ANY talk of peace in Ukraine has to embrace the paradox that Russian President Vladimir Putin will never give up his war because he cannot. The only off-ramp that he will accept, albeit temporarily, will be Kyiv accepting Russia can keep the territories it already occupies – a demand unacceptable to Volodymyr Zelensky.
And even then, with Putin in position, Russia would find an excuse, a barely concealed false flag allegation or some other trigger to restart the war. Putin’s entire strongman image, and therefore his political survival depends on his ability now to talk peace whilst maintaining the war through propaganda, manipulation and lies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said it repeatedly and under Trump the US government has not listened, instead pivoting away from Europe and towards Russia.
Putin’s aim of owning or destroying Ukraine, leaving it as a frozen war, will not change whilst he is in power – and that is the nightmare conundrum facing any negotiators, including his slippery Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. How do you settle on an end to war, or rather invasion, when the perpetrator, the man whose fault it is, may pay lip service to peace but his actions will never stick to it?
Almost certainly, the only answer is by strength and force from European NATO allies showing overwhelming power in supporting Ukraine and humiliating Putin into defeat. And that may not be as hard as it seems. Moscow’s army has been hit daily by troops fleeing the war and going absent without leave, many only staying under the threat of being shot.
And either his troops do not listen to him and discipline has all but gone or Putin’s Easter truce was a sick joke. During the recent Russia-declared Easter truce it is estimated Moscow’s troops violated the agreement 3,000 times, launching en masse 48 major combat operations against Ukraine.
Putin’s recent surprise Easter peace declaration did not fool anyone in Kyiv’s intelligence directorate who knew how badly they had hit Moscow’s troops recently. They knew Russia only declared a truce because it needed to regroup having bungled so heavily in the preceding weeks, suffering several massive defeats.
In one operation in the east they lost a battalion of armour, battalions of artillery, hundreds of vehicles and 1,500 casualties. That is not the worst defeat they have suffered. To all those who wrote Ukraine off in the first few days of the invasion and still do you have to ask what it will take for Ukraine to look like it will win.
Russia has made glacial progress in the past year but Ukraine has hammered its logistics supply lines, ammunition dumps and other supplies deep inside enemy territory. And yet still Putin cannot accept an end to the war, because it would mean the end for him politically and perhaps even a violent one at that,
As Zelensky has said repeatedly Putin could end the war immediately by agreeing to withdraw his troops back to Russia. But that would be an admittance of defeat too obviously in plain sight to hide and lead to his political and possible ultimate end. There is a saying in Kyiv that once the world held Russia to have the second most powerful military in the world and now only has the second in Ukraine.
Putin, though emboldened by Trump’s favourable outlook on Russia, knows Ukraine has grown united with European allies and in stature militarily. His army and its hardware, tanks, artillery, armoured vehicles is vastly depleted and has lost over 900,000 to death and injury.
As The Mirror’s Defence and Security Editor I have covered war and terror at home and abroad for more than 20 years.
It has taken me to fascinating places such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, across Africa and even Korea.
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It is riddled from the inside out with corruption and is having to rely on poorly-trained North Korean soldiers and Chinese mercenaries to swell its numbers. The level of incompetence displayed by Russia’s commanders from the beginning of the full-scale invasion is almost too huge to illustrate.
Witness the confusion within a few days of the invasion when a vast column of armour was halted for days north of Kyiv, picked off by ambushing snipers and Ukrainian missile squads. Someone had forgotten to arrange fuel deliveries from Belarus. Officers have been accused of flogging off fuel meant for military vehicles for their own personal gain whilst accusing inferiors of cowardice.
Europe is re-arming at pace, with the UK at the centre (although struggling). Putin is trapped in the decline of a regime propped up by a war economy which has been crippled otherwise by sanctions. At the same time he is running out of troops and his population of males is growing older and many have fled.
Putin’s inner-circle are likely eying up the next move – and the right wing amongst them believe in the war’s necessity for Russian power and expansion.
All Putin cares about is how he and his rule is perceived back home and ending the war in Ukraine would expose the illusion of the strongman. But soon he will have run out of other people to point the finger at for his folly whilst knowing that the war in Ukraine represents his survival.
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