Neither Ukraine nor Russia can win now

The paradox is that a settlement is desperately needed, but there can be no lasting peace with Putin

The Dutch philosopher Spinoza said that “peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice”. Russia’s atrocities and what we now know about Russian nationalism mean that “peace” so defined with Russia is unachievable.

It is quite clear that, as far as Putin and his ideologue Aleksandr Dugin are concerned, Ukraine’s crime was to refuse to be Russian despite being part of the sacred community of Orthodoxy, of the Cyrillic script; and this view would seem to be widely shared among his siloviki. Ukraine’s “crime” is shared with other countries that once belonged to Russia; Poland and Kazakhstan have recently been described as non-states by both former president Dmitry Medvedev and Putin. And there is nothing new in this imperial ambition and paranoia; Pushkin wrote in this vein in support of wars against Poland and in the Caucasus. Listen to Alexander Borodai, a Donetsk separatist: “As Alexander III said, Russia’s allies are its army and its navy. Unfortunately we have no other natural allies.”

So the problem of Russian nationalism is enduring not personal; it cannot be solved, it must be managed. No treaty should be relied on. As one of Putin’s deputies, Sergey Kiriyenko, said in 2017: “The Russian state is not based on treaties.” Treaties constrain the leader who must break them as soon as he can. Any settlement has to be recognised as one that can be secured against potential breaches. Which implies that the Peace Dividend we all took in the 1990s must be revisited.

What might any settlement to the current conflict look like? Zelensky has already offered to end his pursuit of Nato membership. What he wants in return is access to the EU. In terms of territory, Zelensky might accept the loss of Crimea but a sustainable Crimea has to have a land corridor resupply route and fresh water. In return, Putin must leave Ukraine the Odesa coastline to allow it to export by sea. However, the rust belts of the Donbas, home to Russian speakers transported there to replace the millions of Ukrainians killed in Stalin’s Holodomor and the Second World War, could perhaps be ceded, even though those Russian speakers now seem repelled by Putin’s actions.

So the bones of a deal are there: swap Nato for EU, cede the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine and Crimea with a land corridor, reopen the port of Odessa. In theory, this would achieve Putin’s war aims. It would leave Ukraine still viable. Rationally, this ought to be the end of it. And if so, Kissinger is right to assert that Ukraine’s role is to be a neutral buffer state, not the frontier of Europe.

Unfortunately, Kissinger’s view is now problematic. The emotional problems with the proposal grow with every atrocity Russia commits. Russian nationalism also means that the idea of a separate Ukrainian “neutrality” would seem to be a chimera. As a Polish historian observed in the 1930s: “Without Ukraine, Russia is relegated to a northern wilderness.” Hence perhaps why Putin’s negotiator at earlier talks, Vladimir Medinsky, said: “The very existence of Russia is at stake.” A successful Western-oriented economy on its border would pose a real threat to the internal stability of the Russian regime.

The paradox is that the need for some sort of settlement is growing. Each side is fighting the other to mutual destruction; neither a fully mobilised Ukraine nor a Russia that refuses to admit it is at war has the resources to achieve its ultimate goals. Ukraine’s human resources are finite. Cracks are appearing in the Russian internal narrative; when a pop concert chants “F--- the war” in Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, he should take note. Those protesters are of the generation he needs to fight an attritional war; and Russian demographics indicate a severe shortage in this age group. Western sanctions will increasingly make themselves felt; Russia predicts drop of at least 10 per cent in GDP this year. Equally, the global response to the invasion, already patchy, is showing fault lines that will widen as food and fuel shortages bite.

A compromise will have to be reached. And Zelensky will need to show as much wisdom in those negotiations as his people have shown courage in battle. But as we have left the fighting to Ukraine, so we should let the Ukrainians decide where to make those compromises. Our role must be to ensure any settlement sticks and contain the expansive nationalism that caused this war in the first place.