The Ukrainian war can only end in a peace deal

In Ukraine, the political mood has become sombre and fractious. As the front lines settle into stalemate, Russia ramps up for a new season of missile and drone attacks, and vital US support for Ukraine’s war effort crumbles under partisan attack in Congress, one existential question looms large. Should Volodymyr Zelensky continue to fight endlessly in pursuit of a comprehensive defeat of Russia which may be unattainable – or should he consider cutting his losses and reaching a compromise?

At the war’s outset, the Ukrainian President had a clear answer. ‘I am sure there are people who won’t be satisfied with any kind of peace [with Russia] under any conditions at any time,’ he told the Associated Press. ‘But however hard it is, we have to understand that every war should end in peace or it will end with millions of victims. Yes, we have to fight – but fight for life. Nobody wants to negotiate with a person who tortured this nation. [But] millions of people want to stop this war. We cannot decide for them and say: “No, we are not ready to speak with murderers.”’

Zelensky said those words as he sat in a sandbagged stairwell of his presidential palace in Kyiv on 9 April last year. Days before, he had visited the devastated suburb of Bucha, where Russian troops had massacred more than 400 civilians before withdrawing from around the capital. At that time, talks were still theoretically ongoing with the Russians, directly as well as via Israeli and Turkish go-betweens. Indeed, earlier this year, Vladimir Putin claimed that Kyiv’s negotiators had initialled a draft peace plan provisionally entitled ‘A Treaty of Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine’ which included a promise not to join Nato as well as limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces. (A former Ukrainian government source who worked closely with Zelensky at the time of the negotiations confirmed that the details of the draft document alluded to were accurate.)

As Zelensky’s negotiator Mikhail Podolyak told reporters in Istanbul in late March last year, the deal on the table was a ceasefire, the withdrawal of all Russian troops to their positions on the eve of the invasion – but remaining in the self-declared republics of the Donbas and Crimea.