On what terms could the war in Ukraine stop?

Pressure for peace talks is growing, even as Russia retreats from Kherson

RUSSIA’S lightning attack on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was a failure. Its creeping artillery war to seize the eastern region of Donbas has ground to a bloody halt. It has lost a chunk of stolen territory south of the city of Kharkiv, and this week announced a retreat from Kherson, the only provincial capital it had captured since its invasion in February. With each setback, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has sought new ways to torment Ukraine. The latest is a relentless bombardment that seeks to wreck Ukraine’s infrastructure. Residents of the capital have been told they may have to evacuate if the power grid collapses, halting water and sewage services.

Power cuts have not sapped Ukraine’s will to fight. But they are a reminder that, eight months after his unprovoked invasion, Mr Putin keeps looking for ways to raise the stakes. Some worry he might blow up a dam on the Dnieper river, as Stalin did in 1941, to slow his adversaries’ advance.

The ever-evolving Russian assault also raises an awkward question: how long will America and Europe keep providing Ukraine with the billions of dollars’ worth of military and economic aid it needs every month to fend Russia off? “For as long as it takes,” say Western leaders. But many of their citizens reject the idea of bankrolling an indefinite conflict with Russia. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Rome on November 5th, calling for an end to the fighting. “We don’t want war. No weapons, no sanctions. Where is diplomacy?” read one placard.

Wary Washington

In America, too, questions have been raised. Hard-left Democrats recently issued a call, swiftly retracted, for negotiations. Gains by America-first Republicans in the midterm elections on November 8th, although smaller than expected, are a reminder that American politics might change dramatically after the next presidential election, in two years’ time, and with it policy on Ukraine.

Jake Sullivan, Mr Biden’s national-security adviser, made an unannounced trip to Kyiv on November 4th to promise “unwavering” support. But he also urged Ukraine to think about future peace terms. It has since emerged that he has been in touch with his Russian counterparts, to warn them not to use nuclear weapons. On November 9th Mr Biden said Russia and Ukraine would “lick their wounds” after the battle for Kherson, and might then be ready for compromise. He insisted he would not tell Ukraine what to do.

In private, Western and Ukrainian officials are starting to ponder what a stable outcome might look like. Will Ukraine become a new Finland, forced to cede land to its invaders and to remain neutral for decades? Or another West Germany, with its national territory partitioned by war and its democratic half absorbed into nato? A much-discussed template is Israel, a country under constant threat that has been able to defend itself without formal alliances but with extensive military help from

America.

The precise terms of any negotiated settlement depend on what happens on the battlefield. There is likely to be a lot more fighting before either side is ready to end the war. Russia and Ukraine have each lost, by one estimate, roughly 100,000 soldiers, killed and wounded, but both still hope to manoeuvre to a more favourable position.

The retreat from Kherson is a humiliation for Mr Putin. But it will give Russian forces a more easily defended line along the Dnieper river. Mr Putin shows no sign of throwing in the towel. He has mobilised hundreds of thousands more recruits. Some have been rushed into battle with little training or equipment to hold the line; the rest may be used for a renewed push next year.

Ukraine, for its part, hopes to maintain its momentum. Its army is getting reinforcements this winter, in the form of thousands of recruits trained by Britain and other Western countries. Western arms continue to arrive. On November 4th the Pentagon announced another arms package, worth $400m, including 45 refurbished t-72b tanks and 1,100 drones. The first new nasams anti-aircraft batteries were deployed this week.

The West’s stocks of weapons are not unlimited. European armies have eaten deep into theirs; even mighty America worries about eroding its own ability to fight future wars. It is Russia, however, that seems to face the most immediate shortages. It has used up most of its precision bombs and missiles, and is struggling to replace them because of sanctions. It is obtaining fresh weapons from the likes of Iran and perhaps North Korea. (China has so far heeded American warnings to stay out of the war.)

Cold calculation

Mr Putin is hoping his campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity grid will freeze the country into submission, or at least turn it into a weak, failing state. But the evidence of past conflicts is that aerial bombing of civilians, in the absence of an effective ground campaign, rarely secures victory. Nearly 90% of Ukrainians want the country to keep fighting.

In Russia, according to the Levada Centre, a pollster, only 36% want to press on with the war, whereas 57% favour peace talks. At the same time, support for Mr Putin remains at 79%.

Russians, it seems, would like the war to end but, starved of impartial news, do not blame Mr Putin for it. Still, the more he tries to dragoon them into fighting, the more he risks losing popular support.

Ukraine’s more avid Western supporters think that, with time, Ukraine will become stronger, and Russia weaker. But Mr Putin is hoping that “General Winter” will somehow revive his fortunes, if not by weakening Ukraine’s will to fight then by gnawing at the West’s readiness to support it, as the heating bills balloon in Europe.

Mr Putin claims that he is ready to negotiate (from the starting point that the West should recognise his theft of Ukrainian territory) but that Ukraine’s Western “masters” have prevented it from talking. The two sides held lengthy talks after Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and part of Donbas in 2014. They talked again in the spring, as Russia besieged Kyiv. But Ukraine set its face against further negotiations after Russia’s retreat from Kyiv in April revealed widespread atrocities against civilians. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, suggested this week that talks could be revived, but only if Russia was willing to give back Ukrainian land, pay compensation and accept responsibility for war crimes.

The West is vague about its own aims. Mr Biden has at times mused about wanting to see Mr Putin ousted from power; at others he has talked about finding “off-ramps” for the Russian leader. He defined his goals most clearly in a guest article in the New York Times in May: “a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression”. Notably, that left out the question of Ukraine’s borders. Western leaders say this is for Ukraine to decide; their aim is to strengthen its negotiating hand.

More recently, though, Ukraine’s backers have sounded more specific. In a statement on October 11th, leaders of the g7 group of industrialised countries offered their “full support to Ukraine’s independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty in its internationally recognised borders”. They demanded that Russia “completely and unconditionally withdraw” from all seized lands. Among other things, they pledged to find ways of using seized Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.

Artillerymen of Ukraine's Armed Forces destroy the Russian invaders with the help of the German 155-mm FH70 howitzer, Zaporizhzhia Region, southeastern Ukraine. October 27, 2022. Photo by Dmytro Smolienko/ukrinform/abacapress.com