Why London’s Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks will fail

There’s one key thing that one should know about Ukraine peace talks scheduled to begin in London today, and that is that they will fail. The reason is simple: Volodymyr Zelensky is being asked to concede Russia’s legal possession of the Crimean peninsula which Moscow annexed in 2014. And Ukraine’s president has said, in the most emphatic possible terms, that he will not do it.

That’s not because Zelensky is pig-headed, a warmonger, or refuses to accept the reality that there is no way for Ukraine ever to recover the lost peninsula. Zelensky cannot accept because such a concession will be political suicide. It runs the strong risk of triggering a civil war inside Ukraine. And it’s constitutionally impossible for him to do so. Whatever compromises Kyiv could reasonably make on the de facto occupation of its territory, the one red line that Kyiv cannot ever cross is to accept the de jure loss of its own lands.