect what happened in 2021 as Russia prepared to invade in 2022. Russia needed time to scrape up troops from all of Russia to invade. Yes, it should be more difficult for Russia under this type of agreement. But that is its purpose. And again, it could be spun by Moscow as validating their conquests, rolling back NATO, and preventing NATO from being a threat to Russia. Plus a justification for moving troops closer to China, where they are needed.
I'm not sure how this would affect a European monitoring force in Ukraine. But it probably means that to the relief of Europeans it will be smaller and lighter, especially on the ground. A provision to allow NATO to send more forces east to match any Russian troops sent west (or vice versa, I suppose) should be part of the deal.
If Russia lies about NATO moves to justify moving troops west, NATO would know if Russia is lying and could--if it chooses not to ignore the deployments--declare Russia is violating the agreement and take steps to beef up NATO forces in the east and reinforce the Ukrainians.
Yet Russia may be relieved to have an excuse to treat European Russia as a safe rear area in order to focus on blunting Chinese influence in Central Asia and getting a firmer grip on its Far East territories taken from China in the 19th century that China no doubt covets.
Over time, Russia may get used to friendlier relations with the West. But if not, it will take time for Russia to pose a threat to Ukraine and NATO. As long as the West has the will to act on Russian violations. But that has long been a problem.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: You may also read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.
NOTE: I made the map with mapchart.net. Although the map extends Russia in Europe beyond the Ural mountain eastern boundary of a buffer zone, as near as I can tell.
