With Russian forces doing so badly in Ukraine, it is not surprising that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently talked about how Moscow is “ready” to negotiate an end to the war. Lavrov indicated that Russia has two conditions for an agreement, but also made it clear that Moscow hopes to achieve from negotiations with the West what it cannot achieve on the battlefield from Ukraine, writes for “national interest” Mark Katz, Professor of Management and Policy at George Mason University’s School of Policy and Management and Senior Foreign Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
As Newsweek reports, one of Lavrov’s conditions for the negotiations is that the West “takes full account of the interests of the Russian Federation and its security”. Another is that the West will have to “offer us serious approaches that will help reduce tensions”. The first of these two conditions boils down to the Russian demand that the West (especially the United States) accept at least some of Moscow’s territorial claims in Ukraine and that Ukraine not join NATO. The second condition appears to be the obligation that the United States and other Western governments devise a mechanism to force Ukraine to accept any agreement between Russia and the West that ends the conflict.
Unsurprisingly, neither the US nor the Ukrainian government is ready to accept Lavrov’s proposal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously set his own conditions for the resolution talks, including punishing Russia with additional sanctions, ending his role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and international security guarantees for the Ukraine. It goes without saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to agree to any of these terms.
Apparently Russia and Ukraine remain aloof on what conditions would be mutually acceptable to end their war. Furthermore, the Biden administration has made it clear that any agreement must be acceptable to the Ukrainian government; The United States will not help Moscow by insisting that Kiev accept terms it would otherwise not accept.
What realistic terms can be reached to end the conflict? As unpleasant as it is to all parties involved, if neither party can beat the other, then a negotiated settlement can only be reached if both parties make some concessions. In my opinion, the collective West has the following to offer.
In exchange for Russia’s withdrawal from all occupied Ukrainian territories by February 24, 2022 and for the interruption of its military operations against Ukraine, the West will lift all economic sanctions imposed on Russia since that date. Ukraine would obviously benefit and Russia could resume oil exports to Western countries willing to buy its energy supplies.
In exchange for Russia’s withdrawal from all occupied Ukrainian territory between 2014 and February 23, 2022 (Crimea and the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk), the West will lift all economic sanctions imposed on Russia for those previous occupations. (Although, in the unlikely event that Putin accepts a return to the pre-2022 status quo, he is unlikely to accept a pre-2014 return to the status quo. But a future Russian government could.)
For Ukraine to agree not to seek NATO membership, as Russia insists, Moscow will have to provide some peaceful concessions to convince Kiev not to. These may include: 1) withdrawal of Russian forces 250 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border; 2) the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Belarus; 3) the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Transnistria (the breakaway region of Moldova west of Russia backed by Ukraine) and; 4) the end of the Russian naval blockade of Ukrainian ports and the transit trade through them.
It should also be made clear that Ukraine will not seek NATO membership until Russia itself does. While Moscow is unlikely to seek NATO membership while Putin is in power, a post-Putin government that fears an increasingly powerful China may try to do so.
Moscow will not voluntarily hand over members of its armed forces or private military corporations who have committed atrocities and human rights violations in Ukraine to trial. However, Ukraine and other Western governments can hold trials in absentia for these crimes, many of which are recorded on cell phone cameras that could potentially identify the perpetrators. If nothing else, these trials will make it impossible for identified war criminals to travel out of Russia without risking arrest.
Many in the West – and especially in Ukraine – will oppose these proposals because they do not punish Russia sufficiently for its invasion. Likewise, Putin and his cronies will not give up all their territorial conquests, won at enormous cost to the Russian forces. At the moment, the parties may prefer to keep fighting rather than making concessions to the other. But if it only leads to a stalemate, then at some point both sides may find a compromise gimmick like the one outlined here, albeit an unpleasant one. When they do, American and Western diplomats must help them achieve it.
