Is Ukraine War At Its End?

It appears that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is going to end soon as peace talks between the US and Russia in Moscow have remained ‘very good and productive’. Russia has, in principle, accepted a Washington-led 30-day ceasefire on the Ukraine conflict but sought explanations of its technical aspects. Sharing information on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump Friday wrote, “We had very good and productive discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday and there is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end.” 

Following the US-Ukraine agreement to move ahead with the ceasefire, there was much curiosity as to how Russia would respond to it. While thanking President Trump for his ‘opening words’ for the ceasefire proposal, President Putin said, “We agree with proposals to stop military actions, but there are nuances. We proceed from the fact that this cessation should lead to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of the crisis." Putin has emphasised sorting out the 'nuances' to create a credible atmosphere to wind up the brutal fighting.

Failed operation 

The US negotiators, led by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, discussed the proposed 30-day ceasefire with President Putin to close down the three-year conflict, which Russia calls a ‘special military operation.’ The ceasefire proposal has been pushed forward at a time when Russia is gaining the upper hand on the battlefield. It has almost gained control of the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an offensive in August last year as a military adventure to change the entire dynamic of the war. However, the ‘tactical operation’ proved a disaster for Ukraine as it suffered huge casualties, according to various media reports. Thousands of Ukrainian troops are in a ‘very bad and vulnerable position’ as they are "surrounded" by the Russian military. Trump urged Putin to spare their lives. In response, Putin said he was ready to spare their life but they had to surrender.

The ceasefire proposal is a big respite for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as this paves the way for the resumption of US military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. To restore permanent peace, Russia has set three main conditions: Ukraine must give up its bid to get NATO membership, foreign troops must not be deployed in Ukraine and the international community should recognise Crimea and four provinces as its part. For Ukraine, these conditions are a bitter pill to swallow. Zelenskyy, confronting the unfavourable situation, has termed these conditions as ‘manipulative’. 

The bold American initiative for a ceasefire is fraught with formidable challenges as it needs to be strictly implemented by taking both warring parties into confidence. In a joint statement issued after meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, Putin demanded guarantees that during the 30-day ceasefire, Ukraine would not conduct mobilisation, train soldiers and receive weapons. On the other hand, Ukraine has also put forth similar demands. Russia claims that its army is advancing almost everywhere and is not in a mood to halt the military actions until the technical matters of the ceasefire are resolved.

In the Kursk region, the emboldened Russian army has given two options to the Ukrainian Armed Forces: surrender or die. The Russian side has claimed that it will not let the Ukrainian army off the hook as it committed many crimes against civilians. The trickiest issue is how to monitor the ceasefire in areas spanning more than two thousand kilometres. Britain and France have floated the idea of sending European troops to Ukraine as peacekeeping forces following a peace deal, but Russia strongly protested this, stating that the presence of any foreign troops in Ukraine is a security threat to it. The Franco-British initiative, known as the 'coalition of the willing,' is seen as a premature move as it has already met reservations and opposition from countries like Italy, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany. 

Upon Ukraine’s consent to the ceasefire, Zelenskyy has seemingly mended fences with Trump, who came down hard on him during a heated exchange at the Oval Office last month. Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president has again received bad news from the Oval Office. The US President has reiterated that Ukraine would have to make territorial concessions to Russia and not join the NATO alliance, while describing the negotiations as a “complicated process of redrawing international boundaries." Russia has controlled 20 per cent of Ukrainian territories. The term ‘territorial concessions’ means different things to different state parties and is a complex issue that might prolong the negotiation process.

Exhausted by protracted wars and mounting losses of its troops, Ukraine, in recent months, has relented and agreed to some sort of territorial concessions to find compromise between the two nations but it is not ready to give territorial concessions as demanded by Russia, which wants Ukraine completely give up its claim over four oblasts — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – that are virtually under the Russian control now. These regions bear strategic importance as they connect Russia with Crimea by land.

Root causes 

In their meeting in Saudi Arabia last month, the US and Russian officials agreed to trace ‘the root causes’ of the Ukraine conflict. Russia has been insisting on NATO’s eastward expansion as the root cause of the Ukraine conflict. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, a rival to NATO, was dissolved in 1991. As the US emerged as the sole superpower, it started to ride roughshod, as Professor Jeffry Sachs argues, by bringing former communist states into the NATO umbrella one by one. 

In his unconventional address to the European Parliament in the last week of February, the Columbia University professor dug into decades-long historical anecdotes to shed light on the Ukraine war. "This is not an attack by (Vladimir) Putin on Ukraine in the way that we are told every day. This started in 1990, February 9, 1990. James Baker III, our Secretary of State, said to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch eastward if you agreed to German unification, basically ending World War II." Gorbachev gave him the nod:  Yes, NATO doesn’t move, and we agreed to German unification. "The US then cheated on this, already starting in 1994 when (Bill) Clinton signed off on, basically a plan to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine," said Sachs.

(The author is Deputy Executive Editor of this daily.)