We warned from the outset that Russia might well win the war in Ukraine and lose the peace. In fact, the odds are rising that there will be no peace, particularly of the sort that Vladimir Putin has said he wants, which is a durable resolution of conflict, and not yet another comparatively short-term cessation of hostilities in which Russia’s opponents take a breather and then re-start hostilities, even if in a less intense way than full-on fighting.
We’ll unpack why this looks to be the case in short order. But if that prognosis proves to correct, the question then becomes what solution, particularly in terms of territorial disposition, is least bad for Russia in security terms. We concur with Moscow-based analyst Mark Sleboda (who has reluctantly come around to this view, as he claims more and more Russians have), that as painful as an occupation of Russia-hating Western Ukraine would be, leaving it as a Banderite territory on Russia’s borders, to be funded and armed by NATO, would be worse. Note that Sleboda did not consider our preferred outcome, turning these strongly irredentist areas into de-electrified zones. That would greatly thin out population levels, reducing the cost of occupation.
We’ll turn finally to an issue of what it might mean for Russia to “impose terms” which is a formula some commentators (including yours truly) have used without considering what that might mean in practice.
Why the Trump “Negotiations” With Ukraine Will Go Nowhere
The short version, as we have said before, is that there is no overlap in bargaining positions. That means no deal. Indeed, based on what Putin and key officials have consistenly been saying, it’s very unlikely that “talks” will amount to more than preliminary feelers, even with a Trump-Putin face-to-face.1
Even with rumors via (per Alexander Mercouris, as of then only) Dima at Military Summary’s show, that Trump might try to engage Putin on a broad set of security interests, there’s not enough there there to budge Putin with respect to an unresolved threat on Russia’s border. Trump cannot provide what Putin has been seeking at least since 2007: a new European security architecture. In my humble opinion, this is the only sort of offer that might induce Putin to make concessions with respect to his current position on Ukraine, since it could solve the underlying conflict, and not the immediate bone of contention.
Putin’s position, as stated on June 14 and reiterated by Putin and various officials, Russia requires a firm commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO nor engage in NATO-boosting shenanigans like participating in NATO war games and will pull all forces out of the four oblasts that Russia regards as Russian territory. That means ceding territory not held by Russia.
Russia also insists that Ukraine de-militarize; Putin has suggested returning to the haggling over weapons levels that had begun in the spring 2022 Istanbul talks, and “denazifying,” which means among other things outlawing Banderite parties and symbols.
Asking Ukraine to give up areas Russia has not already taken is cheeky, but even more so is Russia’s demand for regime change in Ukraine.2
As we have said before, Trump cannot deliver anything of the kind. He cannot deliver NATO, which is a consensus-based body. He can’t even deliver a credible promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO via a US refusal to vote for its entry, since a later Administration would reverse that. EU leaders ex Orban and Fico were also implacably opposed to cooperating with Trump, and are even more so now that he’s taking an undue interest in Denmark’s Greenland. So they won’t cooperate out of general cussedness.
Similarly, as we have described, Trump cannot even deliver Ukraine. Even when the US was lavishing support on Ukraine, it often defied its paymaster, via flagrant corruption (such as failing to build defense lines around Kursk), terrorist acts, and continuing to pour men and weapons into trying to hold positions that the US urged Ukraine to relinquish. Now with Trump clearly inclined to cut Ukraine loose, what leverage does he have?
Let us also remember that conflicts regularly end without negotiations or meaningful agreements. As Lawrence Freedman pointed out in the New Statesman:
Those that demand Ukraine and its Western supporters work out what concessions will be offered to Russia to cut a deal to end the war, often claim that this will have to be done at some point because ‘wars always end with a negotiation.’ Despite its regular repetition, and however the Russo-Ukraine War concludes, this claim is simply not true. Not all wars end with negotiations. Some end with surrenders, as was the case with both Germany and Japan in 1945, or regime change, as with Italy in 1943, or cease-fires, which might require some negotiation but leave the underlying dispute unresolved, as with Korea in 1953. Even when there are negotiations intended to end a war they often fail…
Once a war has begun, compromises become much harder to identify let alone agree and confirm in treaty form. This will require intense bargaining over specific language in the full knowledge that any ambiguity will later be exploited.
Trust between the belligerents will be in even shorter supply than before….
Which is why remarkably few wars end with negotiations on the dispute which prompted the war.
The last sentence above is important for the Russia-Ukraine war. Again, Putin has been insisting since 2007 of a “new European security framework.” That would mean at a minimum no NATO forever for Ukraine and better yet, a deal limiting other threats, like no nuclear capable missiles within X minutes of flight time to the Russian border. Putin almost got what he wanted when Ukraine had agreed to no NATO membership in the draft of deal terms in the March-April 2022 Istanbul negotiations. But Boris Johnson kicked that table over on behalf of the US and NATO, making it explicit that the conflict was a proxy war and Ukraine was not free to make decisions, despite occasional pious noises otherwise. That further, greatly complicates any resolution. It isn’t just that Russia is faced with a much bigger foe, despite its military ineptitude. It is also faced with a coalition (as Alex Vershinin pointed out) that often squabbles openly about what to do (see regarding weapons commitments, for instance).
Freedman’s article is very much worth reading in full. After the in-depth discussion of the Falklands War, the final section explores the elements that are needed to come to a durable settlement of a conflict via negotiations. They are notably absent here.
Is Russia’s Least Bad Option to Go to the Polish Border?
Your humble blogger had been for some time of the view that if Russia’s paramount aim is security, it cannot leave a rump Ukraine in the West. That part of the country has been the home of the Banderites and many (most?) of its residents harbored strong anti-Russia sentiments.3 If that part of the country is not under Russian control, the resentful Europeans, with the help of perfidious Albion, will make it de facto part of NATO and will do everything they can to stoke hatred of Russia. And if Vance loses in 2028, you can expect the US to join in supplying weapons.
Now Russia has other considerations, like the economic and political cost of garrisoning part of Ukraine, or a son-of-end-of-WWII alternative of administering it for long enough to round up or drive out the Banderites, and re-indoctrinate the remaining population sufficiently so it might be given close to full self-determination down the road.
Keep in mind that Russia would have to manage not just domestic opinion but also that of its economic allies. They won’t like the spectacle of Russia gobbling up all of Ukraine. But if the US and Ukraine keep being hostile to Russia’s security needs, they might wind up making Russia’s case better than Putin ever could.
John Helmer for some time has been writing that the General Staff has been champing at the bit to prosecute the war more aggressively. Early in the electric war, Helmer reported that the General Staff was examining the idea of establishing a large de-electrified/demilitarized zone. An advantage is Russia could impose that unilaterally where it saw fit.
Some readers may think I am making too much of Mark Sleboda’s views, but of all the English-speaking commentators I have encountered, he has been far and away the most accurate in forecasting the pace of the war. That means far longer than just about anyone else thought possible. For instance, most milpundits have been talking about the Ukraine military collapsing any day now, yessiree.4 By contrast, Sleboda says it will take till the end of 2025 for Russia to clear the Donbass. Recall it still has to take two key cities, Slaviansk and Kramatorsk, on the last major defense line. Also consider that for Russia merely to secure the four oblasts that it now deems to be part of Russia, it will have to take two major cities that straddle the Dnieper: Zaporzhizhia (2024 population estimate 796,000) and Kherson (2024 population estimate 320,000). The only city in this size range that Russia has won is Mariupol, which had a population at the time of 420,000. That is not to say it won’t happen, but it is another piece of the minimum end-state for Russia that has not happened and does not look to be quick and easy.
How can Ukraine keep going when even the Pentagon said (a couple of months ago) that it could run out of men in as soon as 6 months, and other source then said 10 to 12 tops? Sleboda reported around ten that the MoD had estimated that for every year that Ukraine dropped the conscription age (now 25) it could raise another 100,000 men. Even if you think that’s high in light of flight across borders, Ukraine can probably raise one last army of at least 200,000. The Russian press has reported that Zelensky has relented to US pressure, but there has been no announcement so far of any conscription changes.
16 year old Ukrainians ‘mass fleeing’ in special buses to EU advertised on Facebook
Interviewee admits she’s packed her son off to Germany already…
US is trying to force Zelensky to lower conscription age to teenagers pic.twitter.com/wK0EtUO3Ed— RT (@RT_com) January 11, 2025
In case there are doubts that the Trump Administration would insist on lower the conscription age, a new Financial Times article puts paid to that idea. From Trump to urge Zelenskyy to lower Ukraine’s conscription age to 18:
[Incoming National Security Adviser Mike] Waltz said [on ABC] that its first steps would be to open dialogue with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — to whom the US has not spoken directly since the war began — and to ask Kyiv to mobilise more men in order to stabilise Ukraine’s front lines ahead of negotiations….
He added: “This isn’t just about munitions, ammunition or writing more cheques. It’s about seeing the front lines stabilise so that we can enter into some type of deal.”
This looks like Trump is moving away from the idea of abandoning the conflict. Perhaps he hopes that an only moderately higher level of intensity from Ukraine will check Russia’s progress. But to anyone following the war, that’s a delusion. At best, perhaps the Trump Team is trying to make demands of Ukraine that Zelensky will reject, and that will justify a wind-down of support. But per above, the Russian press seems to think that Zelensky has, or is about to, capitulate to US demands.
Sleboda also pointed out in this talk that all of the weapons that the West had sent has not appeared on the battlefield, so Russian experts believe there are still some in reserve.5 Te Biden Administration and the Pentagon have graciously pointed out that there’s $3.8 billion in US weapons authorizations for Ukraine that have yet to be sent. So even if Ukraine is getting close to scraping the bottom of the barrel, it is not there yet.
Consider the section starting at 22:50:
Sleboda: When this war first started, I was entirely against the Russian occupation of West Ukraine, because they really do hate Russians there, by and large.
Thomas: Which is why they don’t want to take all of it.
Sleboda: It’s going to be weaponized against them. The entire population there will be just raised as a Western warrior caste for to restart the conflict, you know. in a few years, as soon as possible by the West, right, they’ll be trained.
I think at this point, the terrible costs of a occupation and the resulting guerrilla war in West Ukraine are actually less than the costs of a rump West Ukrainian Banderite statelet that will continue to be weaponized against Russia. And I think that may be part of the plan, the US plan, you know, at some level, not their initial plan, but Plan D or Plan E is oh, “You know, so the Russians are just going to keep going. We’re not going to give them some sort of deal that officiates this or admits that we lost here. We’ll make them fight for every inch. And let’s see them choke on it.”
Again, not to overdo on a key point, but John Helmer indicated that the Russian General Staff has been frustrated that Putin opposed a much speedier destruction of the Ukraine electrical grid as a way to end the war. Russia seems to have the means to prostrate Ukraine quickly if it wanted to. So why not?
Among the reasons:
Avoiding creating a massive humanitarian crisis, on the order of 10x Gaza, albeit without flattening buildings. Russia would become an international pariah. It would be seen as incumbent on Russia to provide relief, which it would be unable to do on this scale.
That scale of loss of services would also give the US and NATO the excuse of sending in large numbers of armed forces, to supply provisions and medical care and preserve public order. That is the last thing Russia wants.
By contrast, despite understandable Ukrainian loud complaints, the steady, systematic degrading of the Ukraine grid has become so regularized that it is almost background noise in the war coverage.
Keeping the good will of its economic allies. Most are deeply troubled by the idea of Russia taking terrain from a neighbor, even if they understand intellectually that this is now the only option left in terms of Russian security after the US and NATO scuppered the Istanbul negotiations. As the war has progressed, more and more Global South members have come around to Russia’s point of view, as reflected in the shift in votes on UN resolutions denouncing Russia’s action. A slow, incremental imposition of new realities, particularly if the West refuses to relent on the core demand of “no Ukraine in NATO, ever” will help keep them on board.
The Problem of Russia “Imposing Terms”
I must confess to occasionally resorting to the formula of Russia will wind up prosecuting the war until it has defeated the current regime in Ukraine and that it will then “impose terms”. But if you view Russia as following Clausewitz, this falls short of one of his definition of success, which is “getting the enemy to do our will”. This is a fuller formulation, from Antulio J. Echevarria II in Defense Analysis:
Clausewitz derived his proposition that “victory consists not only in the occupation of the battlefield, but in the destruction of the enemy’s physical and psychic forces” from the conditions of victory as he defined them for both the strategic and tactical levels of war. On the strategic level, Clausewitz wrote that victory in war required: 1) the complete or partial destruction of the enemy’s armed forces; 2) the occupation of his country; and 3) the breaking of his will to fight.
Even if Russia can do that with respect to Ukraine, its opponent is the US and NATO. Even if the US withdraws support from this adventure, most EU states are determined to carry on in some manner.
NATO’s will to fight seems very much intact, even if it is having trouble with budget implications. And as a recent long article in the Atlantic, by the Prince of Darkness of US neocons, Robert Kagan, shows, he’s still raring for continuing to mix things up with Russia, and no doubt has plenty of company.
To reduce this to practical terms, what happens if Ukraine’s military “collapses” as many milpundits foresee? Perhaps it will reach the level of a Syria-level of soldiers simply refusing to fight, which there amounted to a disintegration of the command structure. Or perhaps Russia really will have to conquer Kiev and seize the key command centers.5
A wee issue here will be the probability of the lack of a credible surrender instrument. Perhaps readers may think it’s silly to consider such a nicety. Isn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?
Even in private contracts, deficiencies or anomalies in the form of agreements can reflect problems with the deal itself. An overly-specified contract may point to a lack of trust between the parties and high expectations that they’ll wind up adjudicating it. Having a party sign that is lightweight (as in not clearly having enough resources) may indicate an intent to defraud.
In keeping if you look at the French surrender in 1940 and the end of World War II, considerable attention was paid to who and where these documents were signed. The German text, for instance, was drafted assuming political leaders would ink it; it was later revised to have the heads of the major armed services execute it, which is what happened. Even in the case of the German agreement, Russian additions to terms that Eisenhower agreed were important and delayed the signing.
In Syria, as far as I can tell, there was never an agreement with the Syrian government. Assad fled, importantly no one in his armed services was asked to execute a surrender document as a proxy for the Assad government. The Russians are very concerned with form, both for themselves and for appearances with their allies, so I doubt they’d accept roll this way.
The US and NATO will be keen to deny Russia a valid-looking surrender deal. They would create a government in exile. If the diminished Zelensky does not manage to arrange his exit, they have an arguably better fallback in the form of Ukraine’s former military chief, Valerii Zaluzhny, conveniently already stationed in London as an ambassador. He has the further advantage of being a diehard Banderite, having had not one but two statutes of Bandera in Zaluzhny’s Kiev office.
Even if the establishment of a government in exile winds up being a bit messy, it’s hard to see how Russia could get a credible representative from the Ukraine side to execute it. Zelensky would be unlikely to survive to do so (Banderites have already threatened repeatedly to kill him were he to try); the only way that might happen is if Russia would guarantee his safety, which means going permanently to Russia. That would be depicted as Zelensky signing under duress (which is narrowly accurate if not for the typical reasons). The same survival risk would apply to the current head of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Syrsky. So it seems not unlikely that someone who was not part of either the top military or political leadership would serve as the Ukraine representative, again contributing to the West’s ability to denounce any surrender or “imposition of terms”.
Again, the point here is not to fixate on a document that from the Russian side would signal an intent to halt their prosecution of the war and move to an occupation/administration phase, but to highlight that its likely deficiencies as an agreement would symbolize that the conflict has not reached a lasting resolution. Odds favor even if the war grind on into 2026 that the European will to carry on not yet having been broken. In a recent video, John Mearshimer provided a list of ways the West could continue a lower-level conflict with Russia, starting with Kaliningrad. Moreover, there will still be Ukraine backers in the US, feeding hopes that the US will resume support in the future even if Trump succeeded in closing the US money and weapons spigot.
Now admittedly, Trump is working on regime change, or at least regime redirection, across Europe, as Conor describes in detail today. But these efforts, like so many US interventions, have good odds of backfiring. So betting on them working out as intended is premature.
As Freedman summed up his New Statesman piece,
It is important to remember that contrary to the idea that wars must end with a negotiated solution in practice they rarely do.
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1 It may be an artifact of translation, but Putin seems often (if not 100% consistently) made a distinction between being willing to hear what the various proxy war participants have to say, as opposed to start negotiations with them. Perhaps in a geopolitical analogue to the US mantra that we provide “access” to healthcare, which is not the same as providing healthcare, Putin saying he is willing to negotiate does not mean he has committed to negotiating. Just insert another word and the formulation becomes more obvious. Saying you are willing to get married does not mean you’ve committed to tying the knot.
2 Turnabout is fair play; Ukraine insisted on regime change in Russia via putting a provision in the Ukraine constitution that bars negotiations with Russia as long as Putin is President. Putin has pointed out that that has to go if talks with Ukraine are to come to fruition. Mind you, given the givens, it’s entirely logical, as Putin has, to question whether Zelensky can sign binding agreements. Russia’s reading of the Ukraine constitution is that Zelensky is no longer the legitimate head of the state, but the head of the Rada could execute treaties. Putin has pointed out that Ukraine could firm up Zelensky’s position by holding elections…assuming, of course that he were to win legitimately, a prospect that seems vanishingly unlikely given his low popularity ratings. And let us not forget niceties like Zelensky having banned opposition parties and shut down opposition media.
Note that Putin did not exhibit such sensitivities with respect to the Minsk Accords. The person that signed on behalf of Ukraine was not an official, but an ex-President who’d been designated as a representative (from what I can tell, without having had a post created or legislative approval).
3 An example: a Scottish contact was negotiating for IT contracting in Ukraine. He had a good command of Russian. Even though the meeting (near Kiev) was expected to be in Russian, he was told to keep his mouth shut: “You are blonde and blue-eyed, that’s enough. If they hear you have a Russian accent, the deal will be off.”
4 I have to admit I was too trusting of this point of view, particularly when it came from people with expertise like Colonel Macgregor. The fact that Russia will win does not mean it will pick up the pace all that much even as Ukraine gets weaker.
5 Or the level of appropriation for sale to arms merchants could have risen markedly.
6 Presumably Ukraine would destroy them, but that’s still an admission of defeat.