By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why There Can Be No Negotiations With Putin

There is a reason that Ukraine defines victory as liberating every inch of its territory. Any territorial concession to Russia, even a small one, would invite further aggression. The pretext might differ, but the objective would be the same: subduing Ukraine. As long as it avoids outright defeat, Russia will use any disputed territory as a launching pad for its next round of expansion, as it did after the Minsk agreements that were supposed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s paramount objective is to avoid a crushing defeat on the battlefield. Nothing less than the survival of his regime is at stake, as the humiliating mutiny led by the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin demonstrated last month. Therefore, Russia needs to create at least the illusion of military achievement. Doing so will allow the Kremlin’s propaganda machine to spin a narrative of revanchism and stoke popular demands for further aggression against Ukraine. This was the playbook Russia followed in Chechnya in the first decade of the millennium when Putin leveraged claims of success in the fight against “terrorism” to concentrate power, weaken democratic institutions, sideline local authorities, and pacify a rebellious region.

But even as Putin fights for his political life, many in the West are still considering short-term solutions that would help keep him in power. Sixteen months of the war in Europe have yet to forge an unconditional anti-Putin coalition. Yet a unified Western policy on Putin, or rather on the need for his removal, is essential for marshaling the material support Ukraine needs to win a decisive victory on the battlefield. The sooner Western governments reach a consensus on Putin—as they did on Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria—the sooner Ukraine will be able to destroy Russia’s invading forces and bring the war to an end.

Throughout the conflict, Ukraine has shown that with timely and consistent help, it can prevail on the battlefield even when its troops are outnumbered. Just as American and British handheld Javelin and NLAW missile systems helped Ukraine halt the advance of Russian tanks around Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion, American high-mobility artillery rocket systems known as HIMARs have since changed the face of the conflict and helped Ukraine liberate a significant amount of territory previously occupied by the Russians. When promptly and consistently supplied, such aid improves the odds of a decisive Ukrainian victory over Russia.

Moreover, advances on the Ukrainian battlefield can catalyze advantageous political developments in Russia, as Prigozhin’s brief rebellion showed. A famous Russian military leader stymied on the battlefield could topple Putin in a coup. The argument, voiced by some Western analysts, that Russia will continue to threaten Ukraine no matter how much territory it reclaims, fails to consider this possibility. As long as Russia is led by Putin, who has stated publicly that he believes “the whole military, economic, and information machines of the West” are turned on Russia, Moscow will remain a permanent threat to Ukraine and the broader transatlantic community. A post-Putin Russia need not see everyone as a threat—and it could cease being a threat to itself.

This is why a unified Western policy on Putin is crucial. If the goal is to prevent Russia from threatening democracies worldwide, allowing it to reach an armistice with Ukraine won’t do much good. Ukraine and its allies must aim to make Russia less anti-Western. Therefore, regardless of what happens at the negotiating table, Putin cannot remain in power.

Some Western officials worry that such a policy would invite dangerous uncertainty. Who would succeed Putin and how that person would behave are unknowable in advance, and some analysts have warned that the collapse of Putin’s regime following a military defeat could trigger the dissolution of Russia as the world knows it today. Such fears have prevented Western governments from supplying arms to Kyiv in quantities sufficient to win the war. The effect has been to prolong the conflict and make it more costly for Ukraine and the world.

To break this vicious circle, Ukraine must finally secure the weapons it needs to prevail on the battlefield and assurance from its Western partners that the leaders of a post-Putin Russia will have the consent of Ukraine. Just as many Western governments support the exiled Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya as a potential political leader of Belarus, and Kyiv supports the members of the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment (a Belarusian volunteer unit fighting for Ukraine) in their ambition to participate in the political life of a liberated Belarus, Ukraine, and its partners should support an alternative to Putin in Russia. Opposition politicians such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and members of Russian military units fighting against Moscow—such as the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom of Russia Legion—should be endorsed by democratic countries and aided in their quest to return Russia to the pantheon of civilized nations. Such efforts to transform Russia’s political landscape are essential because the conflict can only be resolved when Ukraine and its neighbors feel safe from further Russian encroachment.

This is why an armistice like the one that ended hostilities in Korea in 1953 cannot work for Ukraine. That agreement left intact a hostile authoritarian regime in North Korea that, since 2006, has threatened not just South Korea but the entire world with nuclear weapons. The peaceful reunification of Germany in 1990 has been offered as another potential model for Ukraine, but it was made possible by regime changes in Hungary, Austria, and Germany. The end of communist rule in Hungary in 1989 set the stage for the so-called Pan-European Picnic, a massive demonstration during which Hungary and Austria opened their borders and allowed several hundred East German citizens to pass through their territory to West Germany. Protests on both sides ensued, the Berlin Wall came down, and the rest is history. But the bottom line is that the political regime in East Germany had to fall before the country could be reunified.

Russia must make a similarly fundamental change to its domestic and foreign policies before returning to the community of responsible nations. First and foremost, the leaders of a post-Putin Russia would have to demilitarize the country, directing funds away from the army and toward desperately needed social services. In addition, they would have to curtail Russia’s state propaganda machine, which breeds hatred and hostility. As long as the Kremlin opposes the Western transatlantic community to which Ukraine belongs, peace will remain impossible. The war will continue for these reasons until Russia is defeated and Putin’s regime falls. The only question is: How long will that be?

Ukraine seeks as much military assistance as possible because it has the clearest interest in swiftly ending the war. It knows that only victory over—and not just peace with—Russia can guarantee freedom, democracy, and prosperity for Ukraine and the West. And Putin has already revealed how ugly the alternative might be.

At the outbreak of Russia’s invasion last year, many Western experts and most Western governments mistakenly assumed that Kyiv would fall in a matter of days, that Ukrainians would not fight, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would flee or capitulate. The Kremlin made similar assumptions. The war’s course to date has disproved all these predictions. Ukraine stopped Russian forces from taking Kyiv, defeated them in Kharkiv, and drove them back across the Dnieper River, liberating Kherson. Putin’s Bahkmut offensive has deepened his costly mess.

Recent estimates put Russian casualties since the beginning of the full-scale invasion at up to 250,000. Russia has proved unable to guard its border from Ukrainian raids. Ukraine’s counteroffensive may not fully liberate all its currently occupied territories. Still, it could make significant progress in taking back land in the Donbas and breaking through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, thus undermining Russia’s use of Crimea as a staging ground. If Ukrainian forces manage to put Crimea within artillery range as the offensive proceeds over the next several months, Russia may be forced into an untenable position.

Charap nevertheless asserts that “15 months of fighting has made clear that neither side has the capacity—even with external help—to achieve a decisive military victory over the other.” He still assumes that Ukraine cannot force anything better than a military stalemate. This was a questionable assumption even before the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin mutinied against Putin. And Ukraine is not even operating at full force yet. It has not received the complete repertoire of Western systems, including American F-16s: the Biden administration recently agreed to allow allies to transfer them to Ukraine. Nor has Ukraine received enough long-range missiles, even though the United Kingdom delivered Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles in May.

Because the Ukrainians are only partially equipped, Kyiv’s full warfighting capabilities are still unknown. But the pattern over the last 15 months is apparent. Ukrainians, despite losses, have shown capacities—to adapt, learn quickly, and rapidly deploy new systems in the theater—that far exceed Russia’s. If anything, the problem has been the lag in delivering Western equipment for political and logistical reasons. There is no telling what the Ukrainians will be able to achieve once all the promised systems are on the battlefield.

 

Kyiv’s Full Warfighting Capabilities Are Still Unknown

Putin did not expect a drawn-out war, which would have required far more planning, training, and investment in military production than the Kremlin undertook. Russia’s war effort has stumbled from one failure to the next: infighting among the military command, ammunition shortages, a sudden and disorganized mobilization of reluctant conscripts, confused and contradictory propaganda, and a lack of drone capabilities. (In desperation, Russia has had to source drones from Iran.) It is also worth noting that Russia has lost plenty of wars: the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and the Afghan War. Each defeat provoked domestic stress and upheaval.

Although Prigozhin’s uprising was not a coup, an armed military group took over a Russian city—Russia’s operational hub for the war in Ukraine—and marched within 125 miles of Moscow. A deal supposedly brokered by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko saw Prigozhin relocate to Belarus. Others will learn the lesson that rather than lashing out when cornered, Putin negotiates.

But evidence of stress in the Russian ruling circles was abundantly visible even before Prigozhin’s rebellion. For months, Russian military bloggers revealed bitter infighting between the intelligence services and the Russian military command. In private, Russian elites have confessed their disapproval of the war to exiled Russian journalists, apparently to try to keep their reputations clean in anticipation of a Russian loss.

 

Ukrainians Would Rather Live In A Free Ukraine With No Water Or Electricity Than Under Russia’s Thumb

Charap dismisses the significance of Ukraine’s partially pushing back the Russian occupation. But Ukraine’s liberation of Russian-occupied land makes a massive difference to the liberated. As the world witnessed during the joyful celebrations after the Russians retreated from the outskirts of Kyiv and, later, from Kherson, Ukrainians under Russian occupation live in fear and face terrible atrocities. Ukrainians have clarified that they would rather live in a free Ukraine with no water or electricity than under Russia’s thumb.

A military stalemate is indeed possible. And at some point, negotiations with Russia will be needed to end this war. But Ukraine should start negotiating only when it is in the most vital possible position; it should not be rushed into talks when Russia shows no interest in any settlement terms other than Ukraine’s surrender. Starting negotiations now would mean accepting Putin’s maximalist terms. However, if Russia suffers further setbacks on the battlefield, talks could proceed from a better starting place. The most crucial point, which Ukraine’s allies agree on, is that Ukraine must define the right moment for negotiations. That may or may not be when Ukraine’s territory is liberated. The key is for Ukraine to maintain flexibility in its decisions about its territory and the path toward a just peace.

If and when negotiations take place, they must be accompanied by security arrangements for Ukraine that would prevent Russia from regrouping and launching another attack. NATO membership for Ukraine would do the trick; anything less than an unambiguous commitment to Ukraine joining NATO with a delineated path forward would only set up another round of Russian aggression and would also signal to China that aggression can pay. Since Ukraine’s accession to NATO will take time, enhanced security arrangements between key NATO members and Ukraine must be agreed on and implemented in the interim. Experience shows that equivocation about Ukraine’s place in Europe invites Russian aggression rather than deters it. And many examples over the past century indicate that appeasement never leads to durable peace.

Charap’s argument rests on the premise that, in the foreseeable future, Ukraine cannot win a sustainable victory that includes recapturing all its territory. He concludes that ambiguity about its place in Europe will be Ukraine’s fate. But he is far too pessimistic. Kyiv’s friends should not assume that Russia holds all the cards.

The death, destruction, and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is enormous. That a brutal large-scale war could take place on the European continent seemed almost unimaginable two years ago. The accumulating costs—plus the uncertainties of what will happen both on the battlefield and in the 2024 U.S. election—provide a reason to seek some way to stop the violence. 

There is a huge problem in trying to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is Russia itself. Moscow has broken every security-related agreement it has signed with Ukraine in the past 30 years. These include the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, whereby Ukraine renounced its nuclear arsenal—at the time, the third largest in the world—in return for a pledge by Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to respect its independence, sovereignty, and existing borders. That was followed by the 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, in which both sides agreed to work toward a strategic partnership. At the time, Boris Yeltsin, on his first official visit to Kyiv as Russian president, said, “We respect and honor the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” Yet his handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, repeatedly made it clear that he had no intention of accepting these agreements. In 2008, he told U.S. President George W. Bush, "Ukraine is not a real country.” Three years later, he told former U.S. President Bill Clinton that he was not bound to honor any agreements on Ukraine signed by Yeltsin. And in 2021, Putin published a 5,000-word essay called “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” arguing that there was no such thing as Ukrainian nationality. How can one assume that Russia’s behavior would be different this time?

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive unfolds, it is premature to write that “neither side” can “achieve a decisive military victory” or claim that “regardless of how much territory Ukrainian forces can liberate,” Russia will “pose a permanent threat to Ukraine.” The fighting is intense, and this counteroffensive is the first in a series of offensives over the coming months. Ukraine appears to be making incremental hard-fought territorial gains, but Russia claims it is repulsing them. Ukraine could make more gains if it can secure more and better Western weapons. Its soldiers’ morale remains high as they fight for national survival. Russian troop morale is dwindling, and the armed forces continue to perform below par.

Another part of Putin's problem was revealed when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, staged a mutiny, calling into question Putin’s grip on Russia. And even before his rebellion, Prigozhin admitted that Ukraine was building one of the strongest armies in the world.

 

No One To Talk To

Putin’s war aims are not limited. His original objectives were to conquer all of Ukraine, overthrow its government, and ensure Russia’s perpetual domination of the country while simultaneously eradicating Ukrainian statehood and nationhood. Although Putin failed to take Kyiv in three days, there is no evidence that he has abandoned those goals. From his perspective, they may take longer to accomplish. As long as he remains in power, or if his successor shares his imperial mindset, Russia’s aspirations in Ukraine will not change. At this point, he has repeatedly said that the minimum conditions for negotiating with Kyiv would be the Ukrainian acceptance of the loss of the four territories that Moscow claims to have annexed, even though Russia does not fully control them. How can Ukraine survive as a viable state and maintain national unity with the loss of the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia?

Charap acknowledges that “the two countries will be enemies long after the hot war ends” but suggests that an armistice involving a form of a frozen conflict or some territorial concessions by Ukraine is probably the best way forward. Given Russia’s past and present behavior, it is clear that an armistice would be a temporary solution while Russia regroups and plans its next attack or formulates new ways of undermining Ukraine. 

 Diplomacy between the West and Russia is almost nonexistent because European and U.S. representatives have been consistently lied to by Russian officials since the war began. When Western diplomats responded to the fanciful “treaties” presented by Russia to the United States and NATO in December 2021, they met with Russian prevarication, including outright denials that Moscow had any plans to invade Ukraine. The leaders of France and Germany have occasionally talked with Putin since February 2022 but to no avail. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also had several unproductive conversations with Sergey Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. So with whom would this U.S. envoy talk in Russia? Moscow has shown no sign of interest in having serious conversations with Ukraine or the West.

During the Balkan wars, despite disagreements, the Yeltsin administration was willing to cooperate with the West and did not see it as the enemy. Russia has since changed. In the past few months, Russian officials have amplified their criticism of the West for starting and prolonging the war and even blamed the West for Prigozhin’s ill-fated mutiny. Russian forces have doubled down on bombing civilian targets in Ukraine and risk catastrophe in repeated attacks and fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. And the attempts by the Chinese government, African leaders, and the pope to mediate the conflict have so far failed to moderate Russian actions. Putin believes he can outlast the West and win on the battlefield. The United States and its allies have learned from their past mistakes to take Putin’s words seriously when he repeats his commitment to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine as well as reverse what he calls the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century,” the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin will continue until Russia’s aggression is stopped on the battlefield, not at the negotiating table.

 

 

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