The Russian president's highest value negotiating card is the attritional warfare along the 600-mile front line in Ukraine
The 30-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia proposed by the US is the first step towards a peace negotiation that will inevitably be full of diplomatic traps and opportunities for all sides.
Ending a war which no country has won decisively means that everybody, however unwillingly, has to make compromises and eat a fair number of their bellicose words and solemn pledges made in the course of the conflict.
Recall how many complicated moving parts, not to mention players who hated each other, had to be aligned in order to bring to an end to a small war in Northern Ireland with the Good Friday Agreement in 1997. Yet doing the same for a far bigger and bloodier war in Ukraine makes the divisions of Northern Ireland look simple by comparison.
An ultimate solution must reflect the real long-term interests of Russia, Ukraine and their allies – and there is no guarantee that these are compatible. Moreover, successful peace negotiations must reflect the real long term balance of political and military power between the antagonists – and again this is difficult for people waging war to recognise and act upon.
Moves towards peace in Ukraine, as in other inconclusive wars, will be hobbled and at risk of being capsized by short-term events, usually of a nasty nature – an inevitable fact which in Northern Ireland used to be called “the politics of the last atrocity”.
The offer of an immediate ceasefire to Russia contains an obvious trap for president Vladimir Putin because his highest value negotiating card is the attritional warfare along the 600-mile front line in Ukraine in which the Russian army has been gradually gaining the upper hand. Senior Ukrainian generals have expressed fears that their side of the front might collapse. It is clearly in Russia’s interests, with five times the population of Ukraine, both to fight and talk at the same time.
“It is difficult for Putin to agree to this [ceasefire] in its present form,” a senior source in Moscow was quoted as saying on Wednesday. “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing.” Without guarantees, which were not identified, the source said that the ceasefire would put Moscow in a weaker position.
Putin had not yet responded to the ceasefire offer and Russian officials say that they are waiting for US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, to spell out the details. But Putin is likely to make acceptance of it dependent on achieving at least some of his declared war aims about the future status of Ukraine. Putin said last December that “we don’t need a truce, we need a long-term peace secured by guarantees”.
This sounds definitive, but, in the three months since Putin spoke, President Donald Trump has radically shaken up the US alliance with Ukraine – though the supply of arms and intelligence is now to be resumed – and spoken warmly of Putin and a peace agreement with Russia.
Moscow was suspicious of Trump’s claim during the US presidential election that he was going to end the Ukraine war. But, ever since Trump and JD Vance’s public quarrel with president Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House on 28 February, Russians have been visibly relishing the split. In any case, Putin has a clear incentive not to alienate Trump by peremptorily rejecting a US-backed ceasefire or loading it with too many unacceptable conditions.
By instinct or intention, Trump is a past master at keeping everybody guessing about which way the US diplomatic cat is going to jump. This gives him powerful leverage over both Putin and Zelensky, who cannot avoid seeking to outbid each other in order to secure his favour. Having agreed to the proposed ceasefire, Zelenky is once again persona grata in the Oval Office, though some Ukraine analysts believe that the White House has determined to get rid of him as an obstacle to their plans.
Life was easier for Russian, Ukrainian and European leaders under president Joe Biden, who eschewed diplomacy and whose war aims, in so far as he had any, involved an unlikely Ukrainian victory and Russian capitulation. This intransigence was also convenient for Putin, whose initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had failed so humiliatingly, because he could claim that Russia was engaged in a battle for its very existence.
Much commentary on the proposed ceasefire has dwelled excessively on the latest minor Russian advance in the Kursk or the Ukrainian mass drone strike on Moscow. Far more significant is the sheer intractability of the inter-related crises at the heart of the three-year-long war, in which there is no clear winner, but which has so far killed or wounded one million Russians and Ukrainians.