Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto yesterday, at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, proposed that both Russian and Ukrainian troops withdraw 15 km from their current positions, and that UN peacekeepers would monitor the demilitarized zone in between. Then the future of “disputed” areas could be addressed by UN-sponsored referendums.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter yesterday that Indonesia’s roadmap “frankly looks like a twin of the Russian proposal … about the surrender” of Ukraine. He insisted that Russia simply must “withdraw from the sovereign territory of Ukraine,” and that there was no other solution. (https://twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1664936414557921281?cxt=HHwWgoCztaG2hZsuAAAA)
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko explained on Facebook: “There can be no alternative scenarios. Ceasefire without the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine will allow Russia to win time, regroup, fortify the occupied territories and accumulate forces for a new wave of aggression"—as if Russia had not already taken time, regrouped and fortified their positions.
Ukrinform reported that Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, when asked about Indonesia’s proposal, said: “I will try to be polite. It sounds like [a] Russian plan, not [an] Indonesian plan.” Then he called it a “strange plan,” and said that he was consulted on it. He added that, even though world leaders willing to negotiate in the war had lined up in a queue, Ukraine simply needed “the tools for us to finish this war.” (Perhaps this explains why the “Ukrainian Peace Plan” is not meant to be a peace plan.) In his closing remarks, Reznikov told China they should convince Russia to end the war, since China was Moscow’s “older brother.” Ukrinform explained that Reznikov was alluding to “relations between the Soviet Union and the erstwhile Communist bloc,” presumably China.
