The US election, Ukraine, and the meaning of peace

Longstanding whispers about the need to negotiate a peaceful end to Russia’s war in Ukraine have begun to get louder. In early October, former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg floated the idea of a settlement that involved Ukraine giving up some territory to guarantee that the rest of the country survived as an independent nation. Ukraine would become a NATO member and would only de facto relinquish the territory currently occupied by Russia. Stoltenberg cited Finland and Germany in support of his argument, both of which have lost territory in the past but ultimately preserved their independence and their sovereignty.

After the US election this week, calls such as these could grow to a clamour. Irrespective of the result, the United States seems destined to wind down its aid for Ukraine over the coming months and years. Ukraine’s European partners are nowhere near ready to fill that void. This will drive demands for Ukraine to compromise on its longstanding opposition to territorial concessions. But scaled back Western support is incompatible with any settlement other than a capitulation, a bad look for Kamala Harris or for Donald Trump. US policymakers cannot escape the fact that Western support will continue to shape the war. And, if the new administration wants the war to end in a peaceful settlement, Ukraine will need more (and less conditional) support over the coming months to strengthen its negotiating position – and ironclad security guarantees in the years that follow.

“Peace for land” is not peace

The Ukrainian leadership cannot publicly entertain proposals of territorial concessions in exchange for peace. The official line is that any settlement that did not restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders would be unjust and a gross violation of the international order. Also fresh in Ukrainian memory is the world’s response to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, which the international community de facto accepted in the vain hope that Russia would be satisfied. “Land for peace” didn’t work, so why should “peace for land”? And yet, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has requested that allies mulling “peace for land” schemes talk to him directly, not through intermediaries. This suggests that Zelensky is willing to discuss the details of any and all ideas to achieve peace. It is, however, unlikely that he would condemn himself to jail (or worse) by agreeing to anything that would breach Ukraine’s constitution.

No less relevant is the fact that Ukraine’s society rejects a “peace for land” settlement. A majority of Ukrainians (57 per cent) support the entry of their country into negotiations with Russia. At the same time, these negotiations would come with specific conditions: 60 per cent of Ukrainians are unwilling to cede Crimea or any part of their country’s territory; 77 per cent would find negotiations based on the current territorial status quo unacceptable. Zelensky is thus bound by justice, law, and public opinion to continue pursuing a very ambitious agenda for Ukraine.

But security guarantees could be

To demonstrate continued commitment to this agenda and to help the West come up with a clear strategy, Zelensky has pitched a five-point victory plan that covers the geopolitical, security, military, and economic dimensions of ending the war. The plan envisages an invitation to join NATO, increased Western military support, permission to conduct strikes against military targets deep in Russia, and a non-nuclear deterrence package within Ukraine. After the war, Ukraine’s partners would have access to the country’s critical raw materials and Ukrainian military units would replace certain US military contingents in Europe.

As the Ukrainian president puts it, the implementation of this plan should enable Ukraine to enter into negotiations with Russia to achieve a settlement that would not risk the resumption of aggression a few years down the line. For Ukraine, which under the “Minsk process” experienced almost 200 rounds of negotiations and 20 ceasefires, a ceasefire agreement without strong security guarantees such as those contained in the plan would not be worth the paper it’s written on.

Ukraine’s Western allies have hesitated to commit their support for the “victory plan”, with some partners yet again telling Zelensky he is asking too much. Those partners are missing the point.

Ukraine’s Western allies have hesitated to commit their support for the plan, with some partners yet again telling Zelensky he is asking too much. Those partners are missing the point. Western states have long insisted that Ukraine should define the moment and the conditions in which it wants to start negotiations. The plan is Kyiv signalling its readiness to begin this process: it would, after all, be foolish to reveal one’s final position before negotiations had even begun. But negotiations from a position of weakness would bring nothing other than Ukraine’s capitulation. In turn, progress on the first two points – an invitation to join NATO and more military support – seems to be the only way for said negotiations to be feasible at all. This is the case in terms of both the Ukrainian position and the chances of getting Russia to the table.

Zelensky and Ukrainian society could agree to enter a settlement that envisaged strong security guarantees and a diplomatic process that aimed over time to recover the occupied territories. Stoltenberg’s comments referred to the so-called West German model, under which the country joined NATO while East Germany remained in the orbit of the Soviet Union. This could indeed be a reference model for Ukraine if adapted to the specificities of the current conflict. Ukraine could, for instance, legally join NATO within its 1991 borders, but with article 5 on collective defence applying only within the territory currently controlled by Ukraine. That would likely also require Western boots on the ground to keep the peace and deter any new Russian assaults. As a concession, Ukraine might commit not to attempt to regain control of the occupied territories by military means.

This proposal would have to undergo significant examination in Ukraine’s parliament and possibly a public referendum. But the invitation to join NATO would have to happen before any negotiations with Russia took place, given that the Kremlin would be unlikely to agree to drop any of its longstanding conditions without one.

Accordingly, it is the NATO element of Zelensky’s plan that has provoked the most Russian frothing, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisting that Ukraine is pushing NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. This exploitation of the West’s fear of escalation has proven a painfully successful narrative for Russia throughout the war, helping to contain Western support for Ukraine in its stasis of doing “enough not to lose but not enough to win”. As long as Russia understands that Ukraine cannot join NATO while the war is ongoing, the Kremlin has little motivation to do anything but continue the war. Indeed, it has escalated anyway despite Western caution by amassing thousands of North Korean troops near the Ukrainian border. Negotiations with Ukraine as a country on the way to NATO membership and with article 5 set to be applied in Kyiv-controlled territories would be an entirely different proposition.

After the uncertainty of the US election, which has already delayed key decisions on Ukraine and on European security, Western governments should move away from the “peace for land” formula and instead promote “security guarantees for peace”. Being willing to push for a peaceful settlement without being ready to change the paradigm of support cannot bring practical results. Without security guarantees, all discussions about the end of the war are likely to fail thanks to Ukraine’s relatively weaker position, irrespective of the future US administration, and could prove extremely dangerous.