Vladimir Frolov: When Russia and Ukraine will start peace negotiations

https://rtvi.com/opinions/na-pole-boya-ne-reshen-glavnyj-vopros-kogda-rossiya-i-ukraina-nachnut-mirnye-peregovory/

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13.07.2023 / 14:14

“The main issue on the battlefield has not been resolved.” When Russia and Ukraine will start peace negotiations

Vladimir Frolov is an expert on international relations.

“The main issue on the battlefield has not been resolved.” When Russia and Ukraine will start peace negotiations

Since the beginning of the year, the front line has hardly changed during the hostilities in Ukraine, and more and more military experts call the situation in the conflict “dead-end”. At the same time, Moscow and Kiev continue to demand full political surrender from each other, refusing to compromise. Analyst Vladimir Frolov tells about how long the active military phase of the conflict will last, when Moscow and Kiev can start negotiating seriously and on what terms it is possible.

Vladimir Frolov is an expert in international relations, a former employee of the Russian Embassy in the United States.

Unrealistic positions

More than a year has passed since the failure of the Istanbul agreements between Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict, but a new “formula for peace” has never been found. The parties are still far from ending the confrontation, and the principles they publicly voice today are more like the demands for unconditional surrender of the opposite party.

“Ten points of Zelensky” are designed to “formify Russia’s turnout with a guilty” and contain unrealistic conditions – for example, the withdrawal of Russian troops from all over Ukraine within “internationally recognized borders”.

The Russian “conditions for a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace” are also large-scale and provide for disarmament and unconditional surrender of the “Kiev regime” and even the change of this regime in favor of “friendly vassalatity”. In addition, Kiev and the international community are required to recognize “new territorial realities.”

Such positions are weakly correlated with the state of affairs “on the ground” and expose the strange gap between the overestimated desires of the parties and their modest military capabilities (at least in non-nuclear performance) after a year of intense fighting.

Offers from outside

External “partners” also did not offer realistic “just peace” formulas. The West, for example, retains the difficult goals of the settlement, in particular, the return to the territorial status quo as of 24.02.22.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Brazilian President Lula da Silva in one way or another called for the stop of hostilities where the demarcation line is now taking place. However, if Lukashenko proposed to agree with the key Russian demand for Kiev’s renunciation of claims to “new Russian territories”, then nothing was said about it in the Beijing plan. This has Western hopes that China will eventually call on Russia to withdraw its troops to the borders on 24.02.22 in order to maintain Beijing’s special relations with the European Union.

The President of Brazil proposed to “leave Russia Crimea” “so that the world would be calm”, and the Minister of Defense of Indonesia immediately rejected by Moscow and Kiev the “Korean scenario” with a demilitarized zone, the introduction of UN peacekeepers and referendums in the “controversial territories”. The “freezing” of the conflict in the line of contact is currently opposed by both Moscow and Kiev, together with Western leaders, including German Chancellor Scholz and French President Macron.

Thus, there are no grounds for diplomatic optimism yet, and the main issue on the battlefield has not been resolved – in which borders “independent Ukraine” will remain and in whose “zone of control” – Russian or western – it will be.

The fact that as a result of the hostilities, the borders of Ukraine will be changed in favor of Russia (the question of their actual passage on the ground remains open) seems most likely.

Around November this year, the parties are likely to lose the ability to conduct high-intensity fighting. The counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is stuck in the tactical zone of Russian defense. Before the autumn stratum, Ukraine will probably not be able to regain significant parts of the territory and approach pre-war borders. The Russian side lost its opportunities for strategic offensive operations in the winter of 2023.

“Fair peace” is unattainable without reviewing all parties its maximalist political goals and bringing them into line with military realities and capabilities. By the end of 2023, the parties to the conflict will face the need for “difficicict solutions”, and the trajectory of the conflict in 2024 will depend on whether the parties compromise or continue to achieve more by military means.

Mikhail Klimentyev / TASS

“Fair World” for Russia

Moscow will have to decide which part of the territory and population of Ukraine to keep under its control (military or political) to ensure the security of Russia, which part can be “released forever” and how to live on with the “remaining Ukraine”.

At the same time, the “remaining Ukraine” will never be neutral, demilitarized and even more friendly Russia, and it is now pointless to put forward such demands in the negotiations, as State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin notes. This is allegedly already recognized by the Russian leadership, although the open discussion on the topic, as the reaction to Zatulin’s speech shows, is still taboo. The optimistic scenario of relations between Russia and “remaining Ukraine” will resemble relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the past 30 years.

By abandoning control over the “remaining Ukraine”, Russia should receive recognition by Kiev and the West of its new borders at the time of the cessation of hostilities (with permissible adjustments during subsequent delimitation and demarcation), the lifting of sanctions and new agreements on arms control and military transparency with NATO.

These agreements may include, among other things, Russian proposals of December 2021, which NATO residents were ready to accept at that time. Such a “new world” would codify the division of the zones of control between the West and the non-West in Eurasia.

“Fair World” for Ukraine

For Kiev, a “difficult solution” would look like an exchange of part of the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine for the “freedom” of most of the country, which can finally become part of the West with new international mechanisms for compensation and restoration of the destroyed. In general, this would be an improved option for Finland’s withdrawal from the war with the USSR – with the loss of territories, but without restrictions on sovereignty and defense potential under the 1947 Treaty of Paris.

So far, socio-political sentiments in Ukraine are not favorable to such a decision: more than 80% of respondents support the continuation of hostilities until the restoration of the borders of Ukraine in 1991. However, in the Ukrainian elite and part of civil society there are moods in favor of abandoning part of the territory (Crimea, Donbass, part of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions) in order to save lives, restore the country’s economy as soon as possible and freedom of integration with the West with its convincing guarantees that Russia will recognize the sovereignty and borders of “new Ukraine”.

From this point of view, the victory in the conflict for Ukraine will be “the very preservation of statehood “in a certain part of the country.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy was inclined to do so until early April 2022, when he agreed to the “Istagula formula” to postpone the decision on the status of Crimea and Donbass with guarantees that Ukraine refuses their forceful return.

The issue of the attractiveness of the “land for freedom” formula for Kiev is likely to be resolved on the battlefield before the end of 2023. Two options are possible here: either Ukraine recognizes new borders after some time following the example of East Politicians of Germany in the 1970s (probably already under another Ukrainian leadership); or Kiev immediately recognizes new borders within the framework of the negotiation process on a post-war settlement.

“Fair World” for the West

Finally, the “difficult decision” for the West will be to reduce territorial requirements for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the adoption of Ukraine’s new borders through the cessation of hostilities.

The minimum permissible result of the conflict for the West is the preservation of an independent, sovereign and democratic Ukraine on the world map within some borders.

This is not publicly mentioned, but it is read in signals, in particular, from Poland: if the question arises of the complete defeat of Ukraine, Warsaw and NATO allies can send their troops for direct participation in hostilities within the framework of the UN Security Council-approved “responsibility to protect” formula (R2P).

The situation when Ukraine is losing part of the territory through control at the time of the stoppage of hostilities is becoming a topic of discussion in the United States and Europe. For example, a note from the RAND research center states that within the borders of December 2022 Ukraine remains economically viable, that is, such a territorial section can be sustainable.

Libkos

Political impasse

So far, “difficult decisions” under the formula “territories in exchange for peace and freedom” look unrealistic due to the lack of their domestic political support in Russia and Ukraine, although the West would probably have adopted similar agreements between Moscow and Kiev.

An additional agging factor is Russia’s scaling of the goals of the NWO to the global conflict with the United States over the nature of the world order and the entire system of international relations, which excludes the achievement of a settlement directly with Ukraine according to the “Istanbul scenario”. If a peaceful settlement is possible only after the U.S. abandons global dominance and the establishment of a “new just world order”, the time frame for the search for peace goes beyond the earthly life of most of today’s participants. The proposals to the West “just to get off” supported by nuclear blackmail are hardly designed for a meaningful response.

All this creates complex two-stage dynamics. Without understanding the “final result” of the confrontation with the West, agreements with Kiev are not possible, and a separate aspect of the settlement should be the contours of the future security system in Europe after the end of hostilities.

The opposite is also true – not only the format of conflict resolution, but also the contours of the European order and security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic will depend on how, where and how the hostilities in Ukraine will end. Dmitry Medvedev proposes to consolidate the conditions of this order with the “Helsin Final Act 2.0”, which, like its predecessor, will fix the inviolability of new state borders and spheres of control in Europe, but is still far from that.

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The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.

Found here: https://russia.postsen.com/local/349548/On-the-battlefield-the-main-issue-has-not-been-resolved-When-Russia-and-Ukraine-start-peace-talks.html

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