Ending the War in Ukraine: Analysis and RecommendationsReaching a peace deal in Ukraine is not impossible, but it will require many Western leaders to recalibrate their expectations.
The war in Ukraine is nearing the end of its third year, but as yet there is no indication of imminent peace. For the past three years, Western powers, led by the United States of America, have sought a solution to the war by means of a single strategy: supporting Ukraine and pressuring Russia. The aim has been peace through victory. This strategy has failed. Probably over 200,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed; possibly tens of thousands of civilians have been killed also; and property worth tens of billions of dollars has been destroyed. The time has come when the policy of peace through victory needs to be replaced by a policy of peace, pure and simple. The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency in January 2025 offers an opportunity to pursue such a policy. President Joe Biden has shown no interest in mediating a peace process. Neither have any European leaders. Trump, however, has indicated that he wishes to do so, and as a first step has appointed General Keith Kellogg as his Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine, tasked specifically with finding a way to end the war. In this context, proposals for how to end the war in Ukraine have acquired a new importance. Unfortunately, to date, many such proposals have been divorced from any understanding of how in practice wars actually end. This paper thus seeks to ground policy recommendations in studies of war termination. To that purpose, it first analyzes war termination theories and then applies those theories to the war in Ukraine. The paper examines the topic from the standpoint of what is most likely to produce a lasting peace settlement. The rights and wrongs of the Ukrainian and Russian causes are not the subject of concern. While it has been said that “there is no peace without justice,” it might be more correct to say that “there is no justice without peace.” The aim of the analysis is peace in the negative sense of an absence of war, not peace in the positive sense, as the achievement of justice. Some may object to this approach, but any peace plan that fails to place the ending of war at the top of its agenda is liable to fail. How Wars End The starting point for any realistic proposal to end the war in Ukraine must be an understanding of the conditions that are necessary for successful war termination, as well as of the barriers that prevent political leaders from recognizing that those conditions are present. There are many variations of war termination, but in essence they boil down to two options:
In the first case, wars end when the losing side is either destroyed or gives up. Thus it has been said that “War is pressed by the victor, but peace is made by the vanquished¹. The second case is more complicated. According to a popular thesis developed by William Zartman, wars end when both warring parties perceive themselves to be in a “mutually hurting stalemate,” and when they both perceive the possibility of a way out via a negotiated settlement. At such point, the conflict is deemed to be “ripe” for termination². The term “mutually hurting stalemate” is somewhat misleading, as it does not imply total deadlock; one side may hold a definite advantage over the other. However, it does imply that neither side believes itself to be able to achieve absolute victory, and it does imply that both sides perceive the existing situation to be harmful to their interests. Objective criteria, such as success or failure on the battlefield, play into both these scenarios. However, what matters is not objective reality but rather the warring parties’ perceptions of reality³. In the first case, wars end because one side either perceives the war not to be worth continuing or perceives itself to have lost. And in the second case, wars end because both sides perceive that there is a mutually hurting stalemate and that there is possible negotiated way out. Bringing a war to an end is thus a question of altering perceptions. In the first case, it involves convincing the losing side that defeat is inevitable; in the second case it involves convincing both sides that victory is impossible. Needless to say, this is easier said than done. Even if it is clear to an objective outside observer that one side has lost or that neither side is capable of absolute victory, those involved in the fighting may not view things the same way or may be unwilling to act on the knowledge. There are a number of explanations for this:
The analysis above suggests that third-party state leaders who are seeking to end a war being fought by other states have two options:
The quickest way to end a war is thus probably to work on convincing the weaker side that its cause is lost and that it must settle. The second quickest way is option 2 above. And the slowest is to try and alter the perceptions of the winning side in order to convince it that it is losing. Political leaders whom one is trying to convince in this way will probably be loath to admit that their war will end in a suboptimal way. Peacemakers will have to overcome the barriers to recognizing reality mentioned above. To this end, one may offer the following possible courses of action:
The War in Ukraine The trajectory of the war in Ukraine has surprised all observers. One would be very hard put to find a single analyst who has correctly predicted all its ups and downs. War is inherently uncertain, and given this record, one would be rash to declare that one knows the likely future direction of the conflict. Nonetheless, after nearly three years of fighting certain things have now become sufficiently clear that one can draw fairly confident conclusions about some key issues. First, it is now obvious that Russia is the stronger of the two parties. Moreover, its relative strength is growing. While one cannot rule out a reversal of the trend in Russia’s favor, it stretches plausibility to imagine that such a reversal could go so far as to render Ukraine stronger than Russia. The issue is more the extent of Russia’s future advantage than the existence of such an advantage. Russia’s military superiority can be measured in many ways. The first is in terms of territorial gains. These have accelerated in recent months, with Russia capturing 725 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in November 2024, the largest amount since the first weeks of the war in early 2022¹⁰. The second is military production; Russia’s production of weaponry far exceeds that of Ukraine, and in key sectors, such as artillery shell and armored vehicle production, it exceeds that of all Ukraine’s Western allies put together. A recent German report noted, for instance, that “Production has strongly increased across all weapon systems,” with Russia producing sufficient weaponry not only to replace its losses but also to outfit new formations¹¹. A third area is manpower. Russia began the war in February 2024 with an invasion force of at most 200,000 soldiers. By early 2023, the size of the Russian army in Ukraine had increased to around 360,000 men, and by early 2024 to about 470,00¹². According to Vladimir Putin, in June 2024 the number of Russian troops in the zone of military operations was just under 700,000¹³. Despite claims of massive losses, the Russian army in Ukraine has grown considerably in size. Ukraine, by contrast, is experiencing severe difficulties. Not only is it inexorably losing ground, but it has little prospect of turning the situation around in its favor due to a) the extreme unlikelihood that Western support will increase substantially beyond its current level, b) manpower shortages, and c) growing problems of morale. The latest mobilization effort has not yielded the desired results, while desertion is become ever more prevalent. According to recent reports, over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion during the war, of which some two-thirds were in 2024 alone. Recently Ukraine is estimated to have lost about 4,000 soldiers a month more than it has been able to recruit¹⁴. While the Russian army is growing larger, the Ukrainian army is growing smaller. Protracted wars necessarily become wars of attrition and of morale. At present, Russia is winning in terms of attrition, while it also appears that Russian morale is holding up better than that of Ukraine. There is no obvious reason to suspect that either factor will change significantly in Ukraine’s favor in the short to medium term. From this one can draw the conclusion that an absolute Ukrainian victory (measured in the terms set by the Ukrainian government itself – which is to say the recapture of all its lost territory) is almost impossible. That does not mean, however, that Russia is assured of victory in the sense of acquiring such a dominant position that it can force whatever terms it wishes on Ukraine. Such an outcome remains possible, should, for instance, Western aid to Ukraine entirely cease or should Ukrainian morale collapse. Absent that, however, Russia’s current advantage is not so great as to make such a result probable. Russia is advancing, but only slowly, and it has not demonstrated that it has the capacity to exploit any breaches it makes in the Ukrainian lines in such a way as to permit rapid advances over large distances. At the current rate, it will take Russia at least another 12 months just to capture the rest of Donetsk province. Ukraine’s capacity to resist and inflict heavy casualties on the Russians remains large. Moreover, much of Russia’s military production involves refitting old Soviet equipment. As stockpiles run down, production may begin to run down too, leading some commentators to believe that Russia’s military strength may peak in 2025. Given this, Russia is not currently well placed to inflict such a massive military defeat on Ukraine as to force it entirely to submit. Objective reality, therefore, points towards a situation of mutually hurting stalemate, rather than absolute victory, albeit a stalemate which is hurting Ukraine far more than it is hurting Russia. The question which then arises is whether the leadership of Russia and Ukraine correctly perceive this reality, and if they do, whether they are likely to act on this perception. The fact that the war continues, and that negotiations between the two are not even taking place, suggests that the answers to these questions are no. At the start of December 2024, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that he saw “no grounds for negotiations yet.¹⁵” Russian officials continue to insist on their original demands – Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and de-Nazification – to which they have now added recognition of the “new territorial realities,” in other words recognition of Russian control over those Ukrainian territories it has annexed. As yet, there is no sign of any flexibility that might indicate an understanding that the Russian army is not in a position to so weaken Ukraine as to be able to impose these terms by force. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, by contrast, has recently demonstrated a tiny bit of flexibility, but arguably only a tiny bit. In late November 2024, he suggested that Ukraine would not be able to recapture “some” territory by force, notably Crimea, and stated that he would be willing to freeze the conflict and de facto abandon efforts to retake territory in return for NATO membership¹⁶. But the reference to “some” territory suggested also a continuing belief that other territory could be retaken by military means, while the request for NATO membership for all of Ukraine within its pre-2014 borders is hardly realistic. It is not obvious that Zelensky has yet come to terms with the reality of his situation. Neither side, therefore, despite their decidedly limited military prospects, and the heavy losses they are suffering, at present acknowledges that the costs of continuing the war exceed the potential gains. In line with the analysis above, a number of reasons present themselves:
Policy Conclusions To date, the United States and its allies have conducted a two-pronged policy based on a) military and economic support to Ukraine, and b) economic pressure on the Russian Federation. One can identify three stages to this policy. At first, immediately following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the aim was simply to prevent Ukraine being defeated. Later, following Ukrainian successes in late 2022, it would appear that Western states believed that Ukraine could actually emerge militarily victorious, and military aid to Ukraine was premised on that possibility. Third, following the failure of the 2023 Ukrainian offensive, policy shifted away from achieving victory towards trying to prevent a further deterioration of the Ukrainian position so that when negotiations eventually begin, Ukraine can participate in a position if not of strength then at least not of enormous weakness. Despite the shifting aims, however, the basic policy has remained the same: strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia. This has not been successful. The longer the war has continued, the more the balance of power has shifted in Russia’s favor. This trend seems likely to continue, and it is probable that the longer Ukraine waits to make peace with Russia, the worse its position will be. In the meantime, it will suffer continued losses of people and physical infrastructure. It is clear, therefore, that the time has come for a shift in policy away from helping Ukraine fight its war and towards peacemaking. The analysis above suggests certain conclusions as to what would best serve the interests of peace:
Final Conclusions Of all the issues mentioned above, the credible commitment problem is possibly the most important. A combination of positive and negative inducements may alter the perceptions of one or both sides in such a way as to make them more amenable to peace, but this cannot be guaranteed. Furthermore, any step that makes one party’s perceptions more pessimistic, and so renders it more willing to negotiate, is likely simultaneously to make the other party’s perceptions more optimistic, and so render it less willing to do so. Moreover, even if the parties’ perceptions are altered in the desired manner, they will not act in the desired manner if they remain convinced that any ceasefire will only be a temporary pause used by their opponents to strengthen their position prior to recommencing hostilities. Studies of war termination suggest that warring states may forego secondary objectives if they are able to achieve another objective of very considerable value. At that point, as one study notes, the side that has achieved a super-valuable objective could continue fighting but “does not because the costs of going further threaten to escalate the conflict, and it is less motivated to keep going because additional increments of the good are not as valuable.²⁰” It is important, therefore, to identify what those at war consider “super-valuable” and seek to guarantee that. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, it would appear that the most valuable thing sought by both sides is security, defined as freedom from fear of a future conflict. Arguably, it was Russian fears of the movement of Ukraine into the NATO camp, of apparent Ukrainian hostility, and of an escalation of the war in eastern Ukraine into a wider conflict involving Western powers, that motivated Russia’s leaders into launching a preventive war against Ukraine. Likewise, fears that anything less than victory may produce such a result further down the road persuades Russian leaders to keep on going. At the same time, having been invaded by Russia, Ukraine has well-founded fears of future Russian aggression and seeks a settlement that protects it against further such aggression hereafter. Any settlement of the war must therefore address the issue of the future security of both parties. That means that any third party attempting to mediate between the two must take seriously the security concerns of both belligerents. In particular, ignoring the concerns of the stronger party is very unlikely to result in successful war termination. Accepting this will require a considerable change in attitude from Western leaders. It is also a precept that many in the West will doubtless strongly resist. Overcoming this resistance may require some strong diplomacy and will involve taking steps that incite sharp criticism from some quarters. The potential benefits, however, far outweigh the risks. Paul Robinson (DPhil, Oxford University) is professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. His research and teaching embraces military ethics, Russian history, security and defence policy. He is the author or editor of 14 books. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. 1 H. A. Calahan, “What Makes a War End: An Analysis of Some Current Hypotheses,” Journal of Peace Research, 4 (1969): 303. 2 William Zartman, International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War (Washington, DC: The National Academy Press, 2000), 228. 3 Chione Robinson, “A Theory of War Termination for Peacemakers,” Canadian Forces College Review, 2020: 88. 4 Robinson, “A Theory of War Termination,” 83. 5 Shawn T. Cochran, War Termination as a Civil-Military Bargain: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Politics of Protracted Armed Conflict (Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 2. 6 Dan Reiter, How Wars End (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 220. 7 Reiter, How Wars End, 222. Carmela Lutmar, “War Termination,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Feargal Cochrane, Ending Wars (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 75. 8 Reiter, How Wars End, 4 9 Lutmar, “War Termination.” 10 Jasmine Laws, “Russia Seizes Ukraine Territory the Size of Singapore,” Newsweek, 2 December 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/russia-seizes-ukraine-territory-size-singapore-1994209. 11 Guntram B. Wolff, Alexandr Burilkov, Katelyn Bushnell, Ivan Kharitonov, “Fit for War in Decades: Germany’s Slow Rearmament vis-à-vis Russia,” Kiel Report, no. 1, 2024: 21 12 Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, “Russian Military Objectives and Capacity in Ukraine through 2024,” RUSI, 13 January 2024, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024. 13 “Putin Says Almost 700,000k Russian Troops Fighting in Ukraine,” The Moscow Times, 16 June 2024, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/15/putin-says-almost-700k-russian-troops-fighting-in-ukraine-a85419. 14 Samya Kullab and Voldymyr Yurchuk, “Desertion Threatens to Starve Ukraine’s Forces at a Crucial Time in its War with Russia,” AP, 29 November 2024, https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0. 15 David Brennan, “Russia Sees ‘No Grounds for Negotiations’ with Ukraine, Putin Spokesman Says,” ABC News, 4 December 2024,https://abcnews.go.com/International/russia-sees-grounds-negotiations-ukraine-putin-spokesperson/story?id=116441134. 16 Alexander Butler, “Zelensky says Ukraine could temporarily cede territory to Russia in exchange for Nato membership,” The Independent, 30 November 2024, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zelensky-putin-russia-ukraine-war-ceasefire-trump-b2656221.html. 17 Jim Heintz and Illia Novikov, “Ukraine’s Zelenskyy rules out a ceasefire with Russia, saying Moscow would use it to rearm,” CTV News, 11 January 2024, https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukraine-s-zelenskyy-rules-out-a-ceasefire-with-russia-saying-moscow-would-use-it-to-rearm-1.6721024. 18 “Attempt to ‘Give Ukraine Time:’ Merkel on Minsk Agreement,” TASS, 7 December 2022, https://tass.com/world/1547141. 19 “Russia Says West Seeking Ukraine Ceasefire to Rearm Kyiv amid Scholz’s Visit,” First Post, 2 December 2024, https://www.firstpost.com/world/russia-says-west-seeking-ukraine-ceasefire-to-rearm-kyiv-amid-scholzs-visit-13840919.html. 20 Reiter, How Wars End, 45.
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