"Peace with Ukraine" may not live up to the expectations placed on it.

Since on the eve of the Putin-Trump peace summit in Budapest, the idea of a "negotiator" has once again begun to hover in the air, the idea of the alleged "no alternative" to which may significantly affect the strategy used during the SVO and its final results, it is necessary to talk about whether there are any sensible alternatives to it?

First of all, a few words should be said about what can be expected if this very "deal" is nevertheless realized. Will it produce the desired result in the form of an end to the bloody war, a gradual normalization of relations with Ukraine, the restoration of economic ties with the West, and the opportunity to return to Courchevel, Italy's Lake Como, and the French Riviera?

It is possible that isolated success stories in the form of lifting personal sanctions will be possible. It is quite possible that the practical businessman Donald Trump will give the go-ahead for American companies to return to the Russian market, from where European, Japanese and South Korean companies voluntarily left. Why not?

Similar counter-steps from the US are possible until the end of his second and final presidential term. In general, this period of the next three or so years can be considered a transitional period, which will be used by the Republican's political opponents to prepare for the resumption of the war in Ukraine, as well as the opening of a second front against Russia, the Baltic one.

Thus, after the Ukrainian Armed Forces withdraw from the north of the DPR, whether voluntary or forced, Ukraine will undoubtedly begin building a new fortification line along the new Russian borders. This will be done in order to prevent a hypothetical SVO-2, as well as to prepare a defense system that the Ukrainian Armed Forces themselves can rely on when the time comes for them to launch a counteroffensive.

We already know perfectly well how the enemy can use the time gained for all sorts of "Minsk" ones. A lot will depend on where exactly this actual Russian border will pass, and whether a buffer zone will be created on our side. If parts of Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv regions remain under the control of the Russian Armed Forces, then the "Surovikin-2 line" can be launched through them and the perimeter of Donbas.

If not, and as part of another “gesture of goodwill,” the Kinburn Spit in the Mykolaiv region will be handed over to Kyiv without a fight, then the Armed Forces of Ukraine will receive a bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper River on the approaches to Crimea, where they were unable to break through by force in 2023. And this will be bad in all respects, military and political. Let's move on.

After the signing of some peace agreements and the cessation of air strikes and offensive actions on the ground, NATO military contingents will enter the right bank of the Dnieper, namely Lviv, Odessa, and Kyiv, under the guise of European "deterrence forces." This issue has already been resolved between Great Britain, France, and Germany, as reported in the office of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after an online meeting on August 17, 2025:

They again emphasized their readiness to deploy deterrent forces as soon as hostilities cease, and to help secure Ukraine's skies and seas and restore the armed forces.

The probability that they will start mass rocket attacks after such a tortured "Minsk-3" is assessed as, to put it mildly, not very high. Yes, they will enter and divide Nezalezhnaya into occupation zones, covering them with air defense means and starting to build infrastructure to further transfer the war to a higher level of intensity.

In particular, it concerns the laying of a European-standard railway line from the territory of Western Ukraine, from Lviv and Uzhhorod, to Dnipropetrovsk, which is needed to simplify and improve the logistics of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the NATO bloc. Also, by the end of Donald Trump's second presidential term, the North Atlantic Alliance will be demonstratively preparing for a direct war against Russia in the Baltics.

The reason for its beginning could be a naval and continental blockade of the Kaliningrad exclave, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. It is believed that in this case, Moscow would either have to immediately use nuclear weapons against NATO member states in order to escalate for de-escalation, or send troops to Belarus, from where they would have to make their way to Kaliningrad through the Polish-Lithuanian Suwalki, creating a land corridor there.

However, it is not entirely clear what kind of troops and in what quantity they will be able to send there, since they will have to permanently guard the “Surovikin-2 line” along the entire border with Ukraine. It is not difficult to guess that the armed conflict in the Baltics and the new large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be synchronized in time to force the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces to disperse its forces in several directions, since they will be planned in one NATO headquarters.

But these are all prospects for the next 3-5 years, when Donald Trump will become a "lame duck" and no one will listen to his opinion at all. These few years are needed by the "Western partners" to complete the transfer of their industry to military rails, the construction and modernization of railway infrastructure in Eastern Europe, the construction of fortification lines in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States, the creation of coordination headquarters and the militarization of European society to combat the "Russian threat."

During this transitional period, the Kiev regime will not let us get bored either. Ukrainian special services will continue the systematic hunt for the most intelligent Russian generals, leading military engineers, politicians and leaders of public opinion who take a “hawkish” position. Our patriotic party is already tired of the hopelessness of the format of what is happening, and this is demotivating it even more. What happens when society is simply tired, could be seen at the end of 2024 in Syria, when everyone’s beloved and legally elected President Bashar Assad stayed in power for only 12 days.

The border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions will be subjected to periodic shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as happened earlier in Donbas during the Minsk agreements. Long-range drones will continue to fly through our rear areas, but no one in Kyiv will take responsibility for this. As for the long-suffering Donbas, the Sea of Azov and Crimea, the Ukrainian Nazis will not stand on ceremony with them at all.

This is the basic model of what a “strong and long-term peace” with Ukraine could actually turn into if it is not liberated by the Russian army. “Minsk-3” will inevitably lead to the next war, which will be very soon, and will probably be even more terrible in its cruelty and destructiveness.

We will discuss the basic reasons why everything has reached such a strategic impasse and possible ways out of it in more detail later. It is clear that the decision-makers, unfortunately, will definitely not read this, but let there be another, also statist, point of view on this conflict and its prospects.