How will the Ukraine war end? Our leaders have to failed to define 'victory'

But Kyiv’s decision to spurn talks and continue the war was predicated on hopes of a successful 2023 offensive dramatically weakening Russia’s battlefield position and the belief that American military support could be maintained until the final victory: yet the offensive was a costly failure and America’s support is increasingly contested in Washington. But while the result has been a deterioration in Ukraine’s battlefield position, Washington’s publicly stated goals have not altered: the facts on the ground may have changed for the worse, but the rhetoric in Washington, and far less Westminster, has not adapted to the new reality.

Yet what would a realistic Ukraine policy look like? The irony is that even if the West’s desired endstate shifts towards a negotiated settlement rather than outright military victory, nothing would actually change that much, for now, at least. When Ukraine appeared to gain the upper hand back in 2022, Kyiv, scenting victory, had no desire to pursue meaningful negotiations. Now that Russia has the upper hand, Moscow, equally, has no desire to make the concessions necessary towards constructive peace talks. Putin’s purported “ceasefire offer”, proposed at the beginning of last week’s Ukrainian-led “peace summit” (taking place without Russia’s inclusion, and which Biden chose not to attend), if anything represents a hardening of Moscow’s position: as recently as last month, the mood music from the Kremlin centred on freezing hostilities on the current frontlines.

As a precondition for talks, Putin insisted that Ukraine withdraw its remaining troops from the four Ukrainian provinces — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson — that Russia formally annexed in autumn 2022, even as the Ukrainian offensive forced it to abandon huge swathes of the latter two. While Russia’s insistence that Ukraine does not join Nato is not, within the context of negotiations, unreasonable — Western rhetoric notwithstanding, there is little realistic prospect of this happening — it is unrealistic to demand Ukraine cede control of large areas of its own territory that it still controls. Russian troops are advancing, slowly, all across the front but have as yet made no great breakthrough. Putin may be counting on a new summer offensive before the onset of winter snows, or be satisfied that a war of attrition will eventually break the Ukrainian army beyond repair, but for now Ukraine’s position is, if difficult, not disastrous, and it is entirely rational at this stage for Kyiv to reject the Russian proposal. Russia’s offer of talks was, paradoxically, Moscow’s statement that it is not yet ready to negotiate.

Yet even still, Ukraine’s own preconditions for peace talks are unhelpful, in that they demand concessions Russia is under no pressure to meet, in pursuit of an end goal Ukraine is unlikely to achieve. The summit in Geneva, from which Russia was excluded, probably represents the last of such initiatives before meaningful negotiations begin, with the patience of non-aligned states already wearing thin. As the Economist observes, “a conversation is already happening about what America believes might be an acceptable end to the war”, as “eyes are already starting to turn towards alternative negotiation platforms, possibly beginning as soon as in the late autumn”.

Much may happen before the autumn, which is precisely why peace talks before then are unlikely. Russia may achieve greater battlefield success this summer, forcing Kyiv to accept terms it would currently reject. Yet equally, Ukraine may continue to blunt the Russian advance, returning the war to a slow, grinding stalemate in which serious negotiations may once again look attractive to Putin. In achieving the latter outcome, Western policy decisions — that is, continuing to arm Ukraine and grant it strong expressions of diplomatic support — would not be measurably distinct from the current stated strategy of supporting Ukraine until Russia’s total defeat. In this sense, the West’s public commitment to maximalist and likely unachievable policy ends can be read as a negotiating tactic to improve Ukraine’s position ahead of a renewed push for meaningful talks: whether or not they fool Putin is another question.

In any case, the other possible event of the autumn, a Trump electoral victory, is perhaps the deciding factor making negotiations unlikely before the end of the year. Trump’s stance on Ukraine is difficult to discern: while he has expressed negative opinions on Zelensky personally, and his most committed faction within American politics is decidedly hostile to Ukraine, he is a mercurial figure who may choose to escalate the war as a dramatic prelude to talks. A future Trump administration’s eventual Ukraine policy is such a potentially transformative yet unknowable quantity that it is entirely logical for Putin to drag out the war until the new American president takes office: until then, there is, currently, no meaningful space for negotiations, and if, as is likely, a peace deal will entail the painful cession of Ukrainian territory, the political logic for the Biden administration will be to palm responsibility, and the press outrage that will accompany an unsatisfactory conclusion, onto Trump.

Yet even still, it is perhaps possible to discern the future outlines of a settlement. Last summer, it emerged that the eminent American foreign policy mandarin Richard Haass was engaged in back-channel talks with Kremlin officials, for which he was swiftly denounced by Kyiv and distanced by the White House. Haass’s conclusion, published in Foreign Affairs the same month he met Russian officials, was that “the West has allowed Ukraine to define success and set the war aims of the West. This policy, regardless of whether it made sense at the outset of the war, has now run its course.” Controversial then, Haass’ analysis that “Peace in Ukraine cannot be held hostage to war aims that, however morally justified, are likely unattainable”, has held up well over the intervening year, with military trends moving in Russia’s favour, and political trends in both the US and Europe edging away from the firm and bottomless commitment to the war that Western leaders expressed at its beginning.

Haass’s suggestion — presumably made to Russia — was that the war should be frozen at the current frontline, and “ideally, both Ukraine and Russia would pull back their troops and heavy weapons from the new line of contact, effectively creating a demilitarised zone,” monitored by neutral observers. Russia would hold its military gains, though Kyiv would not be compelled to recognise their legitimacy, “instead accepting that the recovery of territorial integrity must await a diplomatic breakthrough,” perhaps only after Putin exits the political scene. Until then, “Western governments could promise to fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations with it only if Moscow signed a peace agreement that was acceptable to Kyiv.” Acceding to Russian demands for Ukrainian neutrality — that is, a commitment not to join Nato — would be counterbalanced by a firm bilateral US commitment to Ukraine’s defence. It is noteworthy, then, that as the clock runs down on the West’s current strategy, the Biden administration last week signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement outside Nato structures: the Haass strategy is, perhaps, already in motion.

Even as the war grinds on inconclusively, the remaining months of this year will probably see both sides attempt to consolidate their battlefield positions ahead of a new diplomatic push for peace. If Trump wins the election, and if, as seems likely, he intends to pressure Ukraine to cede land for peace, European politicians will face difficult choices. A full Europeanisation of the Western war effort will require a far greater mobilisation of resources than, for all their rhetoric, European politicians have yet shown themselves capable or willing to make, while the disjunct between Kyiv’s maximalist war aims and battlefield realities will only become starker. Would Starmer commit Britain to the Ukraine war without American support? The question is surely worth asking. To bring this threatening situation to a palatable conclusion requires a frank and serious debate over what an acceptable conclusion to the war, short of a total Russian collapse, would look like.

Yet as Galeotti observes, “one key problem is that we do not have any kind of a common sense of quite what ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’ really mean,” and thus “no meaningful public debate in the West about the likely outcomes, what we are prepared to spend and do… and thus, what our actual strategy may be.” These frank conversations, vital to British security, are already taking place above our heads, yet are strangely taboo in British political discourse, even as our leaders debate reintroducing conscription. Britain committed itself heavily towards Ukraine’s war effort, and deserves credit for enabling its successful defence of its core territory. Kyiv’s very survival is itself a bankable victory, and Britain’s interests ought to be secured in any peace negotiations to follow. Washington’s calculations are already quietly diverging from its rhetoric: in introducing a dose of reality, and dragging vigorous US foreign policy disputes into the insular world of British politics, Farage surely deserves credit rather than censure. It is sensible, rather than immoral, to engage with the hard world that exists, and not the better one we would wish for.

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Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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