PEACE TALKS? THE RUSSIA PROBLEM
Posted on December 19, 2024 by The Analyst
This is clearly a monumental and important moment, as we cross into 2025. Yet the thing that keeps crossing my mind is a moment from the original 1977 Star Wars film ‘A New Hope’. Grand Moff Tarkin is on the bridge of the Death Star, Tarkin stands there waiting for the Death Star to come into range of Yavin, when a junior officer comes in and says, “we’ve analyzed their attack pattern and there is some risk. Should I prepare your shuttle for departure?”
Shocked, Tarkin replies, “Retreat, now? In our moment of Victory? I think not!”
Putin is Grand Moff Tarkin right now. He’s been warned there’s a danger, provided with a means of getting out of it, but decides its full steam ahead, how can he possibly fail?
That is Putin’s official approach to peace talks. There won’t be any, because he made perfectly clear on Tuesday, Russia has the strategic upper hand and its winning. Why would he possibly want to talk right now?
Welcome to the latest Russian smoke and mirrors show.
Opening Gambit
The first thing Russia wants you know is they’re winning and they don’t need peace talks because of it. That means you have to make concessions to even get them to consider talking about talking about peace talks.
This gives them more time to press their military campaign to give them more leeway and greater negotiating power. They will also rely on the fact you want them to talk about talks, to ensure that you can’t be seen rocking the boat, by imposing stricter sanctions or continuing to allow long range weapons use. They rely on your weakness – your desire to end the war is greater than theirs. They will try and extract concessions even this early on. It is up to us to remember they need the fighting to end as much as we do and not to feel they have to be enticed into it – because they will try and convince you that’s what you must do.
However that is not the reality of the situation and you have to know it and believe it.
Reality
Russia desperately wants the war to end because it’s pushing its entire economy to the brink and its starting to struggle with manpower recruitment and material supplies of vehicles. It knows if this goes on six months more it’s going to cause problems it may not recover from and could even cause military problems on the front lines. But they are never going to concede that point, ever, so don’t expect to see it happen.
Literally within the space of 24 hours Putin has moved from we don’t need peace talks because we’re winning, to saying he has no preconditions to starting peace talks.
This is what he does all the time, it’s designed to give hope and seem reasonable until it actually happens, when he’ll blame the west and Ukraine for making it impossible.
Putin literally this morning saying he had no preconditions – just a day after saying he didn’t need talks because he was winning in Ukraine.
Your problem is getting them to the table, but what you cannot do is give them any concessions. If you do that just to get them in the room, they’ve got you for the rest of the negotiations.
What you can do is potentially give them options on where talks will take place, provided you can be sure of communications security. The problem is Russia sees almost anywhere in the West, except possibly Geneva, Belgrade and Budapest as too pro-western. Ukraine won’t agree to Budapest because of Orban and the failed Budapest Agreement on its independence, where major powers including Russia agreed to never attack it.
Agreeing where won’t be too complicated for the West, if it gets Russia and Ukraine in the room.
The next problem is Russia trying to lay down the things it won’t concede before talks even start. “We don’t want a line of contact armistice, we want the oblasts we’re occupying and have declared as ours in full.” For Ukraine that’s not acceptable, and western negotiators won’t accept it either. But the Russians will say it because they think it will force a concession on something else. However if it gets them nowhere they’ll. likely still agree to talks, provided that point is on the table in negotiations.
There will be a lot of bravado, they’ll try and get sanctions dropped, they’ll want their cash in the west returned etc etc. They’ll also make humiliating demands on Ukraine they know it won’t accept. These at first will be rolled out by Russian media amplifiers to bolster its position, but the actual negotiations will be less bellicose and private.
WHAT RUSSIA WILL WANT
Ukraine withdraws from the Oblasts Russia has declared its own.
Its cash in western banks back.
All sanctions lifted as soon as the armistice comes into effect.
Ukraine never joins NATO.
Ukraine reduces its armed forces to x number of men.
Russia gets to verify what Ukraine is doing militarily.
No foreign troops in Ukraine ever.
No fortification of the new border/demarcation line.
Ukraine doesn’t develop long range strike weapons and those it has must be destroyed.
Russian Orthodox Church reinstated and compensated.
Russia knows it cannot have these points. It will ask for everything it knows is not acceptable knowing that it can be negotiated down to a halfway point that is still more than it will actually accept as a minimum. Russia always asks for far more than it is ever likely to really want, but you will never know what they’ll really accept.
Standing firm
The western negotiators and Ukraine have to stand firm – remember the war is still being fought as these talks take place. It’s at this point western aid needs to reach a peak of impact and be holding the Russians back. Ukraine has to be willing to push itself to the max to resist what Russia is doing on the battlefield, which is entirely to improve its negotiating position.
Ukraine is not going to hand over any more ground than Russia occupies. The Russians know that, which is why they keep trying to take more.
Some of the western negotiators will be willing to give back some of Russia’s money but there will be many who don’t want that to happen unless the peace talks have been successful, an armistice holds and is verifiably seen to be doing so. A phased return of the money might be possible, but many will argue that the damage to Ukraine is vast (although most of it is in Russian occupied areas), and it should get the money. Russia will never concede that.
Perhaps the biggest negotiation issue will be on exactly what the cessation of hostilities actually is. Russia won’t want a permanent peace treaty because that gives Ukraine too much leeway to join NATO sooner. A North Korea style armistice line and demilitarized zone creates the same situation as NK and SK – the war is strictly speaking still on, but not. Then its really about where the line is drawn, who leaves which favorable position to make the gap viable for both sides, and how fast each others forces withdraw – because that needs to be verifiable and simultaneous. Then it’s also about how far away forces can be, will there be any gaps for trade – or will that have to wait for everything to settle down?
And what happens about the Zaporhizia nuclear power plant? The largest in Europe and under Russian occupation. They won’t want to give that back.
The most effective DMZ has been North-South Korea from 1953. Two years of negotiations while the war raged on. But the armistice – meant to be temporary – is still with us, across the DMZ. There have been hostilities since. NK special ops raids into the South, shelling of SK held islands, even the sinking of an SK corvette by a torpedo on March 26 2010. The NK have also dug tunnels under the DMZ big enough to get tanks through but the South found and blocked them.
A DMZ like this in Europe – almost another Iron Curtain, may be the only way the fighting ends. Maybe it could allow for a long term settlement but both sides get comfortable with where they are and Ukraine has sworn it will never acknowledge Russian ownership of its 1991 borders and the occupied territories.
Is a demilitarized zone the best option for Ukraine?
The question we will all have to face is do we think Russia will come back for more? If Putin survives long enough, yes its possible, and he won’t make the same mistakes he did with this war. So letting Ukraine into NATO – however politically difficult and fraught with legal issues over vetoes, has got to be an essential ingredient in Ukraine’s security.
Only yesterday Russia’s defence minister announced planning for a war with NATO in the next decade. There’s no doubt where their ambitions lie even if they’re unrealistic.
Russia will do its best to take everyone for a ride over negotiations – it will try and get far more than its entitled to or deserves. Just remember the Katja Kallas rule: The Russians will ask for 500% of what they want and then spend ages letting you negotiate them down to 250%, and they’ll still end up with far more than they’d have accepted. That can’t be allowed to happen this time.
Putin has to be able to spin the wars end as a Russian victory – only keeping conquered land will give him that. He won’t accept anything less, that’s a fact of life we and Ukraine will have to live with. But it doesn’t mean Ukraine has to accept it as permanent or fixed.
Russia and Ukraine need an end to the fighting. Putin and his regime will not last forever. My personal belief is that an armistice line and DMZ is the only way both sides get what they want. At least for now. But it won’t be over until Ukraine gets its legal land back and that could be decades down the road.
A DMZ is not a concession. It would have proven the west stopped Russia conquering what it set out to achieve – all of Ukraine. It’s not ideal but it will mean we can stop it happening again by welcoming Ukraine into the western alliances, NATO and the EU.
What happens once the fighting is over and both sides verifiably step back – I cannot stress the need for verification enough, although with modern satellites it’s a lot easier to identify than it has been in the past – it is critical. Ukraine cannot be left out of the European defence structure, no matter what Hungary or Slovakia or even Germany or France want. Russia will campaign hard to prevent it. We have to be ready for that.
We must also face the fact there will be a post-Zelensky world. He will be both the nations savior and to many, the man who gave up Ukrainian territory even when he didn’t legally do so and refused to. He’s unlikely to win a second term in office, and it’s probably right that doesn’t even stand. Facing the Churchill scenario of saving the nation but nobody wanting you, as Churchill did is a hard pill to swallow. Churchill came back as Prime Minister though, in 1951. A returning Zelensky eventually seems inevitable. It’s how people work in the long term. People lean towards decisive war heroes. Eisenhower, De Gaulle, Churchill, they all came back.
That will mean we have a new Ukrainian president wanting to make radical changes and take the country rapidly westward in its orientation – a source of deep anguish for the Russians that will intensify the new Cold War between them. It’s almost inevitable. Until Russia has a regime that can live with its neighbors peacefully and not want to flatten and conquer them for some school boy vision of faded empire restored, this is how it will be.
Ukraine must be given the chance and the aid to democratize fully, crush the oligarchic tendency and slash corruption. Opportunities for it will be everywhere as reconstruction projects suck in money – preventing it taking hold will be essential. It will need help.
All of it is vital to maintain the peace. Because Russia will undermine it at every possible avenue. Russia must be excluded from Ukraine almost completely. If it thinks it can wiggle its way in and upset the system that’s what it will do.
Can we get to the point of a DMZ and genuine disengagement and de-mobilisation? probably. But a real peace? Years away. Even if Putin fell, Russia would have to sort itself out and face what it had done – and they’ve never been good at taking responsibility for anything.
The Analyst
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