Two visions to end the war in Ukraine have been floated recently, and the difference in both the setting and substance of these proposals couldn’t be more stark. On the one hand was a peace summit held in a scenic resort in Switzerland, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promoted his 10-point peace plan to leaders and dignitaries from more than 90 countries (with Russia not among them). On the other hand was a cease-fire offer made by Russian President Vladimir Putin during an official gathering of Russian ambassadors at the Kremlin, on the conditions that Ukraine drop its ambitions to join NATO and withdraw from the four territories that Russia unilaterally annexed following its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
Two visions to end the war in Ukraine have been floated recently, and the difference in both the setting and substance of these proposals couldn’t be more stark. On the one hand was a peace summit held in a scenic resort in Switzerland, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promoted his 10-point peace plan to leaders and dignitaries from more than 90 countries (with Russia not among them). On the other hand was a cease-fire offer made by Russian President Vladimir Putin during an official gathering of Russian ambassadors at the Kremlin, on the conditions that Ukraine drop its ambitions to join NATO and withdraw from the four territories that Russia unilaterally annexed following its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
Unsurprisingly, each vision was summarily dismissed by the other side.
Ukrainian officials have called Putin’s proposal a “complete sham,” seeing as how the withdrawal of Russian troops and the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity serve as central tenets of Zelensky’s peace formula. For its part, Moscow has been working to undermine Ukraine’s peace summit in Switzerland, with Russian officials calling it “worthless” while making successful efforts to dissuade non-Western countries—especially China—from even attending.
With the protracted conflict having ground to a slow and grueling war of attrition and neither side currently able to get the decisive advantage on the battlefield, it stands to reason that there will eventually be some sort of diplomatic arrangement to bring the war to an end or at least to a semifrozen pause. We can’t tell yet whether Putin’s or Zelensky’s vision will prevail—but there are some clues.
Most critical is the state of the battlefield itself. Over the past two and a half years, there have been significant swings between Russia and Ukraine over such control. Russian forces seized significant chunks of territory in February 2022, while Ukraine was able to regain large swaths (especially around Kyiv and Kharkiv) later in the year. However, Ukraine’s counteroffensive in 2023 into the southern and eastern regions failed to produce significant results, and Russia has in turn been able to gain more territory in these regions in recent months, albeit incrementally.
At this point, the key focal point for territorial contention is centered on the four Ukrainian regions that Russia most recently annexed: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. While both Kharkiv and Crimea are also vitally important, Russia is not likely able to seize the entirety of the former, and the latter remains out of the capability for Ukraine to regain militarily. Both sides are likely to continue to attack each other’s positions in these respective territories, but it is these four annexed regions, aka the land bridge to Crimea, that are likely to prove most pivotal when it comes to deciding the terms of any cease-fire or broader peace agreement. Keeping territory is always psychologically, and diplomatically, easier than surrendering it.
Moving forward, any shift in territorial control in these regions will depend on two factors: military force mobilization and supply of weaponry. Ukraine has recently struggled to mobilize enough forces, while Russia, with a much larger army, appears to be in a relatively better position on that front. Meanwhile, Ukraine has recently secured major military assistance packages from the United States and other NATO countries, while Russia continues to receive steady technology and supplies via North Korea, Iran, China, and its own domestic arms manufacturing capacity. Thus, Russia currently has the overall military advantage, but it is far from a decisive and irreversible one.
But the conflict is not confined to purely the military realm. Both countries have inflicted direct economic damage on the other, with Russia attacking Ukraine’s energy and other critical infrastructure using rockets and drones, while Ukrainian forces have been increasingly using the same tactics within Russian territory. While Russia’s attacks have been more devastating—as much as half of Ukraine’s power generation has been taken out—Kyiv has been making advances in both scope and range, recently using drones to knock out oil production facilities as far away as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, more than 800 miles from the front lines, in central Russia. The United States and other NATO countries more recently lifted bans on Ukraine using their weapons inside Russia, which should give Kyiv additional room for maneuver.
In the meantime, the West has increased its own economic pressure against Russia. This has included maintaining and expanding sanctions against Russia while also passing new forms of economic restrictions, such as export controls and oil price caps. Most recently, at its June summit in Italy, the G-7 agreed to use profits from frozen Russian sovereign assets to extend Ukraine a $50 billion loan. Russia has warned that it, too, could expand its own economic restrictions against the West—but that will hardly cause bankers in New York or Hamburg to shake in their books. In the global financial sector, Moscow is at a deep disadvantage.
The situation at home could also be troubling for both sides. While Zelensky has a strong political mandate as a wartime leader, any future elections—which have been indefinitely postponed since Russia’s full-scale invasion—could impact his vision for peace and potentially even his own political position. Indeed, a recent poll indicated that a majority of Ukrainians want elections to be held and see the cancelation in a negative light.
On the Russian side, there are no such elections that Putin needs to worry about anytime soon, having already secured another six-year term this year. However, domestic shake-ups—such as the mutiny attempt by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and the subsequent overhauling of the Defense Ministry leadership—could impact the Kremlin’s own position.
Diplomatic weight matters for peace, too. As the recent G-7 summit and the gathering in Switzerland showed, Kyiv does have a great deal of diplomatic support from around the world. However, Ukraine’s level of backing from the global south is much more mixed than from the West, as shown by the lack of attendance of dozens of non-Western states at the peace summit, while others—such as India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Indonesia—declined to sign the final summit communique. Many of these same states have not only maintained but actually increased economic ties with Russia since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
On the flipside, Russia has retained and increased support from the likes of China, Iran, and North Korea, but its own backing from other states throughout the global south is much more transactional and less firm than Ukraine’s assistance from the West. At the same time, the current levels of support from the West cannot be taken for granted by Ukraine, especially amid far-right gains in European Union parliamentary polls and a contentious election in the United States still to come. This will make the role of swing players that have relations with both Russia and Ukraine—including Turkey, the Gulf states, and India—critical to watch moving forward. Some of these states may even end up playing key mediating roles between Kyiv and Moscow once both sides are truly ready to come to the negotiating table.
Thus, Russia currently has the advantage militarily, Ukraine and the West have the advantage economically, and the political and diplomatic sphere is much more mixed. The struggles now will set the terms for negotiating peace—whenever that comes
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