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I don’t think this is about partition. It’s about NATO trying to create a pretext for settlement along these lines — Russia gets to keep the eastern enclaves and Crimea, peacekeepers go into those regions and border areas to keep the two sides apart while political arrangements are made.

This is how the crisis should have been solved in January before Russia moved in. Then millions of people would not have needed to leave many areas of Ukraine. A lot less damage would have resulted. Now clearly Russia wants a bit more, a land bridge from Donetsk to Crimea. They already have a bridge over the narrow opening of the Sea of Azov that connects Russia to Crimea. There is the issue of water being with-held from Crimea due to closure of a canal that previously transported water into northern Crimea from the Dnieper River.

I don’t know if Russia is ready to give up on Odessa, Kherson and some other areas yet. I hope so. This idea of making Ukraine a very weak landlocked state seems to be an over-reach and will not fly with any other countries. The rest of the world is probably ready to indulge Russia with control of just those three areas, and that’s about it, they should take it and run before they start actually losing those gains as well. Not that they have any shortage of generals apparently, every other person on the street in a Russian city is probably a general without knowing it.

Rather than Polish peacekeepers though, it would probably be better to send somewhat more distanced but competent peacekeepers into eastern Ukraine. Canada, for example, has lots of experience (in Bosnia among other places). Or even neutrals like Fiji which has done some good peacekeeping work elsewhere in the world. We don’t want to inflame this situation, bigger European countries are problematic too. Canada would be ideal because the soldiers while professional probably don’t have very much direct connection to the conflict and won’t be looking to make trouble.