As war progresses it is difficult to talk about peace. Maximalist demands emerge on all sides. The devastation of this war has left the Ukrainian people with little appetite for compromise, and few are in the mood for peacemaking. But the real question is always: is there a clear endgame to exit the war?
I have worked in conflict resolution for the past two decades and have seen how the horrors and injustices of war can make peacemaking look like a terrible act of betrayal. You have to get into the minds of all the parties, to understand how the seeds of the conflict began and how they can end. Through a process of initially quiet mediation between the different parties, demands can be first understood, metabolised and then later modified. These are the raw compromises of the peace table.
How much further destruction and loss of life are Russia and Ukraine willing to endure? Both sides are caught in the quagmire of war, where the frontline has hardly moved in seven months.
The mood suggests that both sides are preparing for another round of fighting, to be “hottest” in March 2023 as Ukraine plans a major push in the spring. While this surge in fighting may determine the contours of any future peace deal, fighting and talking at the same time could help prevent future dangerous escalation. For this to be effective, lines of communication will be necessary—either direct or through third parties. This allows knowledge of each other’s red lines and the consequences of the actions of the other. An agreement could be made to limit the current destruction, such as nomissile and artillery attacks by Russia on specified critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. In return for such an agreement, Ukraine could agree to no attacks on Crimea.
Making peace requires talking to your enemy either directly or through an intermediary. Given the horrors of this war, many leaders believe that reaching out to President Vladimir Putin is unacceptable. But to end wars we need to get behind the public rhetoric and all its aggression. We need to understand how the Russian leadership and its elites are thinking in terms of a possible endgame. Megaphone diplomacy costs lives; ending wars requires careful communications that move beyond the emotions of conflict, hard bargaining and difficult compromises.
While Russia can still escalate this war, how much loss on the battlefield and what level of insecurity are the Russian people willing to live with to continue it? Russia’s diplomatic isolation; the economic impact of sanctions; the losses on the battlefield, and the growing threat of Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory are beginning to add up. From the Russian perspective, the war is no longer just about material and human losses. The longer the war continues, the less it is about Ukraine. It is now framed as a western war on Russia, with the homeland itself at stake. At a certain point, both sides will need to calculate how much is enough, and at this point, consider the way in which this war will end.
There is currently little talk about peacemaking and ending the war at the negotiation table. No foreign conflict since the Spanish Civil War has so captured the imagination of the left in Europe and the US with so much passion. Nearly a century ago, many progressives saw Spain as a pure fight between democracy and fascism. Today, many on the left and centre-right see Ukraine as another contest between fascism and democracy. For many this is a “good war” with Russia’s defeat a prerequisite for stabilisation—but this makes peacemaking even more difficult. Whether a “good” or a “bad” war, ultimately the calculation has to be the costs of a protracted one, and whether this could present worse outcomes for the Ukrainian people and the destabilisation of the European continent.
In the face of the Russian invasion, it is difficult to contemplate the underlying grievances and to realise that the recent crisis is embedded in a much larger Russian-western confrontation. From a Russian perspective, the groundwork of the Ukraine crisis was established at the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The inexorable threat of encroachment on Russia’s historic zones of influence and security with no recognition of the contested centre of power and different narratives is reflected in the instability of the post-Cold War international system.
Not addressing these issues with a new security architecture could leave Ukraine vulnerable and Russia feeling under threat. Ultimately, the quest for peace requires both security and reconciliation for all the parties, which is almost impossible to think about in the current intensity of war. It will take time to invite Russia back into a relationship with the European community, but leaving the second largest nuclear weapon country in the world impotent and out in the cold is a dangerous game. Democracies do know how to co-habitat with authoritarian regimes—and this may need to include Russia.
As much as there is a case for Ukraine to win this war, Russia’s history and security concerns need to be taken seriously. Historians need little reminding that the humiliation of Germany after WW1 gave rise to the Third Reich and Second World War. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been an outstanding war leader and he is fully aware that the war will end with negotiations. It will require his outstanding skills as a communicator to prepare his country for peace.
The conflict parties will need to make a calculation about both the cost of war and the price of peace. As the wise diplomat and current US director of the CIA William Burns said in his book The Back Channel; “Peace talks are imperfect agreements that leave people better off than war.” The aim of negotiations is to “hammer out the best possible relationship with nasty adversaries—with the imperfection of compromise”.
