More and more leaders and commentators are seeking a diplomatic endgame to the tragic Russo-Ukrainian war. Can this still be achieved?
The Slav versus Slav civil war known as the Russo-Ukraine conflict is reaching its third year. To gauge the toll of life so far is not so easy. Wikipedia puts it at 50, 000 people (which does not include those injured). For the Russians the figure already exceeds those lost in Afghanistan or Chechnya.
Meanwhile some 30% of Ukraine, including its protected areas, have been contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Should you step back and take a long view of the whole debacle, Phaedrus’s phrase `two bald men fighting over a comb` springs to mind.
The prospect of Russia conquering the whole of Ukraine seems like a pipe dream. Even were it achieved it would require Russia to then govern a nation full of saboteurs and endless threat of NATO incursions, as well as increased dependence on China.
On Ukraine’s side, they will never be accepted as a member of NATO while they are at war with such a large power. Nor is Ukraine considered by the European Union to be at the right stage of political development to be welcomed into the fold.
Yet still the prevailing mantra of most commentary in Western Europe is that we must provide Ukraine with military backing for `as long as it takes` (whatever that even means).
Jens Stoltenberg – NATO Secretary General and a sort of Norwegian Tony Blair -thinks he knows. He has advised us that Europe `must be prepared for a decade of war` (BBC, 8th July 2024).
How prepared are we though?
War sceptics.
A recent poll conducted by the European Commission of Foreign Relations in twelve European countries in January of this year found that only 10% of people believed that Ukraine will be the victor. This figure may have changed a bit since the incursions into Kursk (of which later) but a more significant finding is that 37% of respondents take the view that the war can only end through diplomatic negotiations. Meanwhile in Ukraine – as reported by the Kyiv Independent this July 15th – 44% of the public think the time is right for such negotiations.
Some commentators make comparisons with the Finland Winter war of 1939 to 1940 where Finland won lasting autonomy by conceding 9% of its territory to the Soviets. Even a seasoned diplomat like Henry Kissinger recommended Ukraine to consider a similar option.
Green shoots of sanity.
In the infamous interview with Tucker Carlson of February 11th February this year, Putin stated that Putin would recognize an independent Ukraine if only it were not hostile to Russia. We are, he said, ready for negotiations. This claim would later be reinforced by a statement by Dmitry Peskov on August 1st (RIA Novosti, August 4th, 2024).
At around the same time the Eurasian Daily informed us that Andrei Yermak, Head of the Office of Zelensky said:
`We need to end this conflict` and went on to propose that peace talks `could take place in the countries of the global south` (August 2nd, 2024).
The much-loved Russian vlogger Konstantin Samailov of Inside Russia recently broadcast a session titled `Peace is coming`. In this address he made a number of observations about the economic bind that Russia now finds itself in. He also suggested that Russian society is ditching its `war marketing` and that the pro-war messaging from the mass media has begun to mellow in favour of a `new narrative conditioning`.
Opinion formers step up.
In Britain, signs have also appeared indicating a sea change among the intelligentsia.
Emma Ashford works as a Senior Fellow for the Re-imaging U.S Grand Strategy in Washington. In a piece for The Guardian (22nd April 2024) called `Did Boris Johnson Really Sabotage Peace Between Russia and Ukraine? ` she looks at the spring talks in Istanbul that occurred in 2022. She concludes that while there was no deal in existence to be signed Russia was ready for compromise. She concludes:
`If Western policy makers can step in and persuade Ukrainian leaders to fight on in 2022, they can offer advice about entering into negotiations in 2024 and beyond`.
On similar lines, the long-standing journalist Simon Jenkins, writing for the same paper, wrote an opinion pieced called `Farage’s Ukraine Comments Were Not Offensive`. This began with a reference to the loquacious leader of the conservative Reform Party in the U.K who disconcerted some by daring to suggest that Russia and Ukraine should sit down and (quoting his hero) `Jaw-jaw rather than war-war` (Churchill).
Jenkins, whose political orientation is very different from Farage’s agrees with him on this issue:
`The West’s urgent task must be to get Putin off his self-impaled meat hook and stop the bombing and killing` (The Guardian, 24th June 2024).
A bit earlier a joint letter had appeared in The Financial Times. This was signed by Lord Sidelsky and eight other prominent academics and journalists. Headed `Seize the Peace Before it’s Too Late` it insisted that:
`Washington should start talks with Moscow and a new security pact which could safeguard the legitimate security interests of Ukraine and Russia…. this would immediately be followed by a time limited ceasefire in Ukraine [which] would enable Russian and Ukrainian leaders to negotiate in a realistic, constructive manner`. (July 10th, 2024).
Diplomatic offers.
As early as March 2022 Turkiye and Israel put themselves forward as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. Their framework consisted of Ukraine remaining neutral but with multilateral security guarantees and a fifteen-year consultation period on the status of Crimea (quincyist.org).
China too, despite its close economic ties with Russia, has made repeated calls for `harmony` between the warring nations. Their first 12-point peace plan was praised by Segei Lavrov as `the most reasonable one so far` (Reuters, April 4th 2024).
However, they followed this up with a 6-point peace plan produced in tandem with Brazil which they claimed had the support of more than 110 countries (Pravda Eng, 3rd August 2024).
Also, this year, Hungarian President Viktor Oban, in his role as the rotating leader of the European Union, toured many countries touting his own peace solution. This called for a ceasefire linked to a deadline that would allow for peace talks (BBC, 12th July 2024).
Last April Recep Erdogan, the President of Turkiye unveiled his own peace plan. The proposed measures involved a ban on interference in other countries affairs, a complete prisoner exchange, freezing the war on existing terms, a foreign policy referendum in the Ukraine by 2040 and Ukraine joining the European Union but not NATO (N.V. Nation, April 11th, 2024).
So many peace proposals have been put on the table, but the question is: Can Russia and the West ever work together?
Co-operation is possible.
Americans and Russians do remain capable of joint activities in certain areas. Astronauts and cosmonauts carry out missions with one another on the International Space Station and are projected to keep on doing so until at least 2025 (Moscow Times, December 28th 2023).
Then we had the prisoner exchange at the start of this August organized between Washington and Moscow. Twenty-six people were exchanged in these negotiations making it the largest such swop since Cold War times (C.N.N. 1st August 2024).
Moreover, the most significant international deal (as well as the first one) was brokered on July 22nd 2020. In the Black Sea Grain Agreement, Turkiye, the United Nations, Ukraine and Russia co-signed a pact in Istanbul which ensured the safe passage of grain exports.
What about Kursk?
All that said, there may be many who are in agreement with the foregoing but feel that Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russian territory has ended any hope of further talks and diplomacy and indeed has led to a ratcheting up of the situation.
As much as Western military pundits have hyped up this bold action, there does remain something symbolic at work here.
At the time of writing the Ukrainian military have seized land that is in rough terms about the size of ten per cent of the Greater London region in the UK. Lives have been taken, of course, but the Ukrainians have taken many more Russian conscripts as prisoners and have otherwise given the Kremlin the time and space to plan mass evacuations of thousands of people from the affected regions. For their part, the Russians have not taken any drastic inhumane measures such as carpet bombing the area and the much-feared prospect of reprisals with nuclear warheads has not materialised.
Military experts seem to concur that the Ukrainian army is not that likely to be able to continue to advance that much further into Russian soil. The Ukrainians themselves have stated that they do not intend to keep this land forever. So, what is really going on here?
Putin himself may have hinted at the deeper motive behind this gesture. In an emergency meeting with officials he said of it:
`It appears that the enemy is aiming to improve its negotiating position in the future` (Channel 4, 13th August, 2024).
What future negotiations did Putin have in mind exactly?
The diplomatic offensive.
The winds of peace are blowing and to know which direction they are blowing in we must ignore the siren voices of superficial rhetoric. One fond rhetorical illusion is the one which tries to frame this war as a repeat of the Second World War. The Western press likes to paint Ukraine as another Poland in 1939. Similarly, Kremlin propaganda seeks to portray the `special military operation` as an extension of The Great Patriotic War`.
However, just as the Ukraine is not just teeming with neo-Nazis, so too nor is Putin a contemporary Hitler. I know of no serious evidence, for example, that he or his regime holds any designs on the Baltic states, still less Sweden. Citizens of the `democratic West` must, with right and left united, lead the charge of the diplomatic offensive. They must make their anti-war views known through all channels from demonstrations to petitions and demand that the leaders of the world pull the plug out of the meat grinder.
Main image: gas-kvas.com