AFP In 2019, Zelensky and Putin still spoke to each other.
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Coen Nij Bijvank
editor Nieuwsuur
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Coen Nij Bijvank
editor Nieuwsuur
What was supposed to be the year of the long-awaited counter-offensive for Ukraine turned out to be a disappointment. The chance for an obvious Ukrainian victory on the battlefield has, at least for now, disappeared.
In the meantime, many soldiers are dying and on Friday Russia attacked Ukrainian cities by air. Yet President Zelensky is absolutely reluctant to enter into peace negotiations. Also the Kremlin say not wanting to talk; Putin seems to think he has time on his side. What are the ways out of this war? Aren’t peace talks ultimately inevitable?
Putin thinks there is more to be achieved with Trump in the White House.
Bob Deen, Eastern Europe expert
Right now the war is at a stalemate; There have been no major breakthroughs on the front line for some time. Despite some Russian military successes, Putin’s end goals (including “demilitarizing” Ukraine) are no closer than those of Ukraine (recapture of eastern Ukraine and Crimea).
Eastern Europe expert Bob Deen sees roughly four scenarios for the near future. What Zelensky hopes for is that Ukraine will still break through the Russian lines in a new offensive with Western F-16s and more weapons. But: “Then Ukraine must mobilize en masse, but you see a lot of resistance to that.” There is also disagreement in the army leadership about the strategy to be pursued.
Fight on
Ukraine can also choose to go on the defensive and hope that Russia will eventually give up the war of attrition. Deen: “Ukraine must then accept that the east will not be liberated in the short term.”
The problem: Russia has a much larger pool of potential men. Russia has therefore opted for a strategy of continuing to fight, says Deen. The Kremlin’s hope is that Ukraine will collapse or give up. This is the third scenario.
However, there are now no signals that the war will be decided quickly. Denmark’s fourth scenario therefore seems the most likely: a continuation of the stalemate. “Maybe Kyiv and Moscow will eventually realize that the battle cannot be won and that they would be better off negotiating.”
Russians accept a lot, even if it hurts them.
Maria Snegovaya, Center for Strategic and International Studies
“Putin is confident about the times ahead,” agrees Maria Snegovaya, a researcher at the US Center for Strategic and International Studies. Putin’s position seemed to be under pressure for a while due to the uprising of Wagner leader Prigozhin, but Snegovaya does not expect any further large-scale resistance. “Russians accept many consequences of the war, even if they harm them. The propaganda from the Kremlin helps with this.”
Deen: “Russians have a fatalistic attitude and do not mind if their lives slowly get worse. They will only take action en masse if their situation worsens very quickly.”
‘Putin is betting on Trump’
At the moment it is precisely the Ukrainian population that is concerned. “There is a feeling of hopelessness among many Ukrainians I speak to,” says Deen. “They feel abandoned.”
The vast majority of Ukrainians want the country to fight until it wins, recently emerged from an opinion poll, but support for the war is declining. Meanwhile, support for peace negotiations is growing slightly.
Biggest concern: US military and financial support, on which the Ukrainian military largely depends. Congress has not yet agreed to a large support package of $61 billion and Republicans are increasingly calling for the support to be stopped altogether.
Putin hopes that Donald Trump – who has regularly spoken positively about Putin – wins the presidential elections in November and that he stops arms support altogether. “He will certainly not want to negotiate peace until those elections,” says Deen. “He thinks there is more to be achieved with Trump in the White House.”
Taboo
At the same time, Zelensky still has too much confidence in the feasibility of his goals to start talking now. It is taboo for his Western allies to even suggest talks, says Deen. “Such a thing could be interpreted as a recognition of Ukraine’s weaker position and could therefore play into Putin’s hands.”
For peace negotiations, both parties must first realize that there is more to be gained from talking than from fighting, says Suzanne Damman, head of the Peace Negotiations Program at the Clingendael Institute. And that can take a long time.
An interim solution seems more feasible: not a final peace agreement, but a temporary ceasefire. The risk is that the battle will then simmer for a very long time. Damman: “For example, North and South Korea are still formally at war, even though there has been a ceasefire for seventy years. Tensions between the two countries regularly rise, so there is still the fear that it will one day escalates again.”
Is it possible to negotiate with Putin?
In any case, Russia and Ukraine will have to sit down at some point. At the beginning of the war, peace negotiations were held for a while and later – with Turkey as an intermediary – the transit of agricultural products was discussed, which resulted in the grain deal. Damman: “You often see that warring parties, if a peace process is still too sensitive, already discuss, for example, a prisoner exchange or a humanitarian corridor.”
EPAIn 2019, Zelensky and Putin still spoke to each other.
But Ukraine in particular will be reluctant to make agreements on the more difficult issues, such as the future of the territories occupied by Russia. In 2014 and 2015, the Minsk agreements were supposed to put an end to the fighting that took place in eastern Ukraine, but Russia hardly adhered to the agreements. In 2019, Putin and Zelensky agreed another ceasefire, but did not reach an agreement on the status of eastern Ukraine.
The big question is whether Putin will comply with a new agreement for more than a few months or a few years. “Putin never pursued limited goals in all the wars he waged,” says Russia expert Hubert Smeets in News hour. “Now he wants Kyiv back and restore the old Russian empire.”
Compromise impossible?
Even if both sides give up a clear military victory, their nearly opposing goals make compromise seemingly impossible. But negotiation expert Damman remains hopeful. In the past, desperate conflicts have often been ended by talking, such as Northern Ireland, Colombia, South Africa and the Philippines, where Damman himself was involved in the negotiations.
“These conversations often start in private circles, for example with people from civil society organizations, the United Nations or think tanks. They exchange ideas about what the road to peace could look like. By talking you find out what the interests and needs are behind each other’s hard, unyielding positions. This way, rapprochement can be slowly sought.”
2023-12-31 10:00:02
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