-OpEd-
HAMBURG — A “peace demonstration” was held in Berlin on Thursday, which coincided with German Unity Day, which commemorates the reunification of East and West Germany. The core demand of demonstrators was for the German government to stop supplying weapons to Kyiv and to start negotiations immediately.
While the call matches the program set forth by the anti-NATO and euroskeptic Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), well-known Social Democrats such as Ralf Stegner and Wolfgang Thierse are also taking part.
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This sets the stage for next week, when U.S. President Joe Biden will come to Berlin and visit the U.S. military base in Ramstein, where he’s invited the heads of government of the more than 50 countries that supply Ukraine with weapons. The aim, Biden says, is to “give Ukraine the support it needs to win this war.”
The U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 will determine whether the American position on this Russia-Ukraine war will change. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris promises Ukraine further support, while her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, says that Ukraine is “finished” and that it has no chance of winning against Russia. Trump says he will force a deal in a single day — before he even takes office.
Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, recently explained the former president’s aim: Russia would be allowed to keep the conquered territories, there would be a buffer zone along the new border, and Ukraine would have to commit to neutrality. That would come close to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s maximum demands and would amount to Ukraine’s capitulation.
Since the beginning of the war, public debate has never been so loud and confusing in Ukraine’s two most vital allies: the U.S. and Germany. It’s “negotiate now” versus “as long as it takes”, “peace without weapons” versus “peace through weapons.”
Does this mean that negotiations may be getting closer? And if so, under what circumstances would they begin, who would lead them, and how might they proceed? It’s time to imagine how this war, which has now lasted more than two-and-a-half years, coming to an acceptable end.
Talk about the talking
Truth be told, there is currently scant hope of seeing Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky sitting at the negotiating table anytime soon. But there is no doubt that the “talk about talking” is gaining momentum.
Even if Trump wins, it seems unlikely that he alone will be able to force the two countries to negotiate. Yet, he would undoubtedly have many levers to severely limit the Ukrainians’ ability to fight: the U.S. provides Ukraine with most of its financial aid and weapons.
And even if Trump were to cut that funding, European governments would probably not abandon Ukraine, says Nicole Deitelhoff, director of the Frankfurt Institute for Peace and Conflict Research.
But what if Trump withdrew the Patriot air defense systems, thereby exposing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russian fire? The coalition of supporters considers this unlikely. Not because Trump has moral concerns, but because it would make him look weaker than Putin.
Negotiations start when both sides believe there is nothing left to be achieved on the battlefield.
The situation at the front — as precarious as it is for both sides — does not currently suggest that negotiations will be carried out quickly. Deitelhoff says the pressure is increasing.
Ukrainian armed forces are increasingly being worn down by Russian territorial gains in the Donbass. The strategically important city of Pokrovsk is in danger of being taken. At the same time, the Kursk operation has spread new optimism in Ukraine. And on many other sections of the front, the Russians are making little progress.
Victim paradox
Jörn Leonhard, historian at the University of Freiburg, examined peace agreements since the early modern period in his 2023 book On Wars and How to End Them. Negotiations, he says, start when both sides believe there is nothing left to be achieved on the battlefield. Leonard sees no signs of this yet.
Even the fact that the number of victims on both sides keeps rising suggests there is currently no will to negotiate. Rather, there is a “victim paradox,” says Leonhard: “The more victims there are, the more negotiations are interpreted as a betrayal of the victims, which limits freedom of action towards one’s own society.”
Rather than a large peace conference, a valid first step would be informal back channels.
In any case, the idea that war can end with a single, large peace conference is misleading. There are few historical precedents for this, Leonhard says. The road to peace is usually long, arduous and marked by setbacks. Talking and fighting often happen at the same time. And even more often the “peace” turns out to be nothing more than a break. Leonhard believes the most important prerequisite is lacking: trust.
Political scientist Samuel Charap from the American think tank RAND believes that building trust will be a major effort. The Eastern Europe expert outlines a different path to peace. Rather than a large peace conference, a valid first step would be informal back channels, i.e. discussions between people without an official mandate, such as scientists or former politicians.
“We don’t know where the red lines really are,” says Charap; they may be found out via a back channel. In official diplomatic talks, government representatives rarely explore positions that do not correspond to their declared policy, and certainly not the ceding of territory. In informal talks, they can.
After such informal talks take place, the next step would be temporary ceasefires and partial peace to allow for more comprehensive negotiations and, at best, treaties. The first steps in this direction have already been taken. There have been repeated talks about the exchange of prisoners of war. Another example is the grain agreement brokered by Turkey, which Russia allowed to expire in 2023.
Guarantees are crucial
Interestingly, it was Zelensky himself who recently raised hopes of a peace conference. In June, Ukraine and its key supporters from the G7 countries brought together more than 100 countries in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.
The conference was a cleverly packaged attempt to expand the coalition of supporters of Ukraine to include countries from the Global South. Russia did not attend. Yet the conference also set up international working groups on secondary issues, such as the safety of nuclear facilities in war and food security.
Some observers believe that representatives from Russia could be invited to one or more of these working groups, so that the “Bürgenstock process” could become part of the path to peace. In any case, lasting peace will demand a lot of compromise from the supporting states. If you really want peace, you have to talk about it.
Ukraine cannot remain in a geopolitical gray area.
The hellish difficulty of ending this war boils down to a single term: security guarantees. This means giving Ukraine the guarantee that its allies will come to its aid if it is ever attacked again. At its core, the war in Ukraine is not about territory, but about the fundamental question of what place the country should play in the future of Europe. Is it a buffer state between the West and Russia, or should it become part of the EU and eventually NATO ?
The failure of German (and European) policy in recent years has shown that Ukraine cannot remain in a geopolitical gray area. Russia has a long history of violating agreements: the Budapest Agreement of 1994 as well as the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015. Only strong and credible security guarantees from the supporting states would deter Russia from further imperialist raids. The model is Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, in which members guarantee mutual assistance in the event of an attack.
Admission to the EU and NATO
It seems only logical that Ukraine is demanding ever more urgently to join NATO, which has been on offer since 2008. But the chances of this happening are zero as long as the war continues. No country with open conflict raging on its territory can become a member of the alliance. That could draw NATO directly into the war with Russia.
But the security guarantee does not necessarily have to be NATO membership. Conflict researcher Deitelhoff believes that it is a distraction to focus on that. Membership requires a consensus among the 32 members, which she believes will not be achieved in the foreseeable future due to the obligation to provide assistance under Article 5.
It would make more sense, says Deitelhoff, to contractually guarantee that the Ukrainian armed forces will be trained and equipped to NATO standards — and that they will then be allowed to use the weapons provided without range restrictions.
The path to negotiations also depends on which countries will act as mediators.
With no security guarantees, negotiations may not take place at all. Even if the supporting states are now ramping up their rhetoric and Biden is talking about Ukraine’s “victory,” restoring Ukraine’s full territorial integrity cannot be achieved with the resources that are currently being provided.
Ultimately, it will come down to Ukraine exchanging land for peace and security, which will be extremely painful. Ukrainians will only accept such territorial concessions if there is a solid prospect that will secure peace.
Last, but not least, the path to negotiations also depends on which countries act as mediators. For weeks, rumors have been circulating that the German government itself wanted to hold a peace conference in Berlin — a follow-up to the Bürgenstock summit. But it is naive to believe that Putin would agree to host a peace conference in a country that is as resolutely supportive of Ukraine as Germany.
Talk about talking
A country in the Global South, such as Brazil, India or South Africa, would be a more likely candidate. A Gulf state such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates could also be a solution. China is also mentioned again and again. But China is increasingly supporting Russia by purchasing energy and supplying goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
When Western diplomats ask Beijing to influence Russia, Chinese representatives routinely downplay their influence, and Russia will not back down from its maximum demands if no one is pressuring them to.
We’ll see whether anyone in Moscow will answer the phone at all.
Even so, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is considering contacting Putin again in the coming weeks, according to German government sources. A telephone conversation in the run-up to the G20 meeting in Brazil in November is being considered, if only to check whether Putin would be willing to make any move. Yet the conversation has not yet been scheduled.
A phone call between the German and Russian leaders would be a small sensation. Scholz last spoke to Putin on the phone in December 2022. Other Western heads of government have also struggled to get direct contact with him. It would be a test after a long, icy silence: We’ll see whether anyone in Moscow will answer the phone at all. If they do, maybe we can at least talk about talking.
