Representatives from Russia and Ukraine will be in meetings to try to hammer out details of a ceasefire on Monday. But peace is still a long way off.For starters it's only a partial ceasefire—no strikes on energy infrastructure. It's only for 30 days.And the Ukrainians and Russians aren't even meeting with each other. The U.S. will be a go-between.One of the biggest things working against a new agreement, is what happened after Ukraine's last agreement with Russia. And the ones before that.Ukraine says it won't trust a promise from Russia. It needs security guarantees. To understand why, you've got to go back to the birth of independent Ukraine.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What are the prospects for a ceasefire in Ukraine?
Here's what White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt says about prospects for an end to the war in Ukraine.
We have never been closer to peace than we are today.
That may be true, but the current situation is still a very long way from a lasting peace. This week, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia agreed in separate phone calls with President Trump to a limited 30-day ceasefire. The exact details are in dispute, but it would at least cover attacks on energy infrastructure, like power plants.
Both sides are already accusing one another of violating the agreement. Meetings are scheduled for Monday in Saudi Arabia to work out the details. Here's State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce on Wednesday.
Everyone now is at a table to get to the same goal.
That's a metaphorical table in this case because Ukrainian and Russian officials will be in separate rooms with the U.S. acting as a go-between. All this for a partial one-month ceasefire. One of the biggest things working against an agreement to end the war is what happened after Ukraine's last agreement with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the ones before that.
There is a long history of broken promises. In 2019, I signed with him the deal. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, brought up that history in the Oval Office last month. It's what prompted the pushback from Vice President J.D. Vance and the argument that ultimately ended the meeting.
He broke the ceasefire. He killed our people, and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn't do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?
Consider this. Ukraine says it won't trust a promise from Russia. It needs security guarantees. To understand why, you've got to go back to the birth of independent Ukraine. From NPR, I'm Juana Somers. It's Consider This from NPR. On August 24th, 1991, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Ukraine declared its independence.
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Chapter 2: Why is the current ceasefire agreement disputed?
We are happy to feel our life without Moscow, without Russia.
Kirill Stetsenko, a Ukrainian in Kyiv, spoke to NPR about it a few days later.
We can't believe in this. Ukraine struggled for independence many hundred years. And now that is real.
But almost immediately, Ukrainians worried about Russia trying to claim parts of their country. And their fear was justified.
Within a few short days after that, spokesperson for president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, made a claim for Ukrainian territory. Serhii Plahy is a historian at Harvard University. And when reporters asked him what borders he had in mind, he referred to the Crimea and Donbass.
So that was the first case when the new democratic Russian leadership put in question the borders between Russia and Ukraine.
I wanted to talk to him about the long history of broken agreements between Ukraine and Russia that haunts the current peace negotiations, about the reason Ukraine won't trust Russian promises. He says a lot of it goes back to an agreement from 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum.
So once the Soviet Union fell apart, the huge Soviet nuclear arsenal ended up to be stationed on the territory of now four countries. independent states. And Ukraine inherited the biggest chunk of that, aside from Russia.
So what happened in Budapest in 1994, and at that time the president of the United States was Bill Clinton, was that Ukraine and other states that inherited Soviet nuclear arsenal were provided with assurances for their territorial integrity and for their security in exchange for turning the nuclear weapons to Russia.
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