BarcelonaThe hum of the 2024 plenary of the UN General Assembly next Tuesday will be mixed with the flashes still coming from Kursk and the sound of Ukrainian drones near Moscow, all mixing with the allied reluctance to allow Ukraine to launch long-range missiles against targets on Russian soil. All this while Putin’s voice echoes threatening a generalized conflict and admitting for the first time that Russia is in a “state of war” – no longer a special military operation – and that on December 1 the Russian army will have 180,000 more cash, up to a million and a half cash. A recruitment maneuver with still unpredictable consequences in Russian society.
As the elections in the United States approach, the Kremlin is easing the tension, and the war has entered an escalation from which gestures and positions could begin to be glimpsed prior to an armistice, the format of which will depend on what let the votes of the Americans say on November 5.
Depending on the results obtained by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, it will swing towards a more fragile armistice, more circumstantial, or towards a more solid and forward-looking one. With more or less guarantees of being the basis of a lasting peace. The weather and the rhythms we will experience in the coming months will determine the historical future. It is not certain that if Kamala Harris is proclaimed president-elect she will be able to devote herself immediately to peace in Ukraine. It could happen that between November 6, 2024, the day after the polls, and January 20, 2025, the presidential inauguration, a losing Trump will not accept the results and give in to the temptation to mount a similar street riot to the assault on the Capitol in January 2021.
The war has entered an escalation from which gestures and positions prior to an armistice could begin to be glimpsed.
A hypothetical Kamala Harris administration would represent a reinforcement of Western allies and support for Ukraine, and would intensify the policy of deterrence towards Russia. This means time, it doesn’t represent an immediate armistice, but Putin would eventually feel the pressure and might end up agreeing to dialogue: withdrawing maybe not from Crimea but from the Donbass, giving Ukraine border guarantees and accepting Ukrainian entry to NATO
On the other hand, the also hypothetical return of Donald Trump to the White House represents vertigo, immediacy. Trump has always made it clear that he does not think about the future of Ukraine, and that he neither cares nor cares about it. This means undermining NATO, establishing an understanding with Putin and staging an armistice and a negotiation that would culminate in the amputation of Ukrainian territory – Crimea and the Donbass – and the imposition of a neutrality status on Kyiv which would mask another Ukrainian satellite.
Going a little further, what happens on November 5th in the United States can condition and perhaps also determine not only the format of the end of the war but the political and economic consequences of the country that comes out of it and what it has to curl up A Ukraine freed from Putin would be a devastated country, with a contraction of more than 50% of GDP, which would need economic aid equivalent to the Marshall Plan deployed in Europe after the Second World War. But he would have the opportunity to build the democratic structures that he has always left unfinished. In the same way that the withdrawal from Ukraine and the concessions would represent for Russia a humiliation that would end up shaking Putin’s regime and leadership. All of these possibilities are foreshadowing these days, and some must end up emerging sharp and forceful at the end of the climb.
Source: www.ara.cat
