This is John Batchel, speaking to Serhi Ploki, the distinguished Ukrainian history professor, Harvard University.

His book, Russo, Ukrainian War. The book is published last year 23, and it comes now to what he anticipated, which is a trading territory,

for a ceasefire for a peace deal, negotiation in some fashion,

anticipating that Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 of 2015 are not adequate.

Russia wants to annex Crimea.

Will Mr. Zelensky agree? The conversation with Mr. Trump points in that direction. It all comes down to who moves first, who appeases whom,

and can the deal actually calm everybody down enough to restore some order to Ukraine and start

the rebuilding?

Here's Serhi Ploki about the appeasement.

Well, absolutely.

And that was something that the United States, Germany, the NATO allies in Europe, we are trying to implement and

implement very often in the Russian version of the agreements, the way how Russia read those

agreements.

The key sticking point there was what should come first in the implementation of the Minsk

agreements, either elections on the territory controlled by Russia or Ukraine taking control of its own borders and then conducts elections on the basis of its

laws and under its control.

Russia insisted on elections first under the Russian control, military control,

and then taking this region, using them as Trojan force,

putting them into the political body of Ukraine,

and really destabilizing Ukraine,

precluding the situation in which Ukraine would be able to apply to the

European Union, to try to get closer to the West, to NATO.

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