Europeans are losing faith in Ukraine’s ability to win the war against Russia – but experts say any hope for a negotiated peace is misguided.
It’s been exactly two years since Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the conflict shows no sign of an imminent conclusion.
Russia – along with many Western military experts – expected Ukraine to capitulate quickly after its forces invaded the country in 2022. Instead, Ukraine bravely resisted, faring much better than many would have thought as Russia’s initial offensive ran into myriad problems.
In the first year of the war, Ukrainian troops mounted a stunning counteroffensive, managing to drive Russian forces out of Kherson, the only regional capital they had by then captured.
But in the second year, progress was slower. A much-trailed Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to obtain the same quick results as the initial pushback, and for months, neither Ukraine nor Russia could claim any major land breakthrough.
Now in the third year of war, Ukraine is facing a new challenge: the withering of crucial Western support.
Europe’s dwindling optimism
The most alarming development is in the US, where pro-Trump Republicans in the House of Representatives are still stalling the passage of a €55.4 billion military aid package that would grant Kyiv what it needs to resupply its troops at the front.
In contrast, European powers are shoring up their military and financial support, and a majority of the EU’s population continues to strongly support Ukraine in its fight against the Russia. Yet according to a recent EU-wide poll, only 10% believe that the country can defeat Russia in the war.
The authors of the report, titled “Wars and Election: How European leaders can maintain public support for Ukraine”, wrote that EU politicians should take a more “realistic” approach that centres upon establishing how peace can be achieved.
As co-author Mark Leonard explained The Guardian newspaper, arguments for more aid should focus on how it “could lead to a sustainable, negotiated peace that favours Kyiv – rather than a victory for Putin”.
But other experts told Euronews that a peace deal is not really on the table.
Opposite goals
Stephen Hall, a lecturer in Russian and post-Soviet politics at the University of Bath, pointed out that Vladimir Putin’s terms for ending the war in Ukraine still include the “denazification, demilitarisation and neutrality of Ukraine”.
As far as the Russian president is concerned, those goals are non-negotiable, but they are unacceptable to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Western allies – and regardless, their premise is spurious.
But that’s not all. According to Dr Jade Glynn, research fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, Ukraine’s and Russia’s ideas for an acceptable peace deal would be close to mutually exclusive.
Kyiv’s ideal peace deal would demand the respect of its legally recognised 1991 borders and the imposition of a genuine form of deterrence against any future Russian attack, Glynn said – something that would essentially mean rolling back everything Russia has achieved through violent military action since 2014.
Additionally, Kyiv would want to be allowed to join the European Union and NATO, said Hall – a move that Putin has long opposed, and which he initially invoked as a flimsy pretext for the invasions of both 2014 and 2022.
Glynn told Euronews that according to the latest position stated by the Kremlin, an acceptable deal for Russia would require full control of all four Ukrainian regions they claim are Russian, along with the city of Kharkiv and even Odesa. Moscow would demand a final say on who can be president of Ukraine – and their only concession would be that what remains of Ukraine could join the EU.
This is unacceptable to Kyiv, to put it mildly.
‘Can’t trust Putin’s words’
Putin has repeatedly made clear that he doesn’t consider Ukraine a sovereign country, and insists it should be under Russian rule.
“You can go back to 2004 and 2014 and find that Vladimir Putin […] says that the final aim is the control of Ukraine, that Ukraine doesn’t have full sovereignty,” Glynn said.
A peace deal, she explained, “would only be temporary until Russia was able to restore its army to the strength of 2022, which according to Ukrainian estimates it should be able to do by 2028.” And while a ceasefire would give Ukrainians a “night off” from the bombing and the shelling, but it would not ultimately help Ukraine permanently fight off the Russian invasion.
According to Mathieu Boulègue, a Eurasian security and defence issues expert at Chatham House, a peace deal isn’t possible until the current Kremlin leadership is gone and the “Putin system” fully dismantled, with power given back to “more representable politicians”.
Years to come
The war in Ukraine continues because the country cannot afford to lose. As several experts told Euronews, that would likely mean the end of its very existence.
It will take years for the war in Ukraine to end, said Boulègue, “because conflicts tend to either finish very quickly or be prolonged for a long time and become normalised, with neither side being able to dominate militarily on the other.”
Talks of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are unhelpful, he said. “Zelenskyy would tell you, ‘we don’t negotiate with war criminals’, and the rest of the international community should be on the same line. And even if we did, there would be absolutely no guarantee that Russia will not come back in a few years to destroy Ukraine again.”
A test for NATO and the West
All experts who talked to Euronews agree that a Russian defeat in Ukraine is as important to the West as it is for Kyiv.
“I don’t think negotiations are a solution to this conflict, at least in the present form, because it would highlight that the West is weak,” Hall said. “It would be taken as a cue for Russia to have another go at Ukraine or potentially another country.
“I don’t think they would attack a NATO country, but they would certainly try and see how weak its Article V is, and if they find out that it’s just a piece of paper, that would mean that NATO would collapse.”
While he doesn’t like to advocate for continued war, Hall sees continuing the conflict as the best way ahead now.
“The West needs to maintain its support for Ukraine to ideally help it win as quickly as possible, or at least make it so unpalatable to Russia that it won’t be able to take it, and eventually when Putin leaves power, it will lead to actual peace talks that aren’t merely a Russian diktat to Ukraine.”
According to Boulègue, fighting Putin is “very much about the principles” of the European Union, NATO, the United States, and all the global and collective West.
“If we let the bullies win, we’re not living by the standards that we want to project in terms of human rights, in terms of democracy, in terms of sovereignty.”
Glynn struck the same note.
“Ukrainians are very tired of the war, they have war fatigue, not us, but they understand that you can’t trust Putin’s words.
“With bullies, you have to sort of make a stand. You have to stop them, or they’ll just continue to take more.”