Is the war in Ukraine headed towards an endgame?
After nearly three years of war, a ceasefire and peace talks are more likely than ever, but could turn out to bring only temporary relief for Ukraine.
Over the past few months, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shifted his stance on ending the war with Russia in unprecedented and dramatic ways. Back in October, Zelenskyy pitched an ambitious victory plan to key allies in the west that was premised on an increase in western military support, permission to use long-range western weapons against targets deep inside Russia, and an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. Two months later, the Ukrainian president indicated that he was open to ending the war diplomatically and has signalled that he would be prepared to accept ceasefire terms that do not involve an immediate return of territory seized by Russia since 2014 as a condition.
The most obvious factor for this new approach is, of course, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections in November, including the fact that his Republican party also controls the House of Representatives and the Senate. Trump has been clear about his intention to force Russia and Ukraine to the negotiation table to make a deal. It is not clear that the incoming 47th president of the United States will indeed succeed; and even if he does, any bargain that Trump will broker carries significant and long-term risks.
But it would be too simplistic to see Zelenskyy’s shift merely as rearguard action to limit the damage that US pressure will do. More so than at any time since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine is now facing an existential struggle for survival. News from the frontlines is grim. In the east, Russia has continued to advance on the ground and captured some 300 square kilometres in the last month alone. In the Kursk region inside Russia, the Kremlin, with the help of increasing numbers of North Korean troops, has pushed Ukrainian forces back as well, thus limiting the size of the ‘bargaining chip’ that Kyiv is holding ahead of future negotiations with Moscow.
When Kyiv finally succeeded in November in obtaining permission for long-range strikes with western weapons, there was some hope that this might benefit the Ukrainian war effort. But these have not materialised, and are unlikely to do so—not least because Trump, much to Putin’s delight, has condemned these strikes as counter-productive escalation.
At the same time, Ukraine struggles to recruit more men for its armed forces and retain those already fighting. Zelenskyy’s refusal to lower the conscription age from currently 24 years to 18 years has been criticised by western allies—and makes them more reluctant to increase their own support for Ukraine’s war effort. Some Europeans—notably Germany’s opposition leader (and most likely next chancellor after upcoming February, 2025, snap elections), Friedrich Merz, and the European Union’s new foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas—still talk about helping Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield. They are keen to keep up sanctions pressure on Russia and to avoid the impression that Putin might be rewarded for his aggression in any deal that Trump imposes. But the prevailing mood trends towards compromise and concessions.
On top of this increasingly difficult military situation, the humanitarian crisis that Ukraine is facing has also dramatically worsened. Relentless Russian attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, in particular against the country’s already battered power grid, have turned the lives of ordinary Ukrainians into abject misery with near-constant power cuts and lack of heating. Unsurprisingly, a majority of Ukrainians now support negotiations with Russia to end the war.
Zelenskyy, thus, not only has few options left but to explore a negotiated settlement but he now also has more support for doing so among Ukrainians than a few months ago.
And Russia’s position appears to be shifting as well. The Russian foreign minister, in an interview with Tucker Carlson on December 6, 2024, insisted that there can be no peace in Ukraine without respect for Russia’s red lines, but also indicated that a deal with Trump might be possible. Four days later, a close Putin ally, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, claimed that Moscow is close to achieving its war aims in Ukraine. This could pave the way for Russia to enter into Trump-brokered talks and ultimately claim victory at the negotiation table.
Taken together, all of this suggests that the endgame in the war might be approaching—at least in the sense that actual negotiations might start and achieve at least a ceasefire before the third anniversary of Russia’s war of aggression in February 2025.
A longer-term settlement, however, still faces significant obstacles. Ukraine is likely to have to accept the de-facto loss of one-fifth of its territory, and this will be a hard truth to accept given the sacrifices that the country has made and the suffering its people have endured. It may still be possible for Ukraine and its Western allies to avoid formally recognising Russia’s landgrab, but the idea that once the frontlines are frozen any land can be retaken by Ukraine in subsequent negotiations, let alone by military means, is wishful thinking in light of the current balance of power between Moscow and Kyiv.
And then there is the question of how any deal—ceasefire or full-blown peace agreement—would be monitored and enforced in the absence of Ukrainian NATO membership and renewed doubts over the feasibility of western troops being deployed to Ukraine.
All the signs now are that the war in Ukraine war has reached a significant turning. In the short-term, the beginning of negotiations and a ceasefire are more likely than at any time since the talks between Kyiv and Moscow in the early stages of the Russian aggression. But now, as was the case then, the exact contours of what a sustainable deal could look like are still unclear. And herein lies the danger that whatever is achieved now will only provide temporary relief for Ukraine’s people—and an opportunity for the warring parties to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round.
This is an expanded and updated version of a commentary published by Channel News Asia on December 17, 2024.
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