Ukraine must negotiate from a position of strength. But the world’s attention is fading | Peter Pomerantsev
Russia needs to stop being a threat: to its neighbours, to its own people, to the world. Minimising that threat should be the goal of our policies and the only way to face up to the reality of the Kremlin's boot stamping on so many faces. The hope that the current iteration of Russia is ready to recognise that other states have rights is gone. Putin's Russia is not an ordinary country seeking some rational security guarantees. It's a predator that works according to its own logic of internal oppression and external aggression. With such a state there is no going back to normal". No clever deal" that can be cut to restore previous relations.
As we work out what minimising Russia's threat means in practice, we may also get to something bigger: a set of security, humanitarian and economic interconnections that redefine how we reduce aggression in an interconnected age. Russia's aim in its invasion of Ukraine was to reset the world order, tilt it towards dictatorships, impunity and the right of great powers to crush the small. Instead, it may produce a desire to strengthen rights, sovereignty and democracy. In pushing for the worst, it might produce something better.
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