Minimax and why Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy Reminds Western Leaders That Russia Isn’t Looking for Peace in Its Latest Posture
- john raymond
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not “being difficult” when he tells Western leaders that Russia is not looking for peace; he is stating the only rational conclusion available under minimax reasoning. Russia’s current posture—maximal territorial demands paired with continued strategic strikes and diplomatic theater—signals an adversary optimizing for coercion and advantage, not reconciliation.
In a minimax frame, Western policy must start from the worst plausible intent consistent with the evidence: that “talks” are an instrument to lock in gains, fracture allied resolve, and buy time to regenerate combat power.
Evidence: Russia’s posture is not a compromise posture. In the Abu Dhabi track, Russia has reiterated demands that Ukraine cede the entire Donbas as a precondition for ending the war, even though Russia does not fully control that territory—an insistence on Ukraine’s formal capitulation, not a negotiated settlement.
Russia has also framed the very concept of a ceasefire as unserious absent its preferred end-state, underscoring that “stopping the killing” is not the objective unless it comes packaged with Ukraine’s strategic disablement.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to prosecute the war with winter pressure against Ukraine’s energy system, a classic coercive lever designed to degrade civilian endurance and political stability during negotiations rather than to build confidence for peace.
That combination—unmoved political demands plus escalatory coercion—defines a posture of compellence, not peacemaking.
Zelenskyy’s reminder is therefore descriptive, not rhetorical. He has been explicit that Russia must compromise and that security guarantees are central to any durable settlement, warning that paper arrangements without enforceable backing merely defer the next assault.
His statement that a U.S. security guarantees document is “100% ready” speaks to Kyiv’s priority: deterrence architecture first, signatures second. This is not obstinacy; it is strategic hygiene learned from decades of Russian bargaining practice—negotiate to gain time, rearm, and return.
Minimax: the logic Western leaders keep resisting. Minimax is not cynicism; it is the baseline decision rule when the counterparty has repeatedly demonstrated hostile intent and a willingness to violate agreements. Under minimax, you evaluate policy by asking: if the adversary is acting in bad faith, what is the worst credible outcome this “peace” enables?
Here the worst credible outcome is not abstract. A settlement built on territorial concessions and ambiguous guarantees can function as a Russian victory mechanism: it legitimizes conquest, weakens Ukraine’s sovereignty, fractures allied consensus, and creates a lull for Russia to recapitalize forces—then renew the war under improved terms.
The evidence that Russia is still bargaining from maximalist premises makes that worst-case not only credible but structurally likely.
Raymond Method application. Pillar One (Regime Security): the Kremlin’s war aims are inseparable from regime survival incentives. A negotiated outcome that looks like defeat is domestically dangerous; an outcome that looks like coerced Ukrainian surrender is domestically stabilizing. That incentive pushes Moscow toward settlements that institutionalize Ukrainian weakness rather than end Russian aggression.
Pillar Two (Asymmetric Warfare): Russia treats negotiation as a battlespace—simultaneously shaping narratives, exploiting Western fatigue, and applying civilian-targeted pressure (energy, terror, displacement) to manufacture “reasonable” concessions.
Pillar Three (Byzantine Traitor-General): Russia’s optimal line is not to “persuade” the West it is peaceful, but to create enough confusion and division inside Western coalitions that enforcement collapses and deterrence becomes non-credible.
In that context, proposals reported as externally brokered “formulas” requiring Ukrainian territorial loss are not peace plans; they are coalition-splitting devices. (Where details come via Russian state messaging, the key analytic point is not the slogan; it is the repeated pattern of maximalist prerequisites and allied pressure dynamics.)
The U.S. linkage problem sharpens Zelenskyy’s warning. Reporting that U.S. security guarantees may be conditioned on Ukraine signing a deal—rather than on Russia demonstrating verifiable withdrawal and compliance—creates perverse leverage: it shifts coercion onto the victim while leaving the aggressor’s incentives intact.
Under minimax, that is backward. Guarantees are supposed to deter renewed aggression; making them contingent on Ukraine accepting a coerced settlement risks producing a “guarantee-shaped” document that cannot survive first contact with renewed Russian escalation.
Implications: what Western leaders must internalize now. If Russia’s posture is compellence, then Western posture must be deterrence plus denial, not mediation-as-substitution-for-power.
That means treating any ceasefire or peace track as an enforcement problem, not a wording problem: verifiable conditions, credible penalties for violation, and immediate defensive capacity for Ukraine that does not wait on Kremlin good behavior.
Zelenskyy’s message is strategically conservative: do not confuse the existence of talks with the existence of peaceful intent, especially when Russia couples negotiations with winter coercion and unchanged territorial demands.
The minimax corollary is blunt but stabilizing: when a proven enemy offers ambiguity, assume their ambiguity is a weapon until proven otherwise.