As the war in Ukraine grinds through yet another year, a renewed push for diplomacy has emerged from the West, driven in large part by a desire for stability and a strategic pivot. However, the latest flurry of backroom meetings, envoy visits, and tentative proposals does not yet inspire confidence that peace is within reach. If anything, it highlights the yawning gulf between a desire to end hostilities quickly and the intractable realities on the ground. At the heart of the emerging proposal is a controversial trade-off: a ceasefire conditioned on Ukraine freezing the conflict lines as they currently stand, in exchange for Russia halting further advances. On paper, this might seem like a pragmatic step to stop the bloodshed. But pragmatism, in this context, comes at a steep moral and political cost.

Even the momentum behind these talks appears more tactical than transformative, driven by political timelines rather than a genuine reckoning with the complex roots and........

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