Rob

incredibly motivated by absolute contempt for the notion of Ukrainian nationality and independence, then satisfying, like making pragmatic concessions on Ukrainian neutrality or bringing weapons back further from Russia's border, maybe that won't be the thing that will enable a ceasefire to get over the line.

So what are the main obstacles to a ceasefire deal right now in your mind?

And what are the elements you think need to be in it so we don't just set ourselves up for some other future disaster?

Yeah, I guess on the Ukrainian side, their reluctance to reach any ceasefire agreement with Russia is like largely based on the fact that I think they don't expect Russia to stick with it, right?

I mean, like Russia's torn up all of the previous agreements that they've had with Ukraine.

And it's an understandable suspicion that basically Russia will just take the opportunity to rearm, to refocus, to regroup.

And then whenever the time feels right to them to basically reinitiate the war and try to take more territory.

What strategy do you have in mind for assuaging that fear and indeed like making that outcome

less likely.

So the idea with the snapback guarantees is I guess that you might worry that Russia's strategy would be to like have a ceasefire for a bit to like weaken, I guess, the assistance that the West is providing to Ukraine.

And then they can restart the war and then we have to kind of reorganize ourselves and very gradually like ramp up the support for Ukraine again.

And at every point we have to like have the political debate again about whether we want to do the sanctions and whether we want to arm them with this and that.

And so the way to like deter them is to pre-commit to say, as soon as there is any violation, all of these things automatically come back into place.

And I think, did I read your proposal right there?

they would in fact come into place automatically or like you would need to vote them down rather than vote them up basically so that they, I guess someone would have to adjudicate, I suppose, whether the ceasefire has been violated.

But has that approach been used in other ceasefires successfully?

Yeah.

I think part of your model is the porcupine defense model, which I guess is during the period of a ceasefire, as I understand it, you're thinking the West would say, we will only supply Ukraine with weapons that would be useful for defending and retaining territory, not for regaining territory.

But that would immediately flip if the ceasefire were violated by Russia.

Then we would start rearming them with materials that they could potentially use to regain territory from Russia.