The Long War #42

The catch-22 of negotiating with Russia

(This week’s issue features my attempt to explain what I think is the key issue preventing meaningful peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Usual programming will resume next week, with a selection of interesting and important stories out of Ukraine. As always, thanks for reading)

If you read this newsletter, it likely hasn’t escaped you that the topic of possible negotiations between Ukraine and Russia (or between the West and Ukraine and Russia) has picked up in recent weeks. There was Ukraine’s peace summit organized in Switzerland in mid-June; A letter published in the Financial Times calling on the West to “seize peace in Ukraine before it is too late”; A counter-letter arguing in response that “ceding land to secure peace won’t deter Putin”; A plea to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza published by Russian opposition media Novaya Gazeta and signed by 51 Nobel laureates; Zelensky saying that “Russian representatives should be present” at the next peace summit; And most recently, a poll claiming that 44% of Ukrainians believe “the time has come to start official peace negotiations with Russia”.

The discussion is roughly split into two camps (at least on social networks, things get a bit more complicated once you go out), between those who believe negotiations are not only impossible but would be harmful, because Russia wants nothing less than the total subjugation of Ukraine; and those who think that talks are not only possible but need to happen as soon as possible, because any delay only increases Russia’s leverages and demands.

Here’s what I’m struggling with.

Let’s say that Ukraine has agreed to peace negotiations with Russia and is ready to make painful concessions, be they territorial or otherwise. Kyiv might not outright agree to give up part of its territory, but it could sign a deal in which Russia keeps control of a significant part of that territory, the issue of who that territory ultimately belongs to being pushed aside into an indeterminate future. A situation that would be technically temporary, but which any Ukrainian leader would know could become permanent.

Why would Ukraine agree to such concessions? What would it seek to get in exchange? Not just the end of the war, an eminently unstable state Moscow could decide to collapse at any point. In exchange for painful concessions that are likely to be permanent, Ukraine will ask for, will need something permanent: the long-term reassurance that Russia will not invade again. It is only this peace of mind, for the State and everyone living in it, that would allow Ukraine to begin the tremendously difficult task of processing the trauma of the past years, of healing its wounds and of rebuilding.

Rescuers work on the scene of a Russian strike on the “Okhmatdyt” children hospital in Kyiv, July 8 // Picture: Fabrice Deprez

It may be hard, looking from the outside, to grasp the sheer scale of the damages that this war has already done to Ukraine’s social fabric, environment and economy, not even mentioning the catastrophic demographic trends. Ukraine cannot tackle any of this with the looming threat of invasion hanging over its head for years on end.

Ukraine obviously cannot get this peace of mind based on a Russian promise not to invade again. Long-term certainty that a new war won’t happen requires some kind of tangible mechanism. NATO’s Article 5 is the most obvious example of such a mechanism—Foreign Affairs recently published an interesting piece on what shape this could take in the Ukrainian case. There are other options, I do not know what this could end up looking like.

What I do know is that any such mechanism will, almost by definition, have the side effect of preventing Russia from overtly influencing Ukrainian politics as well as the country’s future decisions. I can’t really picture a situation where Russia is convincingly deterred from attacking Ukraine again but can still impose a pro-Russian president in Kyiv.

The problem is that the ability to impose a Russia-friendly leadership in Ukraine almost certainly remains a key war goal for Vladimir Putin. And that’s the catch-22: any peace agreement able to reassure Ukraine in the long term would force Moscow to give up on the main reason it started the war in the first place.

I don’t know that the conclusion to draw from this is that negotiations are impossible and peace only achievable if Ukraine secures a decisive victory over Russia (especially when the meaning of “decisive victory” over a nuclear-armed country remains extremely unclear). But it probably does mean that any negotiations beyond a ceasefire aren’t likely to go anywhere as long as Russia hasn’t changed its war goals.