Huge question marks remain over Ukraine and Gaza

A most pressing matter is the future of the Ukraine people and that of the people of the Gaza and the Middle East.

- BY LYNN OCKERSZ

Right now, what the future holds for them is virtually anybody's guess. It was expected that the G20 Summit would come out with perhaps broadly outlined plans and processes that would lead to a degree of peace and stability in these regions but this was not be in the absence of the US President.The absence of the US President spoke volumes for the persisting differences between the US and its European allies on the Ukraine and the Gaza. The world was given to understand that the US had formulated a 28-point peace plan for the Ukraine and that it was being studied by the latter and other relevant quarters but even a semblance of deliberation on the plan is yet to emerge.

It is reported that the US plan for Ukraine features the making of very costly concessions by Ukraine to the Russians, such as the granting of increasingly vast swaths of land in Eastern Ukraine to the invading Russians and a definitive end to Ukraine's plans to join NATO. A conceding of these demands would prove very difficult for the Ukrainians and authoritative sources are on record that some 70 percent of Ukrainians are absolutely against the making of these compromises which would amount to a surrendering of Ukraine's sovereignty.

Accordingly, regardless of the Trump administration's reportedly tight deadline to Ukraine to fall in line with the US plan, nothing by way of a Ukraine settlement is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future.