What can peace in Ukraine look like and what was on Putin’s mind when he started the war?

Article by Nicu Ilie

It will soon be three years since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During all this time, no one wanted talks about peace. Only Erdogan, in the first months of the war, tried to organize a bilateral dialogue between Ukrainians and Russians. The attempt failed because Russia simply did not want peace. Currently, Donald Trump’s imminent visit to the White House is reopening talks about ending the war. For the new old American president, this was one of the main campaign promises. What are the chances, though? How fast can peace be? Under what conditions can it be concluded?

What did Putin want by invading Ukraine?

City in the Kharkiv region completely destroyed by Russian forces. Photo by Kostiantyn and Vlada Liberov. Source: war.ukraine.ua

For three years, analysts, specialists in the ex-Soviet space, military experts, political scientists, psychologists, journalists and chibits have been trying to guess why Putin invaded Ukraine. The difficulty is given by the apparent lack of any political and economic logic behind such a gesture.

Ukraine has no use value for Russia. Romania’s northern neighbor has a wide range of natural resources and an important agricultural capacity. But Russia already has all this. A hypothetical total occupation of Ukraine would not bring anything extra to the Russian Federation from an economic point of view. Moscow already has a huge hinterland, the management of which is already creating great demographic and economic problems for it. The expansion of the territory would only create new problems for it. Ukraine’s resources would not bring it anything new, and the military occupation of Ukraine or part of it would increase the risks related to riots and terrorism.

In addition, Ukraine is not and has not been among the rich states of Europe. Even before the war, the standard of living in this country was one of the lowest in Europe, far below that of Russia, which itself lags far behind the European Union. From this point of view, in the last decade, Russia has been surpassed on the main economic and social indicators, including by the former satellites of the USSR – Romania, Poland, Bulgaria – which it clearly dominated during the Cold War.

Under these conditions and in the situation in which Ukraine needs a massive reconstruction as a result of the devastating war, a hypothetical integration of Ukraine or part of it into Russia would bring huge costs to Moscow, almost at the level of the costs of the war. In the same – hypothetical – chapter, the full occupation of Ukraine, which Russia attempted in February 2022, would have led to a population increase of more than 20%: a population even poorer than that of Russia, with a logical and obvious hostility, in an economically destroyed region.

What does Russia have to gain in Ukraine? The comprehensive answer is: absolutely nothing.

Beyond all the demagogy of Putin and Russian diplomacy, an eventual victory in Ukraine would only bring him problems. Any analysis of this conflict is blocked at this point. So: if victory is not the goal of war, what else can it be?

Smoke curtains

As in Orwell, war is not war, it is a special operation. Invasion is pacification. Ethnic cleansing is denazification. Russia’s most fascist actions are justified by Moscow as actions against Ukrainian fascism. Predictably, the tearing of some pieces of Ukraine’s territory is presented as their liberation.

By hijacking semantics beyond any meaning and promoting a rhetoric that mixes threats and pseudo-truths, Moscow has so far successfully managed to create smokescreens in the face of its actions. No one can say with certainty what Putin wants and how far he would be willing to go.

All sorts of other themes have invaded the public space. Constant threats of the atomic bomb and the deregulation of the use of nuclear weapons create a space of insecurity in which half-truths and sets of pseudo-solutions increase confusion and uncertainty. Historical, tactical, strategic, ethnic, linguistic, military, geopolitical, religious, mystical, axiological arguments are thrown over the pile in discussion, without the slightest concern that they make sense to each other, to derive from each other or to be able to somehow order themselves in a vision.

Conflict is the goal of conflict

If victory is not the goal, the only explanation that remains is that war is the goal of this war.

The possible arguments lie in the special situation of Russia in recent decades. At the fall of communism there was an enthusiasm that seemed to lead the new Russian Federation to cordial relations with its former Cold War adversaries, with the USA and Germany in the first place. After the economic and social collapse of the USSR, a package of foreign investments, on the one hand, and the commercial opening of Western markets, on the other, created premises for a gradual integration of Russia into the post-communist global system.

But things did not evolve in the predictable paradigm in the 1990s. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, first of all, caught Russia off guard. Newly elected president of Russia, in his first term, Putin did not have the slightest say, and Russia was not even taken into account. Overall, the increase in the price of hydrocarbons, stimulated by the two wars, led to a doubling or even tripling of Russian exports, and Moscow benefited, not losed. However, it was a first sign that Russia had lost its relevance in global politics.

Subsequently, the 2009 crisis led to the massive withdrawal of foreign investment from Russia, making the crisis even greater for this state. Likewise, the Covid crisis has found Russia isolated and without room for maneuver. In addition, Russian oligarchs, supporters of Putin’s willingness and necessity, have begun to have problems globally due to the corruption associated with their activity. On the other hand, the population of Russia and the satellite states – Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc. – has triggered large protest movements, some of which have resulted, as in Ukraine, in the removal of pro-Russian leaders.

The Russian Federation has become irrelevant in the global context. Its role was reduced to exporting raw materials. In all relevant industries it has been overtaken with no prospects of catching up, and digitalization and robotization will create new and new problems for it. The prospects are even more worrying in Moscow if we take into account the new climate agreements. The EU’s decision to reduce pollution and replace energy sources with clean ones hits Russia’s core capacity to supply polluting energy. By 2030, its main export, hydrocarbons, would be of no interest to the Western world, where the capital is.

It is true, Russia has a diversified economy, which allows it relative autonomy. In addition, for the moment, its foreign trade is clearly positive. But globally its industry is uncompetitive. It exports almost exclusively raw materials and imports everything that means advanced technology. It is not a successful scheme, which would keep it as a global actor and which could generate social development. And if its main exports were to be banned, the prospect of entering a deficit is a very concrete one.

China, Russia’s main rival

For strategic reasons, Russia and China publicly played the card of boundless friendship at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Subsequently, Beijing took care to place enough elements to delimit itself from the Russian action and some to prevent the conflict from escalating even further. At the same time, China is taking advantage of international sanctions against Russia, becoming its privileged trading partner, including with the price discounts caused by this situation. China has preferential prices for imports from Russia, and Russians are happy to be able to keep part of the volume of exports, even if they sacrifice the price.

In real terms, the Russian-Chinese relationship is one of love-hate. If Russia is the biggest loser of globalization, China is its biggest winner. In fact, in the years leading up to the war in Ukraine, Russia’s place in the international scheme was taken by none other than China. The Yellow Sea state has become the world’s largest counterpower through its economic strength, commercial importance, development and technological innovation.

Even militarily, in nominal terms (because Beijing prefers economic imperialism to brute imperialism), China is a superior power to Russia. It has more soldiers and more equipment on each weapon category and is much more technologically advanced. (With the mention that, not actively participating in conflicts, none of these capabilities have been tested in a real way). Neither comes close to the military strength of the United States and NATO, but both claim a place as a superforce in international politics.

This situation, as a challenger, instead of leading to an open rivalry between the two, has led to a relative closeness. The models of the world accessible separately to Russia and China are in conflict. But the ability of the US and, partially, the other NATO countries to set the global agenda and the rules of the game mean that Russia and China are currently engaged in a pseudo-partnership. More than likely, it will cease if either country is on track to achieve its foreign policy goals.

A war Keynesianism

Those who bet on Russia’s bankruptcy in a war it cannot afford have misjudged the situation.

In the first year of the war, economic sanctions were completely ineffective. The EU has blocked some imports for a wide range of products, but has remained dependent on Russian gas. Even if quantities have been reduced in this segment as well, Russia has imposed price increases and made even higher profits than before the war. Thus, 2022 was the most successful year for Russia’s international trade. Only after that did the situation deteriorate to almost the level of 2016, but the trade balance remains positive.

At the same time, the war economy allowed the Russian leader to force the ruble rate and consumer prices, on the one hand, and stimulated, through state orders, industry and employment. The monetary buffer that allowed him to do this was the surplus economic balance of the last decades, which came mostly from hydrocarbons. From these reserves, Russia launches military orders, supports financial incentives and controls the evolution of consumer prices.

As for the real dynamics of the domestic economy, the data provided by Russia cannot be regarded as objective. Apparently, Russia’s GDP has increased compared to the pre-war period, and 8% of it comes from war orders. Unemployment has fallen to 1%, but this is as a technical indicator. It would actually be a labor shortage given that the number of unfilled jobs exceeds one million people. As a result, Russia, at least officially, has a prosperous economy, stimulated by the war, and an economic growth of at least 3%, coming from consumption (which in turn is stimulated by the elimination of unemployment). In the long term, the situation will probably be different, but at the moment the war is a particularly profitable undertaking for Putin.

Brute force

If, in a short time, Russian oil and gas will no longer be worth anything, as a result of global environmental policies, Russia will be reduced to a single dimension: the military one. It would follow that Russia’s interest is simple: to reaffirm the importance of brute force in international relations. In other words, the resuscitation, in some form, of the Cold War would bring it back to the forefront of international decision-making as a first-hand actor, equal in importance to the United States.

How they would monetize this is unclear. Probably the option is to capitalize on such a position to delay environmental policies. In this perspective, the relative support for Russia by Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states and whose political vision is de facto opposite to that of Russia would make a minimum of sense. Even the support for Iran is part of the same picture, given that Russia has a real problem with Islamic fundamentalism, and this will increase, not diminish, given the ethnic-religious landscape in the Russian Federation.

If at the international level it remains to be seen, Putin has already operationalized brute force in domestic politics. Immediately after the start of the aggression in Ukraine, at the same time as he was launching attacks on Kyiv, he issued martial law that allowed him to repress any protest movement against him in the Russian Federation. In the weeks and months leading up to the war, a string of street movements, in Moscow and other major cities, seemed not far from success. After the start of the war, all this was repressed through massive arrests and intimidation, including through media channels. (The exception is the military rebellion of the Wagner troops – another shocking episode of recent years – which ended with the liquidation of the rebel leader, but which demonstrates that structurally the giant has feet of clay, but no one shakes it).

Recorded losses

Apparently, the evolution of the conflict, the scale of support for Ukraine and the diversity of international sanctions took Putin by surprise. What is certain is that the maximalist scenario he tried at the beginning of the war – the occupation of Kyiv and the physical liquidation of those who oppose Russian policy – has failed miserably. Also, the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, frightened by the gratuitousness of the arguments with which Putin’s Russia can unprovoked start an aggression, is certainly a major failure for Moscow. The neutrality of Sweden and Finland was an important outlet for Russian diplomacy throughout the 20th century.

The high number of casualties recorded by the Russian army is also likely to cause long-term concern in Moscow, especially if Russia does not end the conflict by claiming something to call victory. (After all, the inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 was an important element in the collapse of the USSR.)

The drastic reduction of gas exports to the European Union, much faster than Russia feared, must also be put under the heading of “miscalculations”. Part of Europe’s needs are still represented by hydrocarbons (now also coming from other sources, but which, nevertheless, influence their overall price). But another part comes from renewable sources put into operation in recent years. Many such capacities are in accelerated development, and all this will lead to the irrevocable depreciation of the global consumption of hydrocarbons and to the decrease of this trade. Even if dirty energy exports to China and developing countries will continue, the reduced economic strength of these countries, on the one hand, and the change in the energy model, on the other, erode the growth potential of the Russian economy. Even the space for financial stimulus and war Keynesianism through which Russia survives at the moment will shrink considerably.

What would something called victory look like for Putin?

Donald Trump probably rushed to announce peace. Perhaps, it would have been more realistic if he promised to close one chapter and open another.

Russia is prospering economically in this war. Military operations are not going as planned by the Russians, but the propaganda makes them sound extremely convenient to Putin. Moreover, social peace in Russia is guaranteed by the existence of external war. The system of international relations has been shaken by the aggression in Ukraine, and the UN, to some extent, has become devoid of substance, but Russia is a topic of utmost importance in all news bulletins and in much of the discussion on social networks. All this because of the war.

The whole situation is of unimaginable absurdity. The whole history of mankind has taught us that war, even illegitimate, is a way to ensure a victory, to achieve a precise and defined goal. Putin’s Russia is redefining (or trying to redefine) the nature of war, proposing it as a reality in itself. Otherwise, in the new global and technological world, Russia has no prospect to close the gap and become one of the powers again. But military-diplomatic aggression and extortion are, in this picture, the cards that the Russians have to play and are willing to play.

What can peace look like in Ukraine?

As for the conditions of a form of ceasefire in Ukraine, legally enshrined or not, they are to be taken into account only as stage developments. A solid peace is unimaginable today.

Abstracting from anything called legitimacy, new borders can be drawn on the territory of Ukraine in several possible designs. Forced to accept them, by withdrawing American support and diminishing European support, Ukraine could cede the territories occupied by Russia on the day the armistice is concluded. Or, in theory, it can make even bigger concessions. Russia already claims to have held referendums in areas of Ukraine that it has never controlled, and that these territories have already submitted applications to be received in the Russian Federation.

None of this would mean peace. For the rest of Ukraine, not occupied by the Russians, there can be no international guarantees that there will be no attempt to derail the state, through hybrid attacks, or that it will not be subject to immediate military action again. On the contrary, Russia, as it has been reconfigured by Putin, will be able to present itself as a geopolitical force only and only if it manages to maintain itself as a geopolitical threat. Ukraine is probably not even an end in itself, but just a convenient means for Russia to wage war in Europe, where visibility is maximum. (The previous involvement in Syria was abandoned precisely for this reason – that the military force displayed there was largely invisible, given the ethno-social-cultural-religious-historical context incomprehensible to most Europeans).

If it is not Ukraine, the new targets may be Moldova or the Balkans. The fact is that Putin has created at this moment a model that seems productive to him, based on aggression, and that there is no other option that seems profitable to Russia in the medium and long term. For today’s Russia, peace can only be attractive if it is extremely fragile.

What else?

The indefinite prolongation of the war is not an option for Ukraine. Ukrainian troops are showing signs of fatigue. The war of attrition in recent years has not brought great losses, but neither have victories that would excite any of the armies. After heroic battles and high-profile military actions, Ukraine needs a lot of support to continue. But it needs even more a perspective through which all the effort so far can be capitalized on in post-war reconstruction and in participation in economic and political-military agreements and guarantees.

NATO is in an expectation that resembles disorientation. Donald Trump’s first term ended with statements and actions likely to undermine the alliance and even to discuss the eventual dissolution of the military pact. An eventual withdrawal from NATO of its main architect, the United States, is unlikely, but possible and discussed. Much of this uncertainty is due to collateral discussions and does not reflect substantive intentions and interests. However, it is likely to conceal possible solutions and delay necessary actions.

In the short term, stable solutions are unimaginable. (In reality, the conflict is much more complex than can be sketched from the simple analysis of the war in Ukraine. It also includes massive manipulations of public opinion and electoral processes, which are effective in democratic states, where there is freedom of expression, and impossible in the East, where censorship is drastic. Also, acts of sabotage of essential infrastructures, through alleged accidents, but also through cyber attacks. To some extent, the aspect is that of an all-out war, even if undeclared. As a result, solutions that solve a single aspect cannot be feasible in the conditions of continuation of the other attacks on all other axes).

In the medium and long term, Russia’s complex aggression would require social and political reactions that are unimaginable today. Even the social and political mechanisms of democratic states, in the shade in which they are defined today, must be adapted to the new reality in which international aggression is already part of the rules of the game.

In the same vein, stable solutions cannot be generated only through the involvement of NATO (as has been tried for three years) or only from Washington, as Trump promises. Other countries – China first and foremost – must become part of the solution. Otherwise, they automatically become part of the problem. Russia’s international isolation is illusory without the participation of China and India, and economic sanctions only mimic action. In essence, a leap of understanding is needed to realize that the game has changed radically and that the imposition of customs tariffs is a completely secondary issue to the active promotion of aggression and crime in international relations and in the political life of each country.

External links:

For peace conditions in the view of the Ukrainians:

ISW update of January 3, 2025 on the conflict in Ukraine: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-3-2025. President Zelensky described the conditions for a “just peace”: the preservation of a strong Ukrainian army, security guarantees from Western allies, and Ukraine’s future membership in NATO and the European Union (EU) to deter Russia from renewed aggression against Ukraine. Zelensky’s statement presents a reduction of Ukraine’s desires to the most important points to ensure Ukraine’s future existence. Previously, the list of conditions explicitly included respect for Ukraine’s 1991 borders (including the restitution of Crimea and complete withdrawal from the Donbass and other regions), the repair of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure constantly attacked by the Russians, the release of all prisoners, including kidnapped children, the establishment of a special international tribunal to judge war crimes, and a bilateral agreement whereby Russia would accept these conditions.

For peace conditions in the Russians’ view:

Al-Jazeera, Russia-Ukraine war: All the proposed peace plans explained, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/4/russia-ukraine-war-all-the-proposed-peace-plans-explained and CNBC, Russia’s Putin sets out conditions for peace talks with Ukraine, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/russias-putin-outlines-conditions-for-peace-talks-with-ukraine.html. In essence, Russia has not made peace proposals and has not announced concrete objectives for it.

In several uncorrelated statements, Putin, Lavrov and the Foreign Ministry announced as preconditions for Russia to participate in peace negotiations: the withdrawal of any Western support for Ukraine, the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson and the renunciation of Ukraine to its sovereignty and territorial integrity. As for the peace conditions, they seem to have remained unchanged since 2021 and include: the change of political power in Kyiv, the total demilitarization of Ukraine, the cessation of any negotiations with NATO and the EU and even the return of NATO to the 1997 formula (which would mean imposing the withdrawal from the alliance of all countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact,  including Romania).

For an economic analysis of Russia in 2024

Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center – https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/12/russia-economy-difficulties?lang=en

For the evolution of the way the war is fought

ISW, Ukraine and the Problem of Restoring Maneuver in Contemporary War, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-and-problem-restoring-maneuver-contemporary-war

For analysis of Putin’s intentions

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Demystifying the Enemy: Putin’s Geopolitical Calculus and the War in Ukraine, https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2024/08/28/demystifying-the-enemy-putins-geopolitical-calculus-and-the-war-in-ukraine/, August 2024 and Penn Today, Putin’s motivation behind the attack on Ukraine, https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/putins-motivation-behind-attack-ukraine, February 2022.

Photographs

The website dedicated to the war in Ukraine, https://war.ukraine.ua/photos/. Headline image: Night missile attack on residential areas in Kyiv, September 2023.

(Translated after the Romanian original – LINK. )