Unless something unexpected intrudes, Vladimir Putin is on course to win the war in Ukraine. His troops are now within military spitting distance of the city of Pokrovsk, in the Ukrainian oblast of Donetsk. Pokrovsk is an important hub for the Ukrainian military. Last year’s fight for Bakhmut, which cost the lives of many thousands of Russian soldiers, served no known military purpose. Pokrovsk is of a different category. Its capture would signify the most important military achievement for Russia since the start of the trench warfare in eastern Ukraine. If Russian troops manage to capture Pokrovsk, they could move on for the next target, the industrial city of Kramatorsk nearby. One of its main industrial assets is the New Kramatorsk Machinebuilding Factory, which produces mining equipment, and blast furnaces, but also military equipment like components for icebreakers and submarines.
Since February, Russia has managed to move to its frontline forward occupying some 1,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian land. This is not as much as it sounds. It is approximately the size of the Kurs region in Russian which Ukraine occupied in August – though Ukraine has since retreated from around half of this.
Russia’s slow but unrelenting advances are probably the biggest risk to any peace process Donald Trump is trying to impose on both sides. Why would Putin agree to a peace deal if he thinks he can win the war? In the West, a lot of people, including many military and Russia experts, gave in to wishful thinking, hoping that Ukraine can win. Volodymyr Zelensky, who must have grown tired with undelivered Western promises, no longer thinks so himself. The danger now is that Putin turns delusional. It is winter in the region, with temperatures close to freezing point in the Kramatorsk. Even if he achieves a breakthrough, he will still not achieve his stated war goal — the full capture of four Ukrainian oblasts. He has got one — Luhansk — but only portions of the other three.
I am hopeful that the war could end in 2025, but a peace process would be subject to several risks. The hard part is not the main deal. The frontline will act as the de-facto border. The two sides might trade off land. What the ultimate demarcation line is agreed upon, there would be a demilitarised zone on either side. There have been reports that France’s Emmanuel Macron proposed 40,000 Nato peacekeeping troops, to be stationed along the demilitarised zone. Any credible security guarantee, short of Nato membership, would have to include such guarantees. It is not clear that Nato member states are ready for this.
Putin will almost surely demand an unfreezing of Russia’s reserve assets. This is a potential deal breaker for the Europeans. Unwilling to make any fiscal sacrifices for Europe, the Europeans had been hoping to plunder the $300bn pot of Russian reserve assets for military help and for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Putin will also demand the lifting of western sanctions. I struggle to see how there can be a peace deal without the full lifting of all sanctions, and especially the unfreezing of the assets.
And then what? Trump does not want to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Nor does he want to dispatch US troops. This will leave the Europeans in charge of a task for which they are financially, militarily and politically unprepared. The financial burden is so large that it would either have to be funded through debt, through taxes, or through cuts in social services. I don’t think the Europeans would voluntarily agree to do any of these things. The trade-off between spending for Ukraine, and social spending at home has already become an issue in German politics. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, is basing his re-election campaign on fears of an escalation of the war. Macron would, if left alone, be one west Europe’s most effective supporters of Ukraine, but he is hampered by the political chaos in his own country – for which he himself is responsible when he called elections earlier this year. There is not much scope for increased spending for Ukraine anywhere. The UK does not have any fiscal capacity either. Germany does, but has made so many commitments already, that it is hard to see where the money is coming from.
The West’s Ukraine strategy is clearly not working. I realised this very early on when the EU and the US agreed a sanctions package full of holes — designed not to inflict maximum damage on Russia, but avoiding pain for ourselves. Europe was dependent on Russian gas and oil. Some of these dependencies persist to this day.
The biggest shift that took place was without a doubt the US elections. Until this year, Congress agreed to fund Ukraine, but earlier this month the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives rejected a proposal by the Biden administration for an additional $24 billion in aid for Ukraine. This is it. There will be no more US money. It is the West, not Russia, that is running out of money — or a willingness to spend it on Ukraine.
A deal to freeze the conflict around current battle lines would be the best outcome for Ukraine, given the circumstances. I am hopeful, but not certain that it will happen. It would require some deft diplomacy by Trump’s foreign policy team.
We should perhaps stop for a moment to reflect on this last point. We have put ourselves into a position where Trump is our best hope to end the conflict. How did it come to this?
[See also: The rise of machinepolitick]
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