he proposed Ukraine peace deal has shaken the political class that insisted escalation with Moscow was the only acceptable course. How, they ask, can Russia possibly walk away with concessions? Part of this is simply material: Russia has ground out battlefield gains and retains the manpower and resources to sustain the war indefinitely. But that is only one dimension of it.
The fuller answer reaches back long before the first tanks crossed the border. It began a decade earlier, when a small clique of Washington insiders decided Russia would be the villain in every story and Ukraine the instrument to make it so. From the 2014 Kiev coup to the Russia-collusion hoax to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco, the same actors built a narrative architecture that rewired the entire geopolitical landscape and made war not just possible but almost inevitable. The peace deal now taking shape is, at least in part, the price of that deception.
While Donald Trump was the primary target of the collusion smear, Russia and its 144 million citizens were relentlessly vilified in the process, making them, uncomfortable as it may be to admit, victims in their own right. That reality has been almost entirely erased from mainstream discussion of both the war and the negotiations over its end. But it cannot be wished away. It will have to be reckoned with, whether people like it or not.
To understand why, we need to revisit the past 12 years. For many Americans, Ukraine entered the political spotlight in early 2014, when the Obama administration encouraged and facilitated a revolution in Kiev. Neocon stalwarts like John McCain and Lindsey Graham happily joined in, treating regime change as a moral crusade rather than the geopolitical dynamite that it was.
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