When oh when — and how — will the war in Ukraine end?

Women and children are evacuated from Rylsk in Kursk region. Russia said it was deploying more troops and munitions to a border region where Ukraine had mounted a major ground offensive, but this offensive has not brought the desired outcome for Kyiv. Now that there is no prospect that even with Western military supplies, Ukraine can inflict a crushing defeat on Russia and recover its lost territories by force, who will do the courageous thing and begin talks for a negotiated peace? asks the writer. – Picture: Handout, Government, Kursk Region / AFP / on August 9, 2024

By Anatol Lieven

Some Western supporters of Ukraine have been presenting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian province of Kursk as a great victory that will significantly change the course and outcome of the war. They are deceiving themselves.

While legally and morally justified, the attack has failed in all its main objectives, and may indeed turn out to have done serious damage to Ukraine’s position on the battlefield. One US analyst has compared it to the Confederate invasion of the North that led to the battle of Gettysburg — a brilliant tactical stroke that however ended in losses that crippled the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Ukrainian attack has not captured any significant Russian population centre or transport hub. It has embarrassed Putin, but there is no evidence that it has significantly shaken his hold on power in Russia. It may have done something to raise the spirits of the Ukrainian population in general; but as Western reports from eastern Ukraine make clear, it has done nothing to raise the morale of Ukrainian troops there.

Understandably, they are focused on the situation on their own front; and that situation is deteriorating sharply, in part it seems because many of Ukraine’s best units were diverted to the attack on Kursk, and new Ukrainian conscripts are inadequately trained and poorly motivated.

“One of the objectives of the offensive operation in the Kursk direction was to divert significant enemy forces from other directions, primarily from the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions,” Ukrainian commander in chief General Alexander Syrsky said.

In fact, precisely the opposite seems to have happened; and this is leading to intensified criticism both of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian high command from ordinary soldiers and citizens.

The Russian army is advancing rapidly towards the key Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk. In the words of one of the Ukrainian defenders: “For a long time, the situation in Donbas was aptly described as ‘difficult, but controlled.’ However, now it is out of control. Currently, it looks like our front in Donbas has collapsed.”

If or when Pokrovsk falls, it will mean that Russia controls almost all of the southern Donbas, and could strike either north, against the remaining Ukrainian positions in northern Donetsk province, or east, with a view to rolling up the entire Ukrainian southern front.

There is now no prospect that even with Western military supplies, Ukraine can inflict a crushing defeat on Russia and recover its lost territories by force. There is a danger of Ukrainian military collapse, which might lead to pressure in the West for direct intervention. This is one thing that the Russian government's signalled change to its nuclear doctrine is intended to deter.

Present Russian nuclear doctrine states that nuclear weapons will be employed in response to a nuclear attack on Russia, or a conventional attack that “threatens the existence of the state”. In the words of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov;

“[T]here is a clear intent to introduce a correction [to the nuclear doctrine], caused, among other things, by the examination and analysis of development of recent conflicts, including, of course, everything connected to our Western adversaries' escalation course in regard to the special military operation.”

If a direct Nato intervention in Ukraine led to Russian defeat there, it would certainly threaten the survival of the present Russian government, and usher in a period of profound national instability and weakness, conceivably even leading to the disintegration of the Russian Federation. There is little reason to doubt that, faced with this threat, Russia would indeed escalate towards the use of nuclear weapons, albeit initially on only a limited and local scale.

Ryabkov’s statement is also of course intended to deter the US and Nato from bowing to pressure from Kyiv and some Nato governments and politicians and allowing Ukraine to use the new Nato-supplied long-range missiles and F-16 warplanes to strike targets deep inside Russia. It is not that such attacks would provoke Russian nuclear retaliation; but if successful, it is easy to predict that Russia would hit back at the West through sabotage of European infrastructure. Russians believe the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has given them a moral and legal right to do this.

Such sabotage operations appear already to have begun, though on a small scale and as what appear to be warning shots rather than a campaign. If, however, this were to become a full-scale campaign, it could in turn provoke harsh Western responses leading to a cycle of escalation ending in catastrophe.

The Russians also believe — not without reason — that the Ukrainian authorities have a strong interest in creating such an escalation so as to bring Nato in on their side; and that Nato must therefore be pressured into continuing to place limits on Ukraine’s use of Nato weaponry. The fact that Ukraine felt able to invade Russian territory using Nato weaponry has intensified Russian fears in this regard.

Once again, it is necessary here to separate what Ukraine has a right to do, from what is wise for Ukraine to do, and the West to allow. For it should be recognised that like the attack on Kursk, a Ukrainian campaign of bombardments of targets in Moscow and elsewhere deep in Russia with Nato missiles would essentially be a gamble, the outcome of which is highly doubtful.

After the failure of last year’s Ukrainian offensive, the Biden administration abandoned hopes for complete Ukrainian victory and instead started to say that support for Ukraine is intended to “strengthen Kyiv at the eventual negotiating table”. In recent months, the Ukrainian government has also shifted towards this position, and away from its previous refusal to negotiate with the Putin administration and insistence on complete Russian withdrawal from Ukraine as a precondition of talks with Russia.

There has long been a growing recognition in private among Western experts and officials that it is in reality impossible for Ukraine to recover its lost territories through victory on the battlefield. However, this has not so far led — even strictly in private — to suggestions that Ukraine and the West might propose terms that the Russian people (let alone the government) could accept as a basis for negotiations.

In the meantime, the evidence suggests that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is strengthening its military position for eventual negotiations; and it is not at all clear that Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia would significantly change this trend.

This is also true when it comes to Western aid. Even before the crushing defeat in local elections of German ruling coalition parties by those opposed to continuing support for Ukraine, the German government had announced that German direct aid to Ukraine will be cut by almost half, and by more than 90 percent in 2027.

In that year, France will hold presidential elections, which on present form seem likely to be won by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National — also opposed to open-ended support for Ukraine. A drastic reduction in European aid would not in itself end US aid. It would, however, force a US administration greatly to increase that aid if it wished to prevent a collapse of the Ukrainian budget and economy.

There is no reason therefore to think that time is on Ukraine’s side in this conflict, and that it makes sense to delay the start of negotiations. That, however, does not mean that all the cards are in Russia’s hands, and all the Kremlin has to do is wait for Ukrainian collapse. The economy has performed far better than the West hoped, but the Russian Central Bank itself is warning of serious problems next year. As for the situation on the battlefield, while Ukrainian soldiers are exhausted, that also appears true of many Russian troops.

The army with which Russia began this war has been destroyed. The exact level of casualties is unclear, but the dead and disabled are almost certainly in excess of 200,000. The Black Sea Fleet has been crippled. As Russian establishment interlocutors acknowledged to me, Russia probably does not have the troops to capture major Ukrainian cities, unless President Putin launches an intensified wave of conscription — something he is clearly unwilling to do.

This means that if given a clear choice between what they could regard as a reasonable peace and a continuation of war to complete victory, it seems probable that a majority of Russians would opt for peace; and that it would therefore be very difficult for Putin to continue the war, if to do so meant the conscription of many more Russian sons and husbands. Such a compromise peace would be very far from what the Ukrainian and Western governments hope. It would also be very far from what Putin hoped for when he launched this war in February 2022.

* Anatol Lieven is a Professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Qatar, visiting professor in the War Studies Department of King's College London, and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He is the author of Pakistan: A Hard Country. Anatol spent the first part of his career as a journalist in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the former USSR.

** This article was first published on Common Dreams