The Folly of Premature Negotiation With Russia Over Ukraine

Negotiation only works when there is trust. No one trusts Putin. The only basis for negotiation will be a stinging defeat after which he may decide that suing for peace is better than losing his job and his head. 

Those are the only conditions on which a durable peace can be negotiated. JL

Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte report in the Wall Street Journal:

A rushed settlement would be worse than no settlement. A lasting resolution in Ukraine will depend on Russia’s acceptance of Ukraine rather than a poker chip. It will depend on Russia and Ukraine reaching an agreement on the territorial configuration of Ukraine, including Crimea and other parts of Ukraine illegally occupied by Russia. And it will depend on agreement between Russia and the West about Russia’s place in Europe, especially the independent states on its borders. None of these conditions is close to being met. Slapdash mediation will only divert attention from preventing further Russian land grabs and to support Ukraine’s effort to drive Russia back. As long as Putin refuses to revise his strategic aims, the war won't be ripe for serious peace plans.

One year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the engines of diplomacy are revving up. China has proudly put forward a plan to end the war, which Hungary has just endorsed. Throughout the conflict, Turkey has presented itself as a go-between, a NATO member with a direct line to Moscow, joining a long line of states—Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, South Africa and various Arab countries—that have offered to mediate. France, Germany and the United Kingdom have recently floated the idea of giving Ukraine a security guarantee. With increased access to NATO weaponry, it is hoped, Kyiv could work toward a settlement with Russia.

The Biden administration has repeatedly pledged to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” But Washington isn’t free from constraints. There is a limit to the money and materiel the U.S. can send to Ukraine. Some Republicans have no stomach for a fight with Russia, and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats wish to be responsible for another “forever war.” As a new election season takes shape, pressure will mount on the Biden administration to find the finish line. Absent the decisive defeat of Russia or Ukraine, the war will have to end with a negotiated settlement.

Russia was establishing a new perimeter of danger and violence between itself and the U.S.

But in this terrible war, a rushed settlement that fails would be worse than no settlement. A lasting resolution in Ukraine would need to meet three conditions. It will depend on Russia’s acceptance of Ukraine as a diplomatic interlocutor rather than a poker chip on the European playing field. It will depend on Russia and Ukraine reaching an agreement on the territorial configuration of Ukraine, including Crimea and other parts of Ukraine illegally occupied by Russia. And it will depend, above all, on some general agreement between Russia and the West about Russia’s place in Europe, especially in relation to the independent states on its borders. None of these conditions is close to being met.

Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine became painfully visible nine years ago. A revolution unseated Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, in 2014, and Mr. Putin responded by annexing Crimea and moving military units into eastern Ukraine. This wasn’t a local operation for Moscow. Designed to weaken all of Ukraine, it was also intended to push back U.S. influence in Eastern Europe.

 

Russia was establishing a new perimeter of danger and violence between itself and the U.S. Mr. Putin sought a refashioned Europe, in which Russia’s neighbors, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, would think twice before moving closer to the West, and NATO would recognize a Russian sphere of influence and refrain from embracing other Russian neighbors, such as Georgia and Ukraine. He also wanted to slow or reverse the deployment of military capabilities, such as ballistic missile defenses, close to Russia’s borders.

With this larger strategy in mind, Russia didn’t treat Ukraine as a legitimate interlocutor during multiple rounds of diplomacy in 2014 and 2015. Instead it designated the situation in eastern Ukraine a civil war (which it wasn’t) and kept prodding Kyiv to talk directly with the “separatists” in the east. Russia’s goal was to minimize Ukrainian agency, to peg Ukraine as the ailing ward of Russia and the major European powers, as if only outsiders could resolve the “Ukraine question.” For Russia, the most important external actor was the U.S. Although President Trump seemed amenable to a U.S.-Russian settlement over Ukraine, it never came to pass. Mr. Putin failed to get the new Europe he was hoping for at the negotiating table, but he did not give up on his original ambitions.

As long as Mr. Putin refuses to revise his strategic aims, the war won’t be ripe for serious peace plans.

Mr. Putin’s radicalism grew over time. He wrote a series of essays in the summer of 2021 about the historic “unity” between Ukraine and Russia. Then he laid out a set of ultimatums in late 2021. They might seem absurd to his interlocutors in the West—unwinding NATO membership back to what it was in 1998, a withdrawal of military assets from Eastern Europe, a formal ban on Ukraine entering NATO—but they were consistent with his 2014 war aims. He was trying to hasten the arrival of his new Europe.

Whatever Russia’s battlefield setbacks have been since the war started, Mr. Putin is still bent on pursuing his two main goals. The first is a Ukraine that is either deferential to Russia or destroyed, and the second is a diminution of U.S. influence in Eastern Europe. The fact that Moscow is so far getting the opposite of what it wanted—that it is witnessing the consolidation of Ukrainian statehood and the strengthening of NATO—doesn’t appear to have dissuaded Mr. Putin. In fact, the war may have convinced him of his good judgment: The Western threat on Russia’s doorstep means that Moscow has to fight on to the bitter end.

As long as Mr. Putin refuses to revise his strategic aims, the war won’t be ripe for serious peace plans. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some bargains and back-channel talks along the way. Last year, Turkey brokered a deal with Russia, helping with the transit of grain from Ukraine. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have facilitated prisoner exchanges. Such efforts at conflict management are important, but they don’t indicate readiness for a lasting settlement. China has considerable leverage over Russia and presented a peace plan that is more an affirmation of Russian war aims than a credible search for peace. Even so, Moscow’s response was lukewarm.

An agreement between Kyiv and Moscow on the borders of Ukraine is a necessary condition for ending the conflict, but it isn’t a sufficient one. Such an accord would only be an agreement about vocabulary. The underlying grammar of the conflict, which springs from Mr. Putin’s ambition to remake Europe, would remain.

 

Russia’s military failures—and the vigor with which the West has supported Ukraine—have likely deepened Mr. Putin’s commitment to prolonging hostilities. The U.S., Ukraine and any would-be mediator should not imagine that he will be looking to turn away from the war. He will likely be looking for ways to escalate it.

Russia may find itself stalemated by its own expenditure of resources in Ukraine, by the limits of its capacity to wage war, perhaps even by domestic political upheaval at some point. Such factors might bring about a lull in the fighting. But whether it is called a cease-fire or an armistice, it would be very far from genuine peace.

Slapdash mediation will only divert attention from the war’s most urgent tasks: to prevent further Russian land grabs and to support Ukraine’s effort to drive Russia back. With winter turning to spring, one year into Europe’s first major war since World War II, forging peace isn’t a real prospect. Patience not to engage in premature diplomacy is essential for Ukraine and for the West.