Talk about Ukraine peace is its own fight
WASHINGTON — As the fight in Ukraine has dragged on for the past year, another battle has unfolded in parallel: a war of words between Russia and the West over who is more interested in ending the conflict peacefully.
For now, analysts and Western officials say, serious peace talks are extremely difficult to envision. Both sides have set conditions for negotiations that cannot be met anytime soon, and have vowed to fight until victory.
And Ukraine’s president has ruled out dealing directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of atrocities committed by his military forces.
At the same time, both sides also have a keen interest in showing an openness to negotiations.
But far from pointing to a peaceful end, such talk is largely strategic. It is intended to placate allies, cast the opposition as unreasonable and, especially on the Ukrainian side, tamp down a growing desire within Western countries to find an end to the costly war.
Major countries such as India, South Africa and Brazil have not taken clear sides in the conflict, which has raised energy prices and exacerbated a global food crisis.
Russia relies on economic relations with these countries, and benefits when they express impatience with the West over the war’s duration, because a swift end to the conflict now would leave Russia occupying large parts of Ukraine.
By claiming to be more willing than the West to negotiate, Russia gives the countries a pretext for not taking a stance against it. “We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them,” Putin said on Russian state television in late December.
Such rhetoric “is aimed largely at India and other nonaligned powers,” said Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst with the Rand Corp.
At the same time, U.S. officials, mindful of their open-ended talk of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” contend that their goal is to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in eventual peace negotiations, without specifying when they might come.
U.S. officials call Putin’s own talk of peace absurd. They note that Russia is brutally attacking its neighbor and insists that Ukrainians accept Russian annexation of large swaths of their territory as a condition of peace. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of a “false equivalence” between an aggressor and a victim.
“If Russia withdraws its troops today, the war is over,” he said.
Biden administration officials also fear the Russian leader might simply exploit any peace talks for tactical advantage.
And while stressing that Ukraine must make its own decisions about when and how to make peace, Blinken said that Russia’s aggression must not be rewarded with territorial gains, lest it set an example for other would-be aggressors. A United Nations resolution passed Thursday with overwhelming support endorsed the same principle, saying that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.”