Why a negotiated end to the Ukraine War is difficult now

If after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s whistle-stop flying visit to meet him in his war-torn country in August, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky thought that he could sweet-talk Indian policymakers into taking his side on the Russia front, he would have something coming. It is not only about India’s long association and friendship with Moscow, which most Indians, starting with the masses, still believe is more dependable in geopolitical and geostrategic terms than any other international ties, and including the ties with the sole superpower, the US, which has begun facing some strains in recent weeks.

PM Modi was in Moscow again last month for the BRICS summit, where, too, on the sidelines he discussed the war with host President Vladimir Putin. Nearer home, his sideline meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping took away all the limelight from the Modi-Putin talks and even the main events and outcomes on the BRICS front. Suffice to point out that BRICS member states should not rush through admitting new members ad infinitum or float a common currency that could replace the American dollar as the international currency. If purposeful, they should strategise even more on the timing of the latter, especially. After all, every other nation has to earn the dollar, which is the most popular international currency just now. In simple or simplistic terms, the US has to only print it.

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BRICS aside, Zelensky has since repeated his call for India to intervene in peace facilitation, but on Ukraine’s side. It is a basic premise in diplomatic matters that you cannot be a facilitator or mediator in such situations and still take sides. But Kyiv insists that all those who want to play a constructive role in ending the war, which Ukrainians also want ended, should endorse Zelensky’s position of being partisan towards his country—and condemn Russia and Putin at the same time.

It is clear that India would not fall for Zelensky’s idea even with closed eyes. Yes, India can host bilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia. It need not even mediate but only needs to facilitate. But even for doing so, the stakeholders involved should do their bit. From the Russian side, Moscow would have to endorse that it would withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territories once other concerns were met to its satisfaction. Whether those territories should end with those that Russia has ‘occupied’ (or ‘liberated’) in the course of the war that commenced in February 2022 is the question. Or, should it also include Crimea that Russia occupied in 2014, that would form the subtext.

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Mutual concerns

Enough has been written about how the US avoided responding to Putin’s demand for non-expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders since the late nineties. Barring the West, especially the US, there was general agreement that admitting Ukraine into NATO would provoke Russia. The more Russia reacted, say, by ‘annexing’ Crimea, the greater did it become the US’ un-spelt-out cause for taking Ukraine into NATO’s embrace. Yes, there was a genuine concern also for Ukraine to fear Russian annexation of the country or its border provinces, if only over time. But greater the possibility of early admittance of Ukraine into NATO, faster did Russia react.

Earlier, in 2008, when Putin exchanged the presidency with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (if to circumvent a constitutional provision), Russia ‘recognised’ Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia as independent entities, established diplomatic ties with them, and also posted Russian troops for their security. Will this ‘occupation’ by Russia, too, form a part of an overall agenda that the West will set for any Russo-Ukrainian talks to end the continuing war? It is a million-dollar question that neither India nor any other peace facilitator would want to explore, not certainly at this preliminary stage.

Otherwise, the long list of nations that had participated in the Ukrainian peace efforts are also those that had endorsed Zelensky’s position, which is no position if the idea is for a negotiated peace with Russia. The fact is that neither Ukraine nor its Western backers, especially the US, want to accept, or want to be seen as accepting, that Russian demand may have some justification to it. It is another matter that neither side is ready to declare that they are willing to go back to their pre-war position if their legitimate demands are met and cannot be ignored either.

Step-motherly treatment

Today, Russia’s demands have become longer against Ukraine’s one-point demand for the other to withdraw its troops to pre-war positions on the ground. Yes, Kyiv would also demand iron-clad guarantees that Moscow would not duck its commitments on a later date. Membership in NATO then becomes a raison d’être for Ukraine and its Western allies, yes, the US in particular. That is where the current war has had its beginnings; they will be unwilling to concede, and start-off negotiations on that point remain remote, at least now.

Russia can also be expected to demand that the US-led West withdraw all sanctions imposed since the commencement of the Ukraine War and go back to the days of Georgian and Crimean episodes. It is fair to expect that the sanctions imposed since the commencement of the Ukraine War are an acceptable demand if Russia too withdraws from occupied territories, but other sanctions and their withdrawals might link to similar withdrawals elsewhere. Is Russia prepared for it all?

This question is serious in intent and content, as Moscow in general and President Putin in particular would have a lot to explain to their people, who have endured the war, if Russia were to walk out of territories that it had either annexed as its territories or has recognised as independent entities. Any power wanting to unsettle a post-peace Putin leadership would expect domestic opposition to any such initiative by their government, especially after they had endured such hardships. Likewise, in territories under Russia’s control or care, the local population would loathe to return to the post-Soviet ‘parental fold’, where they might fear stepmotherly treatment and worse.

Last but not least on this list is the International Criminal Court’s ‘arrest warrant’ against President Putin, labelling him as a ‘war criminal’. It is once again proof that in the international arena of politics and diplomacy might (even if in terms of numbers) is right. For the war to end, along with other sanctions, Russia would want this warrant against Putin withdrawn, preferably with retrospective effect. Whether withdrawn that way or otherwise, such a course would make a further mockery of the post-Cold War global order more than already.

In effect, both sides have resorted to irretractable steps that they would find it difficult to withdraw without losing face, nearer home or afar, and without playing around with global systems that have already been mocked at now by Israel and earlier by the US, too. If at the height of the Iraq War, the US told the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that anyone is yet to recover, the Israeli ban on secretary-general Guterres and attacks on UN peacekeepers have made the shame on the international institutions irretrievable for all time to come. From here, the UN can only weaken further and farther. This is not to defend the other offenders, but to point to the impossibility of the prevailing situation that can only worsen.

Non-interference

The real question for any peace facilitator under the circumstances is whether the US, especially, would guarantee non-interference in the process, directly or otherwise, whose effect would be to torpedo the initiative now and ever. After all, it has become a ‘proxy war’, where Ukraine is fighting two battles at the same time—one defending itself against Russia, the other fighting a ‘proxy war’ for the US and the rest of the West. Hidden behind their perceived altruism is a desire to see Russia de-capacitated militarily and economically, and hopefully politically, too.

Would, as a peace facilitator, India want to see such a turn of events and blame itself later on for letting a long-time friend and past ally emaciated to levels that even the splintering of the Soviet Union did not cause? Recent events on the US-Canada front(s) in matters pertaining to Khalistani terrorism have exposed the chinks in India’s bilateral ties with America in particular. This may be less in the case of the political leadership and even the nation’s diplomatic and strategic community, but on the streets of India, a mental equation between dependability on Moscow and lack of it in the case of Washington has re-emerged. No government in Delhi can overlook such concerns and considerations over the short and medium terms.

For Western corporations, they have lined their pockets with the blood money from selling weapons to Ukraine through the past two years and more. If there is peace, then again, their private sector would make big money in reconstruction of the war-ravaged Ukraine, the money coming from their governments as loans to Ukraine. Ultimately, the latter and its population would suffer for years to come, wherein additional IMF bailout packages would see them through bare minimum existential expenditure.

Yes, Ukraine has a long list of exportable commodities, which could ensure that their export earnings too grew in a more peaceful neighbourhood environment, as in the pre-war period. That could limit the cause for concern, but concern over external debts piled up through war and peace would still be worrisome. It will be no less for Russia, which would have to shoulder all the bills from its pockets. There may not be any intermittent under-writer of expenses, with the result, the nation’s economy could take a further hit. Who cares?

Trans-Atlantic chasm

While commencing the war, Putin should have considered the possibility of an existing trans-Atlantic chasm that he should have allowed to fester. It was already evident when France, for instance, reacted strongly to Australia cancelling an existing non-nuclear submarine deal after secretly signing up a nuclear sub-deal with the US and the two forming the AUKUS security apparatus with the UK too partnering in it.

Germany, the other continental power, played neutral in the Ukraine War as long as its concerns about the loss of Russian oil remained. Once it had addressed that problem one way or the other, its concerns for being seen as caring and daring for continental Europe overtook. Today, both France and Germany have their own agendas for the Indo-Pacific, and so has Canada, which is miles and miles away from the centre-of-gravity of such a construct.

Today, thanks to Russia and the Ukraine War, the trans-Atlantic chasm has been covered. There is also the inevitable reality that after a series of new admissions in the post-Cold War era, the US’ say in NATO has increased, especially when it comes to the number of smaller European nations eating out of its hands. Hence, the revival of any France or Germany, or an unimaginable and inevitable Franco-German initiative to take over from where the US might have left, looks distant. Any peace facilitator in the context of the Ukraine War will have to consider those developments, futuristic as they may sound now, if they have to make headway.

The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.