A Proposal For A Russo-Ukrainian Peace Deal - The Armistice Day Plan

Which does not involve NATO membership or US/NATO "boots on the ground"...

Putin wants Ukraine and Crimea for reasons no one is talking about: Russia's economy is based on extraction/production of fossil fuels and mineral resources. Russia continues to sell low and moderate enriched uranium to the US and the West, about $1 billion worth to the US alone, and the Gazprom pipeline across Ukraine is still operating, through which billions of dollars worth of natural gas and potentially oil flows to Europe - oddly enough, being in an active war zone, this pipeline (unlike the rather more inaccessible Nordstream pipelines) has never come under shell or rocket fire. Most of this extraction/production activity is now in Russia's Far East and Siberia - and that's where a lot of Russia's heavy machinery production is, in places like Omsk, Khabarovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Barnaul, as well.

And this region is highly vulnerable to Chinese incursion - all it takes is a quick move over the Amur river - you can see China from Omsk. And the Chinese have attempted it before, in the 1970s, when Chinese forces got nearly to Irkutsk, before the Soviet Army threw them back across the border. The Russian Army isn't close to being as strong as the Soviet Army, and the Chinese PLA is far, far stronger than the PLA of 50 years ago. And the Chinese have redrawn their maps and have laid claims to this Far East and Siberian territory, and perhaps it is a matter of time before the Chinese will figure that the Russian Army has been attritted sufficiently for the Chinese to make a move which will be highly advantageous to them - right now they import about 85% of their energy resources, a lot from Russia.

Ukraine is rich with fossil fuels and rare earth mineral resources - the second largest stock of lithium ore in Europe, amongst other rare earth minerals, especially in Eastern Ukraine (and stretching across to Romania), and in Crimea and in the Black Sea south of Crimea and Odessa - there has been a lot of exploratory drilling going on in this area and has been since 2014. Turkey is active in this as well. And these parts of Ukraine and Crimea have warmwater port facilities (at Sevastopol, and Feodosia on Crimea, and Mariupol and Taganrog on the Sea of Azov adjacent to the Black Sea), unlike Vladivostok, so transport of resources can go on year round - and there is no threat of Chinese incursion. So there are very good reasons, that Putin, with his PhD in Natural Resource Economics (1997) from the St Petersburg Mining University, wants Ukraine and Crimea, so badly.

And this could be part of a peace deal, because, as Putin has found out, the infrastructure for extraction, processing, storage, and transshipment of fossil fuels and minerals (lithium burns in air an makes for spectacular fires which can't be put out until the lithium is gone) is highly vulnerable to rocket attack - and without a peace deal in place Putin will be unable to use these resources even though he may have captured the land. So there are these considerations as well that could come into play.

OK, so here’s the plan:

1. A cessation of hostilities to take place on 21 January, at 21:21:21 Moscow/Kyiv time - that’s 9:21:21 pm. Full stop, no more weapons fired after this time, no more ordnance arriving on target after this time - which would involve a bit of calculation as to flight time, but it can be done. Explosions of land mines do not count, but no new mines to be laid after this time.

2. Hostilities cease at the stop lines achieved by the two sides at 21:21:21 Moscow/Kyiv time, this stop line will be the western/northern border of the Autonomous Regions of Luhansk/Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporhizhzhia/Zaporhozhia, and Kherson.

3. A group of Autonomous Regions will be formed, as follows:

   The western/northern border will be the stop line as mentioned above in Paragraph 2, the northern/eastern/southern border of the Autonomous Regions will be the border of the Russian Federation adjacent to Luhansk/Lugansk and Donetsk Oblasts; a line midway between the lands of the Russian Federation and the lands of Donetsk and Zaporhizhzhia/Zaporhozhia in the Azov Sea beginning at the border of the Russian Federation at the northern land extent of the Azov Seam, and continuing down to the Kerch Strait; then to a line midway between the lands of the Russian Federation in Krasnodar Krai, such parts of Georgia occupied by the Russia Federation lying on the Black Sea, and the land of Georgia, and the coastlines of Crimea and Kherson Oblast; terminating at a line drawn from North to South in the Black Sea, originating at the western border of Kherson Oblast, and terminating at that point in the Black Sea either defined as international waters, or recognized to be a part of Turkey on the south. It may be more convenient to make the Autonomous Regions - including Crimea - one contiguous and united region, under one name, although comprised of the regions mentioned above, as a confederation.

4. This Autonomous Region (or set of regions, or confederation thereof) shall not in any way be a part of either the Russian Federation, or Ukraine. It may be a part of both BRICS and the EU, or neither, but it may not be a part of BRICS and not of the EU, or vice versa - it’s both or none. It will not be a part of NATO, or any Russian-involved or -led counterpart; it will maintain its own armed forces and police to an extent necessary to assure domestic order, and the citizens will have a right to keep and bear military arms. A duty of the citizens between the ages of 16 and 50 to keep, bear, and become and remain proficient in the use and care of military arms, and other aspects of the military sciences, may be prescribed as a disincentive against invasion by either Russia or Ukraine.

5. The ownership of the resources of the Autonomous Regions shall lie with the Autonomous Regions. They may enter into lease agreements with Ukraine, or Russia, or both, or neither, to make arrangements for extraction and sale of these resources. The leases shall not operate as a sale or other alienation of the lands of the Autonomous Regions, but merely as a license to extract, process, and transport said resources. Reversion, whether by operation of law or in the event of breach of lease conditions, shall always be to the lessor, the Autonomous Regions; no lease shall cede sovereignty over its lands, and lands within the Autonomous Regions shall not be sold to any person not a citizen of the Autonomous Regions. No company operating in any way on the lands of the Autonomous Regions and incorporated therein shall have more than 49% of foreign ownership, and only companies incorporated in the Autonomous Regions shall have the right to do business therein. It is expected that some part of the profits from these business concerns will go towards rebuilding and restoration of the lands and towns in the Autonomous Regions for civilian usage - to include demining and removal of military hardware and materiel - and when safe, to bring those people forced to seek refuge in other places back to their home places.

6. The language to be spoken and written in the Autonomous Regions will be Interslavic/Medžuslovjansky, a constructed language which is mutually intelligible to speakers of both Ukrainian and Russian, which has both Latin and Cyrillic orthography, but which is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. Dictionaries and resources for learning and translating into Interslavic are available for both Russian and Ukrainian speakers -

and notes/links therein.

The incentives for making this peace/armistice agreement are, over and above the cessation of hostilities between two peoples who have close familial and cultural ties between each other, the cessation of the waste of human lives and their creative potentials - the possibility of great commercial and monetary gains. And these gains are possible only through co-operation; if one or both sides do not co-operate, it is all too easy for one side to “piss in the other’s cornflakes”, to prevent economic gains from taking place on the other side, all aspects of lithium and fossil fuel extraction being quite flammable, with the added peril of contamination of land by fallout from toxic smoke from a lithium fire - and such contamination can persist for decades if it gets into the groundwater and soils.

So it really comes down to a simple choice - continue to waste resources and people, or stop, and potentially prosper….