Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that Ukraine will not surrender one meter of land to Russia. It would seem that his demand makes any diplomatic solution to the war impossible. Russia, after all, has recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent and has annexed Crimea.
So while Zelensky looks at his war aims one way, the Russian position is the diametrical opposite. So while the Russians say they are willing to negotiate, something they repeat quite often, the sine qua non of the Russian position is to accept the territorial changes they have made, or in the case of Donetsk and Luhansk, supported.
For some time I have been writing about whether there is a way out of this dilemma. The situation is complicated by the war itself, and by Washington’s apparent veto over any sort of negotiation.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett who, for a time, was acting as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, tells how he had the first part of a deal between Ukraine and Russia in hand, but Washington objected and blocked it, leading to Ukraine walking away from peace talks with Russia.
Now Russia is mounting a major offensive whose ultimate target isn’t clear. The Ukrainians are hanging on, strongly defending the line of contact and in some cases even advancing a little. But so, too, are the Russians gaining ground and getting close to encircling the strategic town of Bakhmut. Whether this will result in a Russian victory, or not, remains to be seen.
In the mind of the Russians, the Bakhmut battle compares to the Battle for Stalingrad in World War II. In that battle, German and Axis forces numbered 220,000, but in the bloody fighting and freezing weather were reduced to 91,000 or the loss of close to 60% of their manpower and an even greater loss of equipment and ammunition.
On February 2, 1943, the German Field Marshal and General in charge of the Stalingrad offensive, Frederick Paulus, decided to surrender his remaining forces, disobeying Hitler’s order to fight to the last man. (Hitler promoted him to Field Marshal at the last minute, expecting Paulus to commit suicide.)
Stalin and Soviet General Georgy Zhukov regarded the Stalingrad battle as the first big step in rolling up the German army, eventually leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany in the last war battles in Berlin. Russian President Vladimir Putin, like his predecessor Joseph Stalin, no doubt has the same opinion about Bakhmut.
As the battle continues to unfold, no one knows what Russia’s next steps will be. Certainly, Russian forces, including the notorious Wagner group, are working on encircling Bakhmut and trapping the Ukrainian defenders.
Some progress is reported in that sector. It can be expected that the anticipated coming Russian offensive will focus heavily on Bakhmut and Ukraine’s lines of communication and supply. Very heavy use of Russian airpower can be expected, as Moscow by now controls the skies over Ukraine.
It would be smart for the United States to consider trying to forge a deal with Russia if it can be done, but the Biden administration, as previously noted, has vetoed any and all peace initiatives, whether coming from the Normandy Group in Europe (France and Germany principally), from outside parties (Israel and Turkey) or even among the combatants (Ukraine and Russia).
The Russian offensive could fail, of course, but it is unlikely Russia will back off and disengage. On the other hand, if the Russians grab Bakhmut and continue to push Ukrainian forces back, the risk grows that Ukraine will have to ask Russia for peace talks.
In such a case, the US and its NATO allies will be out of the game, and the US in particular will find itself on the outside looking in. If this is the end game, then the NATO experiment in Ukraine – and more generally NATO’s expansion vision – will dematerialize and its membership support fragment.
The window of opportunity for a political solution other than a direct Ukrainian appeal to Russia for peace talks appears to be closing. Yet it is obviously not in the US or NATO’s interest for the end result to appear as a defeat.
There are already signs in Washington and in NATO that the situation is deteriorating. The public admissions that NATO cannot keep supplying ammunition and the suggestions to the Ukrainian defenders to conserve the supplies they have are indicative of more than just admitting there is a problem.
At the same time, the statements by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, speaking to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels on February 14, suggesting that Ukraine would win the war and that Russia has been defeated were hardly credible.
It would seem they were trying to buck up the Europeans but may have succeeded in alienating their more nervous allies (other than the British who are even more committed to fighting to the last Ukrainian).
If a political solution is possible, then the only one that could be satisfactory from the point of view of the US, NATO and Ukraine would be one that kept the existing territories within Ukraine on some basis. That, of course, was one of the important principles of the Minsk II agreement of 2015.
It proposed making the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk autonomous but still part of Ukraine subject to Ukrainian law and where they would still send representatives to Ukraine’s parliament, called the Verkhovna Rada, or Supreme Council of Ukraine. Minsk II did not address Crimea, and some hybrid solution is needed there, something the Russians will not like one bit.
Minsk II was never implemented. In fact, recently former German chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emanuel Macron, and current Ukrainian President Zelensky all now say that signing the agreement was done simply to buy time for Ukraine to build up its military capabilities in order to push the Russians out of their territory.
The Russians, who never renounced Minsk II, now say they were tricked by the Western powers and by Ukraine and they won’t be fooled again.
The other half of any diplomatic deal would have to be a neutral Ukraine fully detached from NATO. That would mean NATO’s legal association agreements with Ukraine, and whatever other agreements exist between Ukraine and the US, would need to be canceled.
Apparently, Putin is about to make a major speech in the next few days about Ukraine and Russia’s strategic objectives. Maybe that talk can open doors but no one can say for sure. It may simply be a speech to rally the Russian people, who are making great sacrifices in the Ukraine war.
All of this leads to the conclusion that any chance for a peaceful resolution is farther away than ever.
This article first appeared on Stephen Bryen’s ‘War and Strategy’ Substack page and is republished with kind permission. To read the original please click here.