After months of resolute refusals to negotiate, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin are finally expressing a desire to talk.
It’s difficult to establish whether either leader is sincere, though Zelensky said he will deliver his plan to US President Joe Biden, Ukraine’s biggest wartime booster, sometime in November. Putin, whose army invaded Ukraine first in 2014 and then again in 2022, hasn’t articulated exactly what he has in mind.
At the current conflict’s outset, the warring leaders specified concrete peace terms that required the other to give up their war aims unconditionally. Ukraine demanded the full withdrawal of Russian troops that took over the Crimean Peninsula and a swath of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Putin, meanwhile, declared a goal of incorporating Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
Zelensky’s shift, announced last month, is more formal. It was contained in a four-point outline that represents a shrunken version of a ten-point peace proposal he outlined in 2022.
The 2022 “Peace Formula” emphasized the demand for the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops and a Kremlin promise never to invade again. His current “Victory Plan” includes a call “to end the war in a diplomatic way.”
“We understand that it is very difficult to diplomatically end this war without the Russian side,” he said, answering requests from Western European allies to invite Russia to talks.
The “victory” scheme was heralded by the recent Ukrainian conquest of territory in and around the city of Kursk in far western Russia, which Zelensky suggested should inspire allies to provide more economic and military aid.
“The main point of this plan is to force Russia to end the war,” Zelensky said. He announced he will present the plan in detail to Biden sometime this fall.
At first, the Kremlin brushed off the call for diplomacy and stuck to Putin’s original war aims. “Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
But in brief comments last week, Putin appeared to warm to talks. “If there is a desire to negotiate, we will not refuse,” he said. “We have never rejected them.”
So, is all this just pretense or serious message-sending reflecting some sort of war weariness?
For nearly two years, the battlefield fortunes of each side have shifted wildly. First, Russia launched a blitzkrieg-like ground offensive that targeted major Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kiev but which Ukrainian defenders repulsed.
The following year, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive meant to drive the Russians out of the country but could not penetrate more than a few hundred meters into Russian-defended territory. The Ukrainians got stymied by acres of Russian-laid minefields and suffered horrific casualties from artillery and rocket barrages.
This year, Putin ordered a new offensive, which has taken some territory in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine but which has resulted in a limited, hard-fought rollback of Ukrainian forces.
Putin has declared success anyway. “We are not talking about advancing 200 or 300 meters,” Putin said last week. “We haven’t had this kind of pace in the offensive in Donbas for a long time.”
For the moment, the main goal of the Russian campaign is to take the town of Pokrovsk, a communications hub held by the Ukrainians. More brutally consistent assaults have come in the form of scorched earth assaults via artillery fire and rocket and armed drone attacks nationwide. The daily bombardments have destroyed energy infrastructure and civilian targets, including residences and schools, across Ukraine.
Finally, Ukrainian troops flexed newfound offensive skills by launching a surprise cross-border attack into Russia. The August thrust resulted in the conquest of dozens of square miles of territory and the capture of the Russian city of Kursk.
“Everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise,” Zelensky declared as he handed out medals to his soldiers. “This is demonstrated on the battlefield, where our soldiers not only withstood the overwhelming force of the occupiers but also are destroying it in the way necessary to protect Ukraine.”
Ukraine has also fielded an impressive array of domestically produced drones that have hit targets far inside Russia and sank ships in the Black Sea.
So, who is actually winning and would have the advantages in negotiations?
On paper, nuclear power Russia seems to have the edge, even if its offensive moves are slow. It has thrown about 600,000 soldiers into battle backed by heavy weaponry and domestically made drones as well as many imported from Iran. North Korea has supplied rockets. Steady income from petroleum sales, especially to India and China, has helped to pay for it all.
Russian casualties number over 300,000, according to US officials, and almost a third of them are reportedly dead. Whether those figures are higher or lower than reality, Putin seems willing to pay a high human price, despite scattered complaints from relatives of the dead and wounded.
However, winning the war on terms originally expected by Putin—occupation and absorption of Ukraine—is unrealistic and would be bad for Russia, according to an article in the foreign policy journal Responsible Statecraft. “Instead, Russia’s incentive is to use its growing advantages as a lever for negotiating with the West,” the article contended.
Nonetheless, the article concluded that establishing “demilitarized buffer zones in Ukraine,” would be enough of an achievement.
Ukraine, on the other hand, is hampered by dependence for arms on sometimes wavering outsiders, especially in Europe, and difficulties in recruiting fresh soldiers at home.
“Domestic mass production of ammunition is still lagging. As things stand, Ukraine is highly dependent on foreign supplies,” said Huseyn Aliyev, a researcher at the University of Glasgow specializing in Russia and Ukraine.
Last month, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs put the number of Ukrainian dead, “severely wounded,” and missing at at least 130,000. In April, Zelensky lowered the draft age from 27 years old to 25 in hopes of boosting troop numbers.
“Ukraine may come to feel it can’t win,” suggested General Richard Barrons, former head of Britain’s Joint Force Command. “And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer – just to defend the indefensible?”
Other analysts counter such gloomy assessments by pointing out that Ukrainians have shown remarkable resilience in the face of a much larger and relentless foe. They blame allies, including the United States, for compounding Ukraine’s weaknesses by rationing arms and limiting their use.
“Western incrementalism in the provision of military [arms]…strengthens Putin’s ability to absorb risk,” writes the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank. “If US support to Ukraine persists and gains momentum, the Kremlin will have to reckon with its accumulating problems.”
ISW opined “Washington and European Union allies must also let Ukraine use Western-supplied rockets to hit targets anywhere inside Russia.”
In any case, Ukraine faces a paradox in that it must show significant military progress to secure more arms from the West that would make such success more likely. “Showing skill in invading Russian territory cannot be repeated unless it gets more military help,” wrote Raphael Cohen, director of strategy at the Rand Corporation, another US-based think tank.
Zelensky seems to realize the conundrum and he is not just betting on Biden. He plans to speak about his Victory Plan to both Vice President Kamala Harris and ex-president Donald Trump, who are campaigning to replace lame duck Biden at US elections this November.