The dead end of history: no peace for Ukraine means more war for the West

As predicted, insufficient Western military support to Ukraine has led to a war of attrition and stalemate on the battlefield.

Ukraine depends on military and financial support from Western countries, but some Western politicians are hesitating over whether to maintain that support or reduce assistance, potentially pushing Ukraine towards a ‘compromise’ with the Russian Federation?

In their eyes, such a compromise could involve Ukraine relinquishing the goal of liberating its occupied territories and their citizens. Moscow’s stated negotiating position includes recognition of Ukraine’s ‘territorial status, in conformity to amendments of the Russian Constitution’ that includes the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson oblasts and Crimea.

Vladimir Putin banks on winning a game of chicken with the West by threatening a wider war or even nuclear strikes in response to their continued support for Ukraine.

Western leaders fear escalation more than Putin. The illegal annexation of Crimea and full-scale invasion of Ukraine have shown that he is willing to take the risks that war entails. As the warfighting scenario is less a contest of forces, but more is about a risk-taking competition.

Those hoping for a compromise will be encouraged by media reports indicating Putin is quietly signalling his readiness for peace talks. Yet Russia’s actions suggest the opposite. The Russian military is intensifying missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, resulting in civilian casualties and the destruction of residential buildings.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his new-year press conference stated that victory is the only acceptable outcome for Russia in 2024. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s National Security and Defence Council, says Ukraine should not exist in any form. The former Russian president has called Ukraine a ‘cancerous growth’ that will always be illegitimate, no matter who its leader is.

Instead of bringing peace, pushing Ukraine towards compromise and negotiation would signify the normalisation of war in Europe. That could persist for generations, claiming lives and draining resources.

Such an outcome may be inevitable without a serious discussion of how sustained Western support could underpin a Ukrainian victory to ensure lasting peace.

The ‘Sustainable Peace Manifesto’, crafted by Ukrainian civil society representatives and public experts, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘Peace Formula’, unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, are both relevant in this context. Both documents converge on the necessity of respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Since Russia shows no interest in compromise, the only realistic scenario for ending the war is Russian military defeat and Russian Federation’s subsequent transformation in respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states.

Such a transformation in Russian attitudes is crucial to dismantling future threats to security and peace in Europe.

Unfortunately, many in the West fail to understand the way to achieve this transformation in Russia. When they talk about the need for the ‘future of the Russian Federation to be decided by Russians’, they fail to realise there is more than one meaning of the word ‘Russian’ in the Russian language.

The adjective ‘Russkiy’ (‘русский’) draws its orgins from the people who spoke the language and followed the traditions of Kyivan Rus, the medieval Slavic state centred around Kyiv. Putin manipulates this historical explanation to argue that the Ukrainian nation never existed, and Kyiv is essentially a Russian city.

Then there is the adjective ‘Rossiyskiy’ (‘российский’) and the noun ‘Rossiyanin’ (‘россиянин’) referring more generally to all citizens of the Russian Federation.

This formulation grew in usage following the collapse of the Soviet Union when Russian President Boris Yeltsin sought language that signified unity among the different ethnic groups living within the Federation. He could not use the word “Russkiye”, when appealing to Tatars or other nations. Thus, the Russian constitution says: “the bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation is the multinational people of it.” That echoes a formula from Soviet legislation.

Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his propagandists rarely addressed the topic of the country’s multi-ethnic nature. That changed dramatically when the Kremlin needed to create the illusion that Russia’s ‘the multinational people’ are supporting its military aggression against Ukraine. Fostering unity around the flag was deemed necessary to mobilise new waves of soldiers to sustain the conflict.

Like the old term ‘Soviet people’, use of the the word ‘rossiyanie’ to mean Russians is an artificial concept. It implies that Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Kalmyks and other peoples can be part of the constitutionally stated multinational people of the Russian Federation, but cannot be labelled as Russians. This is why the idea that ‘the future of the Russian Federation should be decided by Russians’ makes no sense.

After taking power, Putin curtailed the autonomy and influence of the regions. Rather than representing regional interests, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, became Putin’s puppet. It immediately approved his plan to use military force beyond Russia’s borders and invade Ukraine.

Putin’s power is backed by a strategy of conservative traditionalism, imperialism, political orthodoxy and the nationalist ideology of the Russian (that’s Russkiy, rather than Rossiyskiy) world.

Amendments to the constitution have cemented the status of Russian (Russkiy) as the national language. Without explicitly saying so, it has given ethnic Russians (Russkiye) the official status of a titular nation or nationality.

In November 2023, Russian parliament member Sultan Khamzayev proposed to pass a law about the Russian (“Russkiy”) people, which would replace the constitutional term “the multinational people of the Russian Federation.” According to Khamzayev, Yeltsin’s term “rossiyanie” disoriented the society.

In his press conference, Lavrov referenced the topic of Russian Federation decolonisation, accusing the West of seeking to dismantle Russia. This is pure propaganda. Decolonisation would entail dismantling Russia’s vertical power structures, which seek to suppress nationalities and ethnic groups in order to enforce unity for military purposes. Dismantling the power vertical does not equate to dismantling the state.

Normalisation and decolonisation of the Russian Federation would allow the country’s diverse peoples to freely express and promote their interests, rather than being terrorised by the vertical power structure and Putin’s apparatus of violence.

The Federation Council should make decisions based on the interests of the people, rather than the will of one individual whether it’s Putin or Navalny.

If that had been the case in 2022, it’s unlikely the war would have started. Now, only military defeat and the dismantling of the Kremlin’s power vertical can pave the way for the normalisation of the Russian Federation, rather than the normalisation of the war.

This article is part of Friends of Europe’s Ukraine Initiative series, find out more here. The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.