By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why it is too soon for a lasting diplomatic settlement

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday compared himself to Peter the Great, drawing parallels with the tsar who waged war on Sweden and said the campaign in Ukraine stems from Russia's 'fundamental values while drawing parallels between Peter's founding of St. Petersburg and his own government's annexation of territory saying: We will undoubtedly succeed in solving the tasks that we face. Putin says Russia aims to acquire new territories.

The particulars of the comparison were likely not a coincidence as Sweden and Finland have in recent weeks broken from historical positions of neutrality and formally applied to join NATO, a direct rebuke of Russian aggression and a particular source of irony given Putin’s stated concerns about Ukraine’s own attempts to join the Cold War-ear alliance.

"During the war with Sweden, Peter the Great didn't conquer anything, he took back what had always belonged to us, even though all of Europe recognized it as Sweden's. It seems now it's our turn to get our lands back."

And while earlier we stated why Russia's early failures don't make it less dangerous, Ukraine should have no peace at any price.

As Russia's war in Ukraine enters its fourth month, calls are growing in Western Europe and the United States for a diplomatic push to end the war. In late May, Italy proposed a four-point peace plan for Ukraine that would culminate in sanctions relief for Russia. Not long after, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, speaking at Davos, called on Ukraine to cede Russia's territory and begin negotiations immediately. And at the beginning of June, French President Emmanuel Macron repeated his call to not "humiliate" Russia. In the halls of power, a consensus seems to be emerging: give Moscow land in exchange for peace.

In Ukraine, the opposite view has taken hold. Speaking directly to Kissinger's comments, President Volodymyr Zelensky retorted, "Those advising Ukraine to give away something to Russia are always unwilling to see ordinary people. According to a May poll, he is joined in this view by more than 80 percent of Ukrainians opposed territorial concessions. Unsurprisingly, a population attacked so brutally and unjustly rewarded it.

Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are right: pressuring Ukraine into a negotiated settlement with territorial concessions would not lead to long-term peace and stability in Europe. Instead, it would reward Russian military aggression in the short term, create a new swath of instability in the heart of Europe, and effectively condone Russian war crimes. A peaceful settlement sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice—in this war, at this moment—it would yield no lasting peace.

 

The problem with peace

For starters, proposals that Ukraine gives up territory to Russian control create a moral hazard. The war in Ukraine is not akin to an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century conflict in which a province might be handed from one country to another without catastrophic consequences for most of the people who live there. Russian President Vladimir Putin's war is a war of national extermination. He has made no secret of his aim to destroy Ukraine's cultural and national identity. In the parts of Ukraine they occupy, Russian forces have established "filtration camps" where they question Ukrainians and deport them against their will to Russia. They have committed mass killings and rapes. They have destroyed Ukrainian culture, targeting historical sites, looting museums, and burning books. These tactics are reminiscent of the Stalinist methods employed against Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940, when the Soviets occupied the Baltic states and sought to erase national identity through mass deportations and forced Russification. Russia's crimes in Ukraine today are not excesses of war committed in the heat of battle but expressions of national policy.

Therefore, those who call on Ukraine to give up territory must own up to the consequences. Millions of people would never return to their homes. Thousands of civilians would be killed, tortured, and raped. Children would be taken from their parents. The Ukrainians remaining under Russian occupation would be stripped of their national identity and placed under permanent, hostile submission. Professors, teachers, writers, journalists, civic leaders, local activists, and anyone with what Putin has termed a "Nazi" (read: Ukrainian) identity would probably be harassed and perhaps imprisoned or deported. Accepting further Russian occupation of Ukraine would mean accepting these inevitable moral and ethical consequences. The atrocities would not stop if the fighting ended. On the contrary, surrendering territory to achieve a peace dictated by Moscow would vindicate such tactics and lock in their consequences forever.

 

Just a band-aid

Advocates of a diplomatic settlement are also unrealistic about its long-term implications for European peace, security, and deterrence. Underlying their proposals is the assumption that a negotiated settlement now would lead to a permanent solution in which Ukraine gives up the territory now under Russian occupation—namely, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and perhaps Kherson and other regions—and an independent rump state would develop freely to pursue its ambitions of European integration. The idea is to emulate past settlements in which territory was partitioned, and stability ensued, such as the division of Germany in 1945 and the Korean armistice of 1953. 

But Ukraine is a profoundly different case. Since his February 24 speech that launched the war, Putin has explicitly stated that he intends to destroy Ukrainian independence writ large. A settlement that surrenders some Ukrainian territory to Russia is unlikely to end Russia's desires to deny Ukraine true nationhood. The Soviet Union accepted West Germany as a sovereign country during the Cold War. Still, Putin would never do the same for Ukraine, which he fundamentally does not see as an independent nation.

The Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, for their part, would in no way resemble East Germany. The Soviets sought to make that country the beacon of state socialism. They wanted it to be communist and under their control, not eliminated or Russified. Even if Russia wanted to rebuild the Donbas or any other part of Ukraine it occupies, it doesn't have the resources to do so. If ceded to Russia, these territories—already leveled to the ground—would remain no man's lands: zones of lawlessness and human rights abuses.

A divided Ukraine would not resemble the Korean armistice, either. In that case, on the northern side of the 38th parallel, millions of people suffer under a totalitarian dictatorship. At the same time, 50 million South Koreans enjoy freedom, well-being, and a measure of security in the south. But as long as Russia occupies parts of Ukraine, it will seek to undermine any independent Ukrainian government through force, political subversion, and economic pressure.

Another critical difference: to the extent that both the German and Korean solutions worked, they did so thanks to U.S. security guarantees and U.S. troops. West Germany was made a member of NATO, South Korea signed a U.S. defense treaty, and both countries hosted tens of thousands of U.S. troops. In the case of Ukraine, extending NATO membership to the government could, in theory, back up a territorial settlement. Absent NATO membership, one could imagine a different set of reassurances that could provide the security underpinnings for long-term stability for a sort of West Ukraine. The United States might, for example, station troops in Ukraine on a long-term basis, and it (and perhaps other countries, as well) might offer a security guarantee on the level of NATO's Article 5 or the U.S.–South Korean bilateral defense arrangements. But such guarantees remain unlikely.

Western Europe seems no more willing to provide Article 5 guarantees to Ukraine than it did at the 2008 Bucharest summit, where members settled on Ukrainian NATO membership as a long-term objective but laid out no meaningful path to achieve it. Based on our conversations with officials in the Biden administration, even the United States does not seem ready to offer Ukraine security guarantees akin to what it provided West Germany or South Korea; instead, it is planning to continue to provide only arms and intelligence. Moreover, the Kremlin is likely to insist that any settlement with Ukraine include Ukrainian commitments to give up NATO membership in favor of some neutrality, along with a pledge not to base foreign troops. In any case, those urging Ukraine to surrender territory seldom back up their preferred settlement by insisting that the country be welcomed into NATO or given hard security guarantees by the United States. These omissions inspire little confidence that such proposals are realistic.

At best, Russian-occupied Ukraine would be the site of another so-called frozen conflict, but even that concept is a misnomer and illusion. Frozen conflicts imply stable permanency, but they are anything but that. As with Luhansk and Donetsk, where the invasion began, gray zones often become launching pads for greater aggression. Moscow's occupation of Crimea, another so-called frozen conflict, has allowed Russian forces to impose an economic blockade, cutting off vital agricultural exports from Ukraine and igniting a global food crisis. Creating more gray zones in Ukraine might produce a tenuous short-term stop to the fighting. Still, as recent history has shown, they would also enable the Kremlin to use these territories to destabilize Ukraine and Europe and rebuild its strength.

 

Bad intentions

The diplomatic solution proposed by Italy, to its credit, does not insist on a unilateral Ukrainian surrender of territory. The four-part framework includes a cease-fire and demilitarization; Ukrainian neutrality plus security guarantees; autonomy for Crimea and the Donbas, with both remaining as part of Ukraine; and withdrawal of Russian forces combined with the lifting of sanctions. Judging by its public statements in the early weeks of the war, Ukraine might accept something like these terms if they could be realized.

But they are not likely to be. For one thing, in 2013, the Kremlin already had a good deal in Ukraine: the country was officially neutral, its security relations with the West were minimal, and Putin's man, Viktor Yanukovych, was its president. That wasn't good enough for Putin: he forced Yanukovych to reject a modest trade agreement with the European Union and thus precipitated a democratic uprising. In the years since, Putin's appetite has only grown. Predictably, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already dismissed the Italian proposal.  

Even if the Kremlin announced tomorrow that it accepted a diplomatic framework as the basis for negotiation, there would be a good reason to remain skeptical of its chances. The Italian deal, for example, is similar to the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which started with a cease-fire, included local control for the Donbas, and ended with restoring Ukraine's eastern international boundary. Russia did not take Minsk seriously as anything but a platform to escalate demands. It is unlikely to treat a diplomatic proposal any better today.

Anyone who still believes in Moscow's intention to take such frameworks seriously should study its behavior in Syria, where the Russians treated every arrangement as an opportunity to advance its position on the ground. For negotiations to work, all parties at the table must want a solution, be sincerely engaged in the process, and abide by the ultimate compromise. Putin has shown no inclination to do that so far, and he is unlikely to change his behavior as long as he sees any pathway to a win in Ukraine.

                                                           

Too early for an endgame

Western policymakers must accept a harsh truth in Ukraine: the war will likely grind on for some time. At this point in the conflict, the West should think less about what Ukraine should give to Russia and how to avoid humiliating Putin and more about what it can do to put Ukraine in the best possible position. The ultimate argument of those who wish Ukraine to surrender land unilaterally is that the country cannot prevail in the war—that, as The New York Times editorial board put it, regaining territory "is not a realistic goal."

But those who doubt Ukraine's capabilities should consider how far the country has accomplished. Just as initial assumptions of a quick Russian victory were wrong, current assumptions of a slow but unstoppable Russian advance may be off, too. Ukrainian offensives to regain territory in the south and east of the country may prove difficult. But with its limited forces, Russia may be unable to hold all the territory it has taken. Nobody knows what the fortunes of war may bring. In private conversations with the two of us, senior U.S. military and civilian officials have shared mixed views of how the battle is likely to go and acknowledged that they are uncertain. Uncertainty is a questionable basis for making weighty decisions that have baleful consequences for millions of people—such as urging Ukraine to give up territory or pressuring it to stop fighting. At this stage, there is no basis to allow Putin to win at the negotiating table what he has failed to achieve on the battlefield. 

Ukrainian military success is not inevitable. But it is possible. Putin will not be impressed by firm speeches from Western leaders. What he may well respect, however, is a defeat on the ground, which could convince him to negotiate a settlement that he could portray through his propaganda machine as a victory. Putin is counting on the West to lose patience in a long war and capitulate as energy and food prices rise. And although the Russian people are famed for their ability to endure hardship, they were promised a quick "special military operation"—not years of conflict that make it difficult to live everyday lives. Their patience will wear thinner if Russia loses on the battlefield.

The United States, Europe, and Ukraine's other friends have a responsibility to help Ukraine prevail commensurate with that possibility. The goal now for the West is to thwart an adversary—not to convince or pressure Ukraine to give up. That means sending more arms to Ukraine and putting more economic pressure on Russia.

Such a plan does not rule out negotiations. Zelensky and his government have not done so. They showed more commitment to negotiations in the early weeks of the war than the Kremlin. Ukraine is in the most favorable position.

The twentieth century's two world wars are an endless source of precedents and analogies. The lead-up to World War II produced the Munich analogy, an allusion to the 1938 British and French decision to permit Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. Where Munich became shorthand for appeasement. The aftermath of the war produced the Nuremberg analogy, a reference to the public trials of the surviving leaders of the utterly defeated Nazi regime. "Nuremberg" now stands for "unconditional surrender."

As long as Ukrainians are willing to fight for their homeland and all of Europe, the West must support them. Peace may sound like an appealing talking point, but Ukrainians know that it cannot come at any price. Western policymakers should listen.

Whereby it should not be forgotten that the US and UK have agreed to send Ukraine several medium-range missile systems, despite continuing threats and warnings from Russia about the consequences of continued western support in general and supply of these weapons in particular. Russia possesses similar weapons in abundance – and has used them extensively.

These MLRS and Himars will not win the war on their own. Ukraine’s army will need a great deal more of the same – plus tanks, drones, aircraft, and many other less glamorous systems and equipment, such as trucks and tank transporters, to ensure success for their counteroffensives later in the summer. That said, their new gun and rocket artillery is excellent news for the Ukrainian army – and very bad news indeed for Russians.

However Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence has said Ukraine is losing against Russia on the frontlines and is now almost solely reliant on weapons from the west to keep Russia at bay.“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”. “Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us,” said Skibitsky. “Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.”

In other words, partners have to hurry up.

 

 

 

For updates click hompage here