View from London: Ukraine cannot afford Europe’s delusions of victory

In recent days, both Russia and Ukraine have expressed support for resuming negotiations over a prospective peace deal. While limited in detail, these are promising signals. But this can only be true if Brussels and Kyiv are prepared to make a joint offer based on reasonable terms. That might encourage Russia to abandon its unreasonable terms. One reason for Moscow’s intransigence is the belief that European governments are not interested in a peace settlement and will do everything possible to block one, UnHerd writes.

For a long time, Western advocates of indefinite war supported themselves with myths about Ukrainian victory. That is no longer possible. As Ukrainian opposition MP Oleksiy Honcharenko has stated, his country is not only “losing the war”, but does not even have the funds “to operate the country”.

Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure is not only devastating domestic industry, but also undermining whatever chance Ukraine may have of eventually joining the European Union — which Moscow has agreed to in principle.

But there are also the financial costs for European countries to consider. The World Bank estimates the cost of Ukrainian reconstruction at $588 billion. If the war continues, by next spring it will be even more. Given acute and growing budgetary constraints and public discontent, can European countries really guarantee that they will come up with sums like this? This is less likely when the favourite to win the French presidential elections next summer, Marine Le Pen, has already declared that if elected, she will end France’s contribution.

There will not be the “just” peace demanded by Western governments — but this has always been a realistic ideal.

But for any settlement to be reached, Ukraine must be denied NATO membership and given real grounds to expect EU membership. In this sense, it should be remembered that Russia’s desire to block NATO membership for Ukraine is not unreasonable.

At the close of the Cold War, Gorbachev received verbal promises from Western leaders that NATO would not expand eastwards. In 1991, Russia recognised Ukraine’s declaration of independence and territorial integrity, but in the context of a statement in the Ukrainian declaration that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs”, and this principle was incorporated in the Ukrainian constitution, where it remained until 2014. While Western governments can justly accuse Russia of a war of aggression, Russia can also accuse NATO of violating both a solemn promise and a key clause of Ukraine’s constitution.

Ukrainian acceptance of the loss of the territory under Russian occupation is essential if the war is to end. Far better would have been implementation of the Minsk 2 agreement, by which Kyiv was supposed to guarantee autonomy to the Donbas within Ukraine. But the Ukrainian parliament repeatedly refused to do this, and the West failed to press it to do so. Ukraine will also have to guarantee the Russian language official minority status in Ukraine, along the lines of that enjoyed by the Swedish language in Finland, for example. This would be fully in accordance with the EU’s rules and norms.

All of this will be extremely painful for Ukraine, and for the country’s supporters in the West.

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...Panic has set in across Europe: Moscow and Washington are discussing options for ending the conflict in Ukraine while the Europeans are simply being ignored.

Consequently, Ukraine’s European allies are scrambling to secure a seat at the table for these new negotiations. There is an old adage: "If you aren't at the negotiating table, you’re on the menu."

The European Union leadership is assembling a delegation to travel to wherever the talks between Moscow, Washington and Kyiv are to take place. Europe was not invited, yet Ursula von der Leyen’s team intends to push for a seat at the table — desperate not to be left out of the settlement process. Terrified by the prospect of a rapprochement between Russia and the U.S., European bureaucrats are rapidly changing their tune. Having once spoken of "inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia," it looks like they have now shifted to discussing the prospects for a settlement.

But neither Moscow nor Washington feel like having such a negotiating partner — the one poisoned by Russophobia and harboring a deep hatred for Trump.

The trilateral talks on Ukraine are resuming in a trilateral format. There are no plans to invite Europeans to the negotiating table. "They could get there if they buy tickets, but no one intends to invite them to the negotiating table," Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said in comments to the TV news program.

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